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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. XXIV.
OCTOBER, 1876, TO MARCH, 1877.
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
9 Warren Street.
1877.
Copyrighted by
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY,
1877.
THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Bird’s-Eye View of Toledo, 786
A Glimpse of the Adirondacks, 261
Amid Irish Scenes, 384, 591
Aphasia, 411
Archbishop of Halifax, The Late, 136
Avila, 155
Catacombs, Testimony of the, 371, 523
Chaldean Account of the Creation, 490
Christina Rossetti’s Poems, 122
Christmas Gift, The Devil’s, 322
Cities, Some Quaint Old, 829
Creation, Chaldean Account of, 490
Devil’s Christmas Gift, The, 322
De Vere’s “Mary Tudor,” 777
Dr. Knox on the Unity of the Church, 657
English Rule in Ireland, 799
Egypt and Israel, The Pontifical Vestments of, 213
Errickdale, The Great Strike at, 843
“Evolution, Contemporary,” Mivart’s, 312
Flywheel Bob, 198
Frederic Ozanam, 577
Great Strike at Errickdale, The, 843
Guilds and Apprentices, London, 49
Halifax, The Late Archbishop of, 136
Highland Exile, The, 131
Home-Life of some Eighteenth-Century Poets, The, 677
How Rome Stands To-day, 245
Ireland, English Rule in, 799
Irish Scenes, Amid, 384, 591
Jean Ingelow’s Poems, 419
John Greenleaf Whittier, 433
Knowledge, Physical and Religious, Similarities of, 746
“Lessons from Nature,” Mivart’s, 1
Letters of a Young Irishwoman to
her Sister, 108, 226, 395, 512, 690, 760
London Guilds and Apprentices, 49
“Mary Tudor,” De Vere’s, 777
Mivart’s “Contemporary Evolution,” 312
Mivart’s “Lessons from Nature,” 1
Modern Melodists, 703, 853
Modern Thought in Science, 533
Monsieur Gombard’s Mistake, 445, 667
Mystical Theology, Thoughts on, 145
Nile, Up the, 633, 735
Poems, Christina Rossetti’s, 122
Poems, Jean Ingelow’s, 419
Poets, The Home Life of, 677
Pontifical Vestments of Egypt and Israel, The, 213
Quaint Old Cities, Some, 829
Rome Stands To-Day, How 245
Russian Chancellor, The, 721
Sainte Chapelle of Paris, The, 59
Sancta Sophia, 96
Seville, 13
Siena, 337
Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge, 746
Sir Thomas More, 75, 270, 353, 547
Six Sunny Months, 28, 175, 300, 469, 643, 817
Some Quaint Old Cities, 829
Some Eighteenth-Century Poets, The Home-Life of, 677
Story of the Far West, A, 602
Testimony of the Catacombs, 371, 523
Text-Books in Catholic Colleges, 190
The Devil’s Christmas Gift, 322
Thoughts on Mystical Theology, 145
Three Lectures on Evolution, 616
Toledo, A Bird’s-Eye View of, 786
Unitarian Conference at Saratoga, The, 289
Unity of the Church, Dr. Knox on, 657
Up the Nile, 633, 735
What is Dr. Nevin’s Position? 459
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 433
Year of Our Lord 1876, The, 562
POETRY.
Advent, 560
A Christmas Legend, 541
A March Pilgrimage, 814
Echo to Mary, 129
Evening on the Sea-shore, 107
Light and Shadow, 418
Longings, 744
On Our Lady’s Death, 382
Roma――Amor, 486
St. Teresa, 173
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Alice Leighton, 287
Almanac, Catholic Family, 427
Barat, Life of Mother, 432
Brown House at Duffield, The, 860
Bruté, Memoirs of Rt. Rev. S. W. G., 142
Catholic Family Almanac, 427
Catholic’s Latin Instructor, The, 424
Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 287
Creation, The Voice of, 143
Deirdré, 715
Devotion of the Holy Rosary, The, 432
Ecclesiastical Discourses, 425
Essay Contributing to a Philosophy of Literature, 431
Every-day Topics, 426
Excerpta ex Rituali Romano, 576
Faith of our Fathers, The, 714
First Christmas for our Dear Little Ones, The, 431
Frank Blake, 860
Githa of the Forest, 720
Jesus Suffering, The Voice of, 431
Latin Instructor, The Catholic’s, 424
Lectures on Scholastic Philosophy, 431
Life of Mother Barat, The, 432
Life of Mother Maria Teresa, 720
Life and Letters of Sir Thomas More, The, 428
Linked Lives, 426
Little Book of the Martyrs, The, 576
Margaret Roper, 429
Maria Teresa, Life of Mother, 720
Memoirs of the Right Rev. Simon Wm. Gabriel Bruté, 142
Missale Romanum, 429
More, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas, 428
My Own Child, 288
Normal Higher Arithmetic, The, 576
Poems: Devotional and Occasional, 718
Preparation for Death, A, 430
Real Life, 344
Religion and Education, 716
Sacraments, Sermons on the, 286
Science of the Spiritual Life, The, 429
Sermon on the Mount, The, 431
Sermons on the Sacraments, 286
Short Sermons, 432
Silver Pitchers, 144
Songs in the Night, 430
Terra Incognita, 424
Theologia Moralis, 713
Union with Our Lord, 143
United States, Constitutional and Political History of the, 287
Voice of Creation, The, 143
Voice of Jesus Suffering, The, 431
Wise Nun of Eastonmere, 860
Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare, 717
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 139.――OCTOBER, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
MIVART’S “LESSONS FROM NATURE.”[1]
The condition of what is called the scientific mind in England to-day
may be described as chaotic. Its researches begin nowhere and end
nowhere. Its representative men deny the facts of consciousness, or
misinterpret them, which is equivalent to negation, and thus ignore
the subjective starting point of all knowledge, while they relegate
God to the domain of the unknowable, thereby removing from sight the
true end and goal of all inquiry. Nothing, then, is the Alpha and
Omega of their systems, and it is small matter of surprise that theirs
has been called the philosophy of nihilism. Yet it is sadly true that
the votaries of scientism (_salvâ dignitate, O scientia!_) are on the
increase, and that Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, and Tyndall usurp among
the fashionable leaders of thought, or rather the leaders of
fashionable scientific thought, to-day, the place lately held by Mill,
Renan, Strauss, and Hegel. It is not quite the _ton_ now to content
one’s self with denying the divine inspiration of Holy Writ or with
questioning the Divinity of Christ. We must iterate our belief that in
matter are to be found the “promise and potency of every form and
quality of life,” or that all living things sprang from a primordial
homogeneous cell developed in a primitive plastic fluid eruditely
denominated “protoplasm”; nay, we must join hands with Herbert
Spencer, and affirm of the First Cause that it is unknowable and
entirely divested of personal attributes. It is evident that scientism
is more rigorously sceptical than rationalism or the materialism of
the eighteenth century――in a word, that it is supremely nihilistic.
Being such, it is worth while to inquire through what influence it has
succeeded in dominating over so many vigorous minds, and winning to
its standard the rank and file of non-Catholic scholars. It presents
to the expectant lover of truth a set of interesting facts which
fascinate as well by their novelty and truth as by the hope that the
“open sesame” which unearthed them cannot but swell the list, and that
whatever it pronounces upon is irrevocably fixed. No one can gainsay
the value to science of the brilliant experiments and interesting
discoveries of Prof. Tyndall, nor underrate the painstaking solicitude
of Darwin. Indeed, we are all more or less under the thraldom of the
senses, and the truths which reach our minds through that channel come
home with irresistible force. Hence the allurements of science for the
majority of men, and their complete subjection to the authority of
scientific discoverers. No wonder, therefore, that when a slur is cast
upon the supersensible order――that order with which they have neither
sympathy nor acquaintance――that same majority are ready to deride the
sublimest truths of Christianity, and to devour the veriest inanities
as the utterances of sound philosophy. No wonder that, captivated by
the fast-increasing array of fresh discoveries in the field of
physical science, they pay to the dreamy speculations of Spencer and
Darwin the homage which is due to their solid contributions to
science. These men forget that science is but a grand plexus of facts
which afford to many a convenient peg on which to hang a bit of
shallow philosophism. The truths of science are so cogent and obvious
that most men, failing to discriminate between those truths and
unwarranted inferences drawn from them, regard both with equal
respect, and so deem those who question the latter to be the sworn
foes of the former. It is this confusion of truth with error, natural
enough under the circumstances, that has imparted so much popularity
to the unphilosophic portion of the teachings of Spencer, Huxley,
Tyndall, Proctor, _et id genus omne_, and given to the guinea stamp
the value which belongs to the gold. Moreover, our modern men of
science have not only introduced us to the field of their legitimate
labors with a large knowledge of its varied and interesting features,
but have invested the presentment of their subject with a glamour
which the splendid rhetorical training of the schools and universities
of England has enabled them to throw around it.
Such being the anomalous and insidious blending of truth with error
which characterizes modern scientific thought in England, we should
welcome the appearance of any work aiming at the disentanglement of
this intricate web, especially if the ability and scientific culture
of its author give earnest of its success. Such a work do we find in
that whose title heads this article, and whose author, Dr. Mivart, has
already fully attested, in many a well-written page, his competency
for the task. In his _Lessons from Nature_ Dr. Mivart has undertaken
the consideration of the more salient errors of Herbert Spencer’s
philosophy and Mr. Darwin’s theory of descent and evolution. He has
wisely addressed himself in his opening chapter to a refutation of the
errors which vitiate the substructure of Spencerianism; for the basis
having been proved to be rotten, we are not surprised at beholding the
entire edifice topple to the ground. This chapter he has entitled “The
Starting Point,” and sets out with this theorem for demonstration:
“Our own continued existence is a primary truth naturally made known
to us with supreme certainty, and this certainty cannot be denied
without involving the destruction of all knowledge whatever.”
It will be seen from this statement that Dr. Mivart regards his
opponents as having laid the basis of their systems on the quicksands
of the most radical scepticism; for certainly, if the fact of a το ἐγω
be called in question, all knowledge must go by the board, its
containing subject being no better than a myth. Those casting a doubt
upon the truth of this proposition are by themselves happily styled
Agnostics, or know-nothings, and Dr. Mivart includes in the category
such distinguished names as Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Spencer,
Huxley, and Bain. These writers, one and all, have repeatedly asserted
the relativity of our knowledge――_i.e._, its merely phenomenal
character. They do not deny that we possess knowledge, but that we can
predicate nothing as to its absolute truth. They claim, indeed,
themselves to have sounded the whole diapason of human knowledge, but
they regard it only as a mirage which appears real to the eye whilst
beholding it, but is none the less a mirage in itself. Dr. Mivart
tersely points out the absurdity of this principle of the agnostic
philosophy by stating that either this knowledge is absolute――_i.e._,
objectively valid――or has no corresponding reality outside of the
mind, in which case it represents nothing――_i.e._, is no knowledge at
all. Those, then, who insist upon the relativity of all knowledge are
“in the position of a man who saws across the branch of a tree on
which he actually sits, at a point between himself and the trunk.” For
if our knowledge be purely relative, we know it but relatively, and
that relative knowledge of it is in turn relative, and so on _ad
infinitum_. In other words, if we assert of our knowledge that it is
relative――_i.e._, purely subjective――we affirm an objective fact; for
however much the facts of the mind be subjective in relation to the
objects represented, they become objective in regard to the mind
viewing them as the term point of knowledge; so that to affirm of
_all_ knowledge that it is purely relative is equal to affirming that
the knowledge we have of that knowledge is not the knowledge thereof,
but a similar modification of the mind having no business to look for
anything beyond itself. This surely is a _reductio ad absurdum_; yet
such threads and thrums are made the warp and woof of so-called
scientific philosophy.
Professor Huxley is the most conspicuous champion of this universal
nescience, and Dr. Mivart devotes himself at greater length to a
review of his principles. Huxley says: “Now, is our knowledge of
anything we know or feel more or less than a knowledge of states of
consciousness? And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of
these states we refer to a cause we call ‘self,’ others to a cause or
causes which may be comprehended under the title of ‘not-self.’ But
neither of the existence of ‘self’ nor of that of ‘not-self’ have we,
or can we by any possibility have, any such unquestionable and
immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we
consider to be their effects.” This utterance is remarkable for the
inaccuracies with which it abounds and for the crudeness of its
author’s philosophy. The fact that we immediately apprehend
consciousness in the light of passing states is proof that, mediately
or by reflection, we view it altogether differently, and this latter
mode certainly affords a more certain and satisfactory knowledge. By
reflection, then, or mediately, we regard those passing states as the
product of something enduring and continuous of which we are in
reality conscious, while experiencing those modifications described by
Huxley as “passing states of consciousness.” When conscious of a state
we are certainly conscious of that by which consciousness is had, or
we would be forced to admit that nothing can be conscious, than which
there could be no greater absurdity. The direct consciousness,
therefore, which Huxley’s “passing states of consciousness” would
describe, presupposes the consciousness of the organ of those “passing
states”――a consciousness which stands in an _à priori_ relation to
these latter. The chief flaw in Huxley’s reasoning is that, as he
confines consciousness to a mere modification, and admits no modified
substance as an abiding essence, he must regard mind, so far as he
knows it, as a modification of nothing modified.
We have not here followed out the exact line of argument pursued by
Dr. Mivart, whose strictures on Huxley in regard to his absurd
position must be attentively read in order to be appreciated; but we
hope to have indicated enough to enable the reader to judge of the
fitness of our neoterists to become the leaders of thought. Having
established, then, the implied existence of self in consciousness, Dr.
Mivart proceeds, in a chain of the most solid reasoning, to marshal
around this central truth those having a direct dependence upon it,
and from the admission of which Huxley had fondly hoped to escape by
perverting the true data of consciousness. Memory is the corner-stone
of all knowledge outside of direct consciousness, and Dr. Mivart
clearly shows that its testimony is constantly invoked by the most
outspoken nescients, so that, in regard to its echoings, the choice is
absurd between what it attests generally and the circumscribed field
of operation to which Herbert Spencer seems anxious to confine it. But
Dr. Mivart is satisfied in this chapter with having demonstrated the
sufficiency of rightly understood consciousness to be the “starting
point” of our knowledge of the objective, and properly dismisses the
argument in these words:
“But it is hoped that the cavils of the Agnostics have been
here met by arguments sufficient to enable even the most
timid and deferential readers and hearers of our modern
sophists to hold their own rational convictions, and to
maintain they know what they are convinced they do know, and
not to give up a certain and absolute truth (their
intellectual birthright) at the bidding of those who would
illogically make use of such negation as a ground for
affirming the relativity of all our knowledge, and
consequently for denying all such truths as, for whatever
reason, they may desire to deny.”
To the casual thinker it may appear that the arguments of Dr. Mivart
are somewhat antiquated as against the strongholds of modern error;
but the fact additionally illustrates the slenderness of the resources
with which error comes equipped to the fray, since, whenever there is
question of first principles, truth can with the same weapons always
assail the vulnerable point in the enemy’s armor. It is true that in
point of detail the ground of conflict has shifted, and that those who
once successfully opposed the errors of Voltaire, Diderot, or Volney,
should they suddenly appear on the scene now, would have to count
themselves out of the fight; but with respect to principles and
ultimate expressions, we find the Agnostics of to-day ranging
themselves side by side with the Gnostics and Manicheans of old. So we
believe that Dr. Mivart has done well, before approaching the details
of the controversy, to knock the underpinning from the whole
superstructure of modern error by exposing the falsity of its
principles. At least the procedure is more philosophical and more
satisfactory to the logical mind.
In his second chapter, entitled “First Truths,” Dr. Mivart lays down
the following proposition:
“Knowledge must be based on the study of mental facts and on
undemonstrable truths which declare their own absolute certainty and
are seen by the mind to be positively and necessarily true.” This
proposition finds its counterpart in every text-book of scholastic
philosophy from Bouvier to Liberatore and Ton Giorgi, so that there is
no need to follow the learned author through his very excellent series
of proofs in support of it. The main points of interest in the chapter
are his arraignment of Herbert Spencer’s faulty basis of certainty,
and the disproof of Mr. Lewes’ theory of reasoning.
Mr. Spencer says (_Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 450):
“A discussion in consciousness proves to be simply a trial
of strength between different connections in
consciousness――a systematized struggle serving to determine
which are the least coherent states of consciousness. And
the result of the struggle is that the least coherent states
of consciousness separate, while the most coherent remain
together; forming a proposition of which the predicate
persists in the mind along with its subject.… If there are
any indissoluble connections, he is compelled to accept
them. If certain states of consciousness absolutely cohere
in certain ways, he is obliged to think them in those ways.…
Here, then, the inquirer comes down to an ultimate
uniformity――a universal law of thinking.”
We have quoted this passage of Mr. Spencer’s at some length, both for
the purpose of exhibiting the misty, Germanic manner of his
expression, and of calling attention to Dr. Mivart’s neat and
effectual unfolding of the fallacy which it contains. We presume that
Mr. Spencer means by “least coherent states of consciousness” those
propositions in which the subject and predicate mutually repel each
other, or, in other words, those which involve a physical or a
metaphysical impossibility. Had he, indeed, stated his conception in
those terms, he might have avoided Dr. Mivart’s well-aimed shafts, to
which his cloudiness of expression alone exposed him. A cannon-ball
fired from England to America is the typical proposition which he
offers of “least cohering states of consciousness.” But every one
perceives that the terms of this proposition involve a mere repugnance
to actual and not to imagined facts, causing it to differ in an
essential manner, accordingly, from such a proposition as 2×2 = 5,
against the truth of which there exists a metaphysical impossibility.
The importance of the distinction may be realized when we reflect that
there can be no absolute truth so long as we make the test thereof a
mere non-cohering state of consciousness; for if the terms of a
physically non-possible proposition do not cohere in consciousness,
and if such non-coherence be the absolute test of non-truth, that same
non-truth must end with such non-coherence. This makes truth purely
relative, and is the legitimate goal of such philosophic speculations
as those of Mr. Spencer, which would make all knowledge purely
relative.
Dr. Mivart distinguishes four sorts of propositions: “1. Those which
can be both imagined and believed. 2. Those which can be imagined, but
cannot be believed. 3. Those which cannot be imagined, but can be
believed. 4. Those which cannot be imagined and are not believed,
because they are positively known to be absolutely impossible.”
The third of these propositions finds no place in Mr. Spencer’s
enumeration, since, according to him, it involves “a non-cohering
state of consciousness,” or, as he elsewhere expresses it, is
“inconceivable.” That there are numberless propositions of the third
class described by Dr. Mivart the intelligent reader may perceive at a
glance, and so infer the absurdity of Herbert Spencer’s “non-cohering
states of consciousness” viewed as a “universal law of thinking.”
Thus there is no absolute impossibility in accepting the doctrine of
the multilocation of bodies or of their compenetrability, though no
effort of the imagination can enable us to picture such a thing to the
mind. The common belief that the soul is whole and entire in every
part of the body is “unimaginable,” but certainly not “inconceivable,”
since many vigorous and enlightened minds hold the doctrine with
implicit confidence.
In connection with this subject Dr. Mivart takes occasion to allude to
Professor Helmholtz’s method of disproving the absoluteness of truth.
He supposes
“beings living and moving along the surface of a solid body,
who are able to perceive nothing but what exists on this
surface, and insensible to all beyond it. … If such beings
lived on the surface of a sphere, their space would be
without a limit, but it would not be infinitely extended;
and the axioms of geometry would turn out very different
from ours, and from those of the inhabitants of a plane. The
shortest lines which the inhabitants of a spherical surface
could draw would be arcs of greater circles,” etc.
We have quoted enough from the professor to indicate the drift of his
objection. He concludes: “We may résumé the results of these
investigations by saying that the axioms on which our geometrical
system is based are no necessary truths.” Such is the sorry mode of
reasoning adopted by an eminent man of science in establishing a
conclusion so subversive of the principles of science. Is it not
evident that, no matter what name the inhabitants of the sphere
described by Helmholtz might bestow on the “arcs of great circles,”
these still would be “arcs,” and as such those beings would perceive
them? As showing the lack of uniformity of views which prevail among
men of science when it is question of super-sensible cognitions, Mr.
Mill rushes to the opposite extreme from Herbert Spencer, and holds
that there is nothing to prevent us from conceiving 2×2 = 5. In this
arraignment of Spencer’s faulty view of the basis of certainty, Dr.
Mivart proceeds with care and acumen, and adroitly pits his
antagonists against each other, or invokes their testimony in support
of his own views as against themselves.
The other point of interest in this chapter is the author’s refutation
of Mr. Lewes’ conception of reasoning. In his _Problems of Life and
Mind_ Mr. Lewes reduces the process of reasoning to mere sensible
associations, and entirely overlooks the force and significance of the
_ergo_. He says: “Could we realize all the links in the chain” (of
reasoning) “by reducing conceptions to perceptions, and perceptions to
sensibles, our most abstract reasonings would be a series of
sensations.” This certainly is strange language for a psychologist,
and forcibly demonstrates the hold Locke’s sensism still holds over
the English mind. If we can conceive of a series of sensations in
which the form of a syllogism does not enter――and we experience such
many times daily――then surely there is something more in a train of
reasoning than a mere series of sensations, and that is the
intellectual act of illation denoted by _ergo_. Throughout this
strange philosophism there runs an endeavor to debase man’s intellect
and reduce it to the level of mere brutish faculties. The dignity of
our common manhood is made the target of Spencer’s speculation and
Mill’s subtle reveries, while the grand work of the church which
lifted us out from the slough of barbarism is being gradually undone.
We must indeed congratulate Dr. Mivart upon having led the way in
grappling with the difficulties with which scientific transcendentalism
bristles, and on having rent the net in which error strives to hold
truth in silken dalliance.
We come now to the most difficult and important chapter in the
book――viz., that pertaining to the existence of the external world. We
would premise, before entering upon an analysis of this chapter, that
nothing short of a slow and careful perusal of it in the author’s
language can convey to the reader a full impression of the difficulty
and subtlety which attend the terms of the controversy as waged
tripartitely between Herbert Spencer, Mr. Sidgwick, and the author.
The statement of the proposition is simple enough, viz.:
“The real existence of an external world made up of objects
possessing qualities such as our faculties declare they
possess, cannot be logically denied, and may be rationally
affirmed.”
The terms of this proposition differ but little from those in which
argument is usually made in support of the reality of external
objects, but with Dr. Mivart it serves as the text of a refutation of
Mr. Spencer’s theory of “transfigured realism.” Mr. Spencer stoutly
professes his belief in the realism of the external world, but
distinguishes his conception of it from the common crude realism of
the majority as having been by him filtered through the intellect, and
based, not on the direct data of the senses, but on these as
interpreted by the mind. According to him, “what we are conscious of
as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are
but subjective affections produced by objective agencies which are
unknown and unknowable.” Divested of an involved and trying
terminology, Mr. Spencer’s theory amounts to this: The mind under the
experience of a sensation is irresistibly borne to admit that it is
not itself the active agent concerned in its production; for sensation
as a “passing state of consciousness” is not accompanied by that other
“passing state of consciousness” which exhibits the mind to itself as
spontaneously generating the sensation in question. Therefore that
sensation is derived _ab extra_; therefore its cause, unknown or
unknowable, is something outside of the mind――_i.e._, has an objective
reality. It is a sort of game of blind man’s buff between the mind and
the world, according to Mr. Spencer――we know something has impressed
us, but how or what we cannot find out.
“Thus the universe, as we know it,” says Dr. Mivart,
“disappears not only from our gaze, but from our very
thought. Not only the song of the nightingale, the
brilliancy of the diamond, the perfume of the rose, and the
savor of the peach lose for us all objective reality――these
we might spare and live――but the solidity of the very ground
we tread on, nay, even the coherence and integrity of our
own material frame, dissolve from us, and leave us vaguely
floating in an insensible ocean of unknown potentiality.”
This is “transfigured realism” with a vengeance, and leaves us
somewhat at a loss to know what can be meant by idealism. It
practically differs not from the doctrine of Berkeley and Hume; for it
matters little to us whether external objects exist or not, if they
are in and by themselves something “unknown and unknowable,”
altogether different from what we consider them to be. The radical
fault of Mr. Spencer’s “transfigured realism” is that he mistakes
sensations themselves for the act of the mind which is concerned about
them; and when in reality he speaks merely of the sensations as such,
he imagines he has in view purely speculative intellectual acts. Such
confusion is quite natural in a philosopher who recognizes no form of
idea but transformed sensation, no purely unimaginable conceivability.
This is evident when he says:
“We can think of matter only in terms of mind. We can think
of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed our
explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are
referred to the second for final answer; and when we have
got the final answer of the second, we are referred back to
the first for an interpretation of it.”
Thus is he compelled to revolve in a circular process which makes the
knowledge of mind depend on the knowledge of matter, and _vice versâ_.
How admirably does the scholastic theory of the origin of thought
dissipate the clouds which befog Mr. Spencer throughout this
discussion, and prevent him from seeing to what consequences he
blindly drifts! The unseen, the unfelt, the unheard are each and all
absolutely nothing, so that sense alone can determine reality. Such is
the philosophy of Mr. Spencer; and there can be no wonder that upon an
analysis of premises he finds that, having set out from nothing, he
lands upon the same unreal shore. Scholasticism――the philosophy which
at the present time is returning into unexpected though much deserved
vogue, superseding in the highest intellectual circles the tenuity of
Kant’s unrealism and the sensism of Locke and Condillac――proposes an
explanation of the relation of the external world to the intellect
through the medium of the senses, which cannot but elicit the
endorsement of every logical mind. Just at the point where Spencer
modifies his subjective sensible impression received from the external
world, in such a manner that he can find nothing corresponding to it
outside of himself, the scholastic supposes the active intellect to
seize this phantasm or sensible image, and, having so far divested it
of its sensible qualities as to fit it to become the object of pure
cognition, offers it to the mind cognitive for such cognition, which,
as the true cognitive faculty, pronounces it to be the type or
exemplar of the object, and this he calls the _verbum mentis_, or idea
of the thing. The created light of our intellect, which is itself a
participation in the uncreated divine light, enables us to see and
judge of what is exhibited to it through the organs of sense,
surveying it, measuring it, and penetrating its general essence so far
as to be able to perceive that it is the spiritualized resemblance of
the object which primarily produced the sensation.
We do not here propose to offer any of the usual arguments in support
of this system, apart from the palpable fact that it appears to offer
to each faculty, sensitive and intellective, appropriate material for
operation, but to contrast its adequacy with the confessed impotency
of Spencer’s “transfigured realism.” And, indeed, not only is this
latter impotent but eminently fallacious. In endeavoring to prove that
the mind transfigures its sensations in such a manner that there can
exist no correspondence between the sensation and the object, Mr.
Spencer allows the decision to rest on his test-case of sound. With
respect to the sensation produced on the auditory nerve by aërial
undulations, he says that “the subjective state no more resembles its
objective cause than the pressure which moves the trigger of a gun
resembles the explosion which follows.” And again, summarizing the
argument, he says: “All the sensations produced in us by environing
things are but symbols of actions out of ourselves, the natures of
which we cannot even conceive.” The fallacy of this statement it is
not difficult to perceive; for Mr. Spencer rules out the action of the
intellect, which can alone determine the value and significance of a
sensation, and takes account only of the sensation itself, deeming it
able to pronounce upon its own correspondence with its exciting
object. Indeed, there can be no more correspondence between a visual
object and the sense of vision than there can be between sound and a
vibration of the air, except in so far as the mind pronounces this to
be the case after a due investigation of the respective conditions
pertaining to both sensations. It is the mind alone which can
determine that the sensation we call sound is the result of air
undulations, just as it is the mind which determines that the color
and outline of visual objects are as represented in vision. The fault,
therefore, of Mr. Spencer’s view is that, having constituted sensation
the sole and sufficient judge of its own objective validity and
correspondence with external objects, he is compelled at once to fly
to his chosen refuge and cherished haven of the “unknown and the
unknowable.” Again is he guilty of another transparent fallacy when he
asserts that a series of successive independent sensations are
mistaken for a whole individual one, which we accordingly speak of as
such. The instance he adduces is that of musical sound, “which is,” he
says, “a seemingly simple feeling clearly resolvable into simpler
feelings.” The implied inference is that, since experience proves this
not to be a simple feeling, but resolvable into simpler ones, there
can be no reciprocity between our sensations and their exciting
causes. This reasoning might be accredited with ingenuity, were it not
so extremely shallow. For what is a sensation but that which we feel?
And if we feel it as one, it must be one. It matters not if each
separate beat, contributing to produce musical sound, should, when
heard alone, produce a feeling different from that caused by the
combination of beats, since it is none the less true that the rapid
combination produces a sensation which is felt as one, and necessarily
is one in consequence. Mr. Spencer seems to forget that causes in
combination can produce results entirely different from those to which
each cause separately taken can give rise; or, as Dr. Mivart says,
“All that Mr. Spencer really shows and proves is that diverse
conditions result in the evocation of diverse simple perceptions, of
which perceptions such conditions are the occasions.” Mr. Spencer’s
position, bolstered up as it is by the minutest analysis of mental
consciousness and by a wealth of marvellously subtle reasoning, is
after all but a prejudice. He is indisposed to admit aught but
sensation, and hence plies his batteries against every other element
which dares obtrude itself into the domain of thought. How suggestive
of this fact are the following words:
“It needs but to think of a brain as a seat of nervous
discharges, intermediate between actions in the outer world
and actions in the world of thought, to be impressed with
the absurdity of supposing that the connections among outer
actions, after being transferred through the medium of
nervous discharges, can reappear in the world of thought in
the forms they originally had.”
With Dr. Mivart we ask, “Where is the absurdity?” For surely He who
made the brain might, if he saw fit, and as the facts prove, have so
made it that it would perform its functions in this very identical
manner. The steps of the process by which the results of nervous
action are appropriated by the mind in the shape of knowledge will
necessarily remain an inscrutable mystery for ever, but that is no
reason why they should not be accomplished in any manner short of that
involving a contradiction. This ends what we wish to say concerning
Dr. Mivart’s chapter on the “External World.” He has not endeavored to
shirk a single phase of the discussion with his formidable opponents,
and we feel that if he has worsted them in the encounter, his triumph
is as much the inevitable outcome of the truth of the cause which he
has espoused as it is of the undoubted abilities he has exhibited
throughout the course of the hard-fought contest.
So pregnant with material for thought are the different chapters of
Dr. Mivart’s book that we have thus far been unable to get beyond the
opening ones, nor do their diversified character allow of a kindred
criticism. Thus, from the consideration of the “External World” the
author at once proceeds to a few reflections on language in opposition
to the Darwinian theory of its progressive formation and development.
We wish we could bestow on the whole of this chapter the same
unqualified praise which his previous chapters merit; for, though
partaking of the same general character of carefulness and research
which belongs to all Dr. Mivart’s writings, in it he rather petulantly
waves aside one of the strongest arguments and most valuable
auxiliaries which could be found in support of his position. The
proposition is to this effect: “Rational language is a bond of
connection between the mental and material world which is absolutely
peculiar to man.” He first considers language under its twofold aspect
of emotional and rational, the latter alone being the division alluded
to in the proposition. With the view, however, of facilitating his
encounter with Darwin, he makes six subdistinctions which, though
true, seem to overlap at times, or at least are gratuitous, since they
are not needed for the purpose of their introduction. Mr. Darwin has
exhibited, in his effort to make language a mere improvement on the
gutturals and inarticulate sounds of animals, less of his accustomed
ingenuity than elsewhere, so that any amount of concession might have
been made to him, and yet the orthodox view on the subject have been
left intact. And this we deem the wiser procedure in such cases; for
less expenditure of force is required if the outer entrenchments can
be passed by without a struggle, and siege laid at once to the inner
fortress itself. In one point of the argument Dr. Mivart gets the
better of Darwin so neatly as to remind us of a _carte blanche_ thrust
in fencing. Mr. Darwin remarks that man, in common with the lower
animals, uses, in order to express emotion, cries and gestures which
are at times more expressive than any words, thus asserting an innate
equality between both, if not even the superiority of the emotional
over the rational language, and thereby insinuating that, in point of
origin, there could not have been any difference between them. Dr.
Mivart replies that certainly emotional language is more expressive
when it is question of expressing emotion. “But what,” he asks, “has
that to do with the question of definite signs intelligently given and
understood?” The fact that man uses emotional language in common with
other animals proves nothing beyond the additional fact that he too is
an animal, which is not the question; the question being whether in
addition he possesses exclusively another faculty――viz., that of
rational language, _sui generis_――radically different from the
emotional. Mr. Darwin’s argument is thus representable: _a_ and _a_
(animality) + _x_ (rational language) = _a_ and _a_.
The passage in this chapter to which we reluctantly take exception is
the following: “I actually heard Professor Vogt at Norwich (at the
British Association meeting of 1868), in discussing certain cases of
aphasia, declare before the whole physiological section: ‘_Je ne
comprends pas la parole dans un homme qui ne parle pas_’――a
declaration which manifestly showed that he was not qualified to form,
still less to express, any opinion whatever on the subject.” Now, we
are of opinion that, rightly understood and interpreted in the light
of the most recent researches, these words convey a deep and
significant truth. Dr. Mivart is anxious, in the interest of truth, to
maintain intact and entire the essential difference between emotional
and rational language, and this we believe he might best do by
investigating and adapting the facts of aphasia. Aphasia declares that
language-function is confined to some portion of the anterior
convolution of the brain――a source or centre of nerve-power altogether
distinct from the vesicular or gray portion of the cerebral substance
which is concerned in the production of thought and all purely
intellectual processes. This being the case, whenever we discover a
lesion of the anterior convolution, and find it accompanied with
impaired ability of speech, we also find inability to conceive such
thoughts as those of which words are the sole symbol and sensible
signs. The researches made by Trousseau, Hammond, and Ferrier prove
that the faculty of language is thus localized, the anatomical region
being somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Reil; and though
Brown-Séquard, a physiologist whose opinion is entitled to great
consideration, differs from this view, the fact that more than five
hundred cases as against thirteen favor the opinion is sufficient
guarantee of its probable truth.
The distinction here is not sufficiently kept in sight between objects
of thought which are denoted by some symbol besides the articulate
word, and those which can be represented in words alone. All material
objects, or such as are found amid material environments, belong to
the former class, and of course need no words to become known. Their
material outlines and specific sensible qualities sufficiently reveal
them to the mind without any spoken language; for these individualize,
differentiate, and circumscribe the object, and that is the whole
function of language. When, however, it is question of purely
intellectual conceptions, such as obtain throughout the range of
metaphysics, these are so bound up with their expression that, this
being lost, the thought disappears with it. This theory, long since
broached by De Bonald, finds unexpected support in the facts of
aphasia. There are two forms of aphasia, the one amnesic, involving
the loss of the memory of words, the other ataxic, or inability to
coordinate words in coherent speech. The latter form is met with often
separately, and under those conditions the study of this phenomenon
becomes more interesting. We then see that all idea of relation has
disappeared, because it being a purely intellectual idea, having no
sensible sign to represent it, its expression being lost to the mind,
the thought perishes at the same time. Hence words are confusedly
jumbled by the patient without the slightest reference to their
meaning. The researches of Bouillaud, Dax, Hughlings, Jackson,
Hammond, Flint, and Séguin all tend to establish the close dependence
of thought and language, and to justify the utterance of Prof. Vogt
which Dr. Mivart quotes with so much disapprobation, or to lend force
to the dictum of Max Müller, that “without language there can be no
thought.” We have merely touched upon this interesting subject of
aphasia, as a lengthened consideration of it would carry us beyond our
limits; but we hope to have stated enough to show that Dr. Mivart was,
to say the least, rash in dismissing its teachings so summarily. We
will, however, do him the justice of saying that he conclusively
proves the essential difference between emotional and rational
language, and the absurdity of regarding the latter as a mere
development of the former. He has done this, too, by citing
authorities from the opposing school, and the labors of Mr. Taylor and
Sir John Lubbock are made to do yeoman’s service against Mr. Darwin.
We have thus far followed Dr. Mivart step by step through the opening
chapters of his book, and have found at each point of our progress
abundant materials for reflection. The field he has surveyed with
close-gazing eye is varied and extensive; and though many gleaners
will come after him laden with fresh sheaves of toilsome gathering, to
him belongs the credit of having garnered the first crop of Catholic
truth from the seeds which modern science planted. He has done this
service, too, for philosophy: that he has enabled us to view modern
speculations in the light of the grand old principles of scholastic
philosophy, and dispelled the clouds of sophistry which filled up and
gilded over the cranks and crannies of modern error. He has
appreciated _au juste_ the drift and meaning of that false science
which strives to make the beautiful facts of nature the basis of a
pernicious philosophy. Not a few of our orthodox friends have hitherto
failed to discern the real germ of falsity in the speculations of such
men as Tyndall and Huxley and Spencer. They felt that the conclusions
arrived at by those writers are false, subversive of reason and
morality, but, not being sufficiently versed in the premises wherewith
those conclusions were sought to be connected, they were obliged
either to hold themselves to a silent protest or to carp and snarl
without proof or argument to offer. We should remember that, though
principles rest the same, consequences assume Protean shapes,
according as a sound or a perverse logic deduces them; and such is the
invariable necessity imposed upon the champions of truth that they
must, from time to time, cast aside weapons which have done good
service against a vanquished foe, and fashion others to deal a fresh
thrust wherever they find a flaw in the newly-fashioned armor of
error. Catholic thinkers must keep abreast of the times, and we hope
that henceforth the opponents of scientism will abandon sarcasm and
invective, and, approaching their subject with a fulness of knowledge
which will compel the respect of their adversaries, proceed in their
work, even as Dr. Mivart has done, with dignity and moderation.
[1] _Lessons from Nature as manifested in Mind and Matter._
By St. George Mivart, Ph.D., F.R.S., etc. 8vo, pp. 461. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.
SEVILLE.
Quien no visto a Sevilla
No ha visto a maravilla.
Our first glimpse of the soft-flowing Guadalquivir was a
disappointment――a turbid stream between two flat, uninteresting banks,
on which grew low bushes that had neither grace nor dignity. It needed
its musical name and poetic associations to give it any claim on the
attention. But it assumed a better aspect as we went on. Immense
orchards of olive-trees, soft and silvery, spread wide their boughs as
far as the eye could see. The low hills were sun-bathed; the valleys
were fertile; mountains appeared in the distance, severe and jagged as
only Spanish mountains know how to be, to give character to the
landscape. Now and then some old town came in sight on a swell of
ground, with an imposing gray church or Moorish-looking tower. At
length we came to fair Seville, standing amid orange and citron
groves, on the very banks of the Guadalquivir, with numerous towers
that were once minarets, and, chief among them, the beautiful,
rose-flushed Giralda, warm in the sunset light, rising like a stately
palm-tree among gleaming white houses. The city looked worthy of its
fame as Seville the enchantress――_Encantadora Sevilla_!
We went to the _Fonda Europa_, a Spanish-looking hotel with a _patio_
in the centre, where played a fountain amid odorous trees and shrubs,
and lamps, already lighted, hung along the arcades, in which were
numerous guests sauntering about, and picturesque beggars, grouped
around a pillar, singing some old ditty in a recitative way to the
sound of their instruments. Our room was just above, where we were
speedily lulled to sleep by their melancholy airs, in a fashion not
unworthy of one’s first night in poetic Andalusia. What more, indeed,
could one ask for than an orange-perfumed court with a splashing
fountain, lamps gleaming among the trailing vines, Spanish
_caballeros_ pacing the shadowy arcades, and wild-looking beggars
making sad music on the harp and guitar?
Of course our first visit in the morning was to the famed cathedral.
Everything was charmingly novel in the streets to our new-world
eyes――the gay shops of the _Calle de las Sierpes_, the Broadway of
Seville, which no carriage is allowed to enter; the _Plaza_, with its
orange-trees and graceful arcades; and the dazzling white houses, with
their Moorish balconies and pretty courts, of which we caught glimpses
through the iron gratings, fresh and clean, with plants set around the
cooling fountain, where the family assembled in the evening for music
and conversation.
We soon found ourselves at the foot of the Giralda, which still calls
to prayer, not, as in the time of the Moors, by means of its muezzin,
but by twenty-four bells all duly consecrated and named――Santa Maria,
San Miguel, San Cristobal, San Fernando, Santa Barbara, etc.――which,
from time to time, send a whole wave of prayer over the city. It is
certainly one of the finest towers in Spain, and the people of Seville
are so proud of it that they call it the eighth wonder of the world,
which surpasses the seven others:
Tu, maravilla octava, maravillas
A las pasadas siete maravillas.
The Moors regarded it as so sacred that they would have destroyed it
rather than have it fall into the hands of the Christians, had not
Alfonso the Wise threatened them with his vengeance should they do so.
Its strong foundations were partly built out of the statues of the
saints, as if they wished to raise a triumphant structure on the ruins
of what was sacred to Christians. The remainder is of brick, of a soft
rose-tint, very pleasing to the eye. The tower rises to the height of
three hundred and fifty feet, square, imposing, and so solid as to
have resisted the shock of several earthquakes. Around the belfry is
the inscription:
NOMEN DOMINI FORTISSIMA TURRIS
――the name of the Lord is a strong tower. It is lighted by graceful
arches and ascended by means of a ramp in the centre, which is so
gradual that a horse could go to the very top. We found on the summit
no wise old Egyptian raven, as in Prince Ahmed’s time, with one foot
in the grave, but still poring, with his knowing one eye, over the
cabalistic diagrams before him. No; all magic lore vanished from the
land with the dark-browed Moors, and now there were only gentle doves,
softly cooing in less heathenish notes, but perhaps not without their
spell.
On the top of the tower is a bronze statue of Santa Fé, fourteen feet
high, weighing twenty-five hundred pounds, but, instead of being
steadfast and immovable, as well-grounded faith should be, it turns
like a weather-cock, veering with every wind like a very straw, whence
the name of Giralda. Don Quixote makes his Knight of the Wood,
speaking of his exploits in honor of the beautiful Casilda, say: “Once
she ordered me to defy the famous giantess of Seville, called Giralda,
as valiant and strong as if she were of bronze, and who, without ever
moving from her place, is the most changeable and inconstant woman in
the world. I went. I saw her. I conquered her. I forced her to remain
motionless, as if tied, for more than a week. No wind blew but from
the north.”
At the foot of this magic tower is the _Patio de las Naranjas_――an
immense court filled with orange-trees of great age, in the midst of
which is the fountain where the Moors used to perform their ablutions.
It is surrounded by a high battlemented wall, which makes the
cathedral look as if fortified. You enter it by a Moorish archway, now
guarded by Christian apostles and surmounted by the victorious cross.
Just within you are startled by a thorn-crowned statue of the _Ecce
Homo_, in a deep niche, with a lamp burning before it. The court is
thoroughly Oriental in aspect, with its fountain, its secluded groves,
the horseshoe arches with their arabesques, the crocodile suspended
over the _Puerta del Lagarto_, sent by the Sultan of Egypt to Alfonso
the Wise, asking the hand of his daughter in marriage (an ominous
love-token from which the princess naturally shrank); and over the
church door, with a lamp burning before it, is a statue of the
Oriental Virgin whom all Christians unite in calling Blessed――here
specially invoked as _Nuestra Señora de los Remedios_. The Oriental
aspect of the court makes the cathedral within all the more
impressive, with its Gothic gloom and marvels of western art. It is
one of the grandest Gothic churches in the world. It is said the
canons, when the question of building it was discussed in 1401,
exclaimed in full chapter: “Let us build a church of such dimensions
that every one who beholds it will consider us mad!” Everything about
it is on a grand scale. It is an oblong square four hundred and
thirty-one feet long by three hundred and fifteen wide. The nave is of
prodigious height, and of the six aisles the two next the walls are
divided into a series of chapels. The church is lighted by
ninety-three immense windows of stained glass, the finest in Spain,
but of the time of the decadence. The rites of the church are
performed here with a splendor only second to Rome, and the objects
used in the service are on a corresponding scale of magnificence. The
silver monstrance, for the exposition of the Host, is one of the
largest pieces of silversmith’s work in the kingdom, with niches and
saints elaborately wrought, surmounted by a statuette of the
Immaculate Conception. The bronze _tenebrario_ for Holy Week is twelve
feet high, with sixteen saints arrayed on the triangle. The Pascal
candle, given every year by the chapter of Toledo in exchange for the
palm branches used on Palm Sunday, is twenty-five feet high, and
weighs nearly a ton. It looks like a column of white marble, and might
be called the “_Grand Duc des chandelles_,” as the sun was termed by
Du Bartas, a French poet of the time of Henry of Navarre. On the right
wall, just within one of the doors, is a St. Christopher, painted in
the sixteenth century, thirty-two feet high, with a green tree for a
staff, crossing a mighty current with the child Jesus on his shoulder,
looking like an infant Hercules. These gigantic St. Christophers are
to be seen in most of the Spanish cathedrals, from a belief that he
who looks prayerfully upon an image of this saint will that day come
to no evil end: _Christophorum videas; postea tutus eas_――Christopher
behold; then mayest thou safely go; or, according to the old adage:
Christophori sancti, speciem quicumque tuetur,
Istâ nempè die non morte mala morietur.
These colossal images are at first startling, but one soon learns to
like the huge, kindly saint who walked with giant steps in the paths
of holiness; bore a knowledge of Christ to infidel lands of suffering
and trial, upheld amid the current by his lofty courage and strength
of will, which raised him above ordinary mortals, and carrying his
staff, ever green and vigorous, emblem of his constancy. No legend is
more beautifully significant, and no saint was more popular in ancient
times. His image was often placed in elevated situations, to catch the
eye and express his power over the elements, and he was especially
invoked against lightning, hail, and impetuous winds. His name of
happy augury――the Christ-bearer――was given to Columbus, destined to
carry a knowledge of the faith across an unknown deep.
This reminds us that in the pavement near the end of the church is the
tombstone of Fernando, the son of Christopher Columbus, on which are
graven the arms given by Ferdinand and Isabella, with the motto: _A
Castilla y a Leon, mundo nuevo dio Colon._ Over this stone is erected
the immense _monumento_ for the Host on Maundy Thursday, shaped like a
Greek temple, which is adorned by large statues, and lit up by nearly
a thousand candles.
This church, though full of solemn religious gloom, is by no means
gloomy. It is too lofty and spacious, and the windows, especially in
the morning, light it up with resplendent hues. The choir, which is as
large as an ordinary church, stands detached in the body of the house.
It is divided into two parts transversely, with a space between them
for the laity, as in all the Spanish cathedrals. The part towards the
east contains the high altar, and is called the _Capilla mayor_. The
other is the _Coro_, strictly speaking, and contains the richly-carved
stalls of the canons and splendid choral books. They are both
surrounded by a high wall finely sculptured, except the ends that face
each other, across which extend _rejas_, or open-work screens of iron
artistically wrought, that do not obstruct the view.
The canons were chanting the Office when we entered, and looked like
bishops in their flowing purple robes. The service ended with a
procession around the church, the clergy in magnificent copes, heavy
with ancient embroidery in gold. The people were all devout. No
careless ways, as in many places where religion sits lightly on the
people, but an earnestness and devotion that were impressive. The
attitudes of the clergy were fine, without being studied; the grouping
of the people picturesque. The ladies all wore the Spanish mantilla,
and, when not kneeling, sat, in true Oriental style, on the matting
that covered portions of the marble pavement. Lights were burning on
nearly all the altars like constellations of stars all along the dim
aisles. The grandeur of the edifice, the numerous works of Christian
art, the august rites of the Catholic Church, and the devotion of the
people all seemed in harmony. Few churches leave such an impression on
the mind.
In the first chapel at the left, where stands the baptismal font, is
Murillo’s celebrated “Vision of St. Anthony,” a portion of which was
cut out by an adroit thief a few years ago, and carried to the United
States, but is now replaced. It is so large that, with a “Baptism of
our Saviour” above it by the same master, it fills the whole side of
the chapel up to the very arch. It seemed to be the object of general
attraction. Group after group came to look at it before leaving the
church, and it is worthy of its popularity and fame, though Mr. Ford
says it has always been overrated. Théophile Gautier is more
enthusiastic. He says:
“Never was the magic of painting carried so far. The rapt
saint is kneeling in the middle of his cell, all the poor
details of which are rendered with the vigorous realism
characteristic of the Spanish school. Through the half-open
door is seen one of those long, spacious cloisters so
favorable to reverie. The upper part of the picture, bathed
in a soft, transparent, vaporous light, is filled with a
circle of angels of truly ideal beauty, playing on musical
instruments. Amid them, drawn by the power of prayer, the
Infant Jesus descends from cloud to cloud to place himself
in the arms of the saintly man, whose head is bathed in the
streaming radiance, and who seems ready to fall into an
ecstasy of holy rapture. We place this divine picture above
the St. Elizabeth of Hungary cleansing the _teigneux_, to be
seen at the Royal Academy of Madrid; above the ‘Moses’;
above all the Virgins and all the paintings of the Infant
Jesus by this master, however beautiful, however pure they
be. He who has not seen the ‘St. Anthony of Padua’ does not
know the highest excellence of the painter of Seville. It is
like those who imagine they know Rubens and have never seen
the ‘Magdalen’ at Antwerp.”
We passed chapel after chapel with paintings, statues, and tombs, till
we came to the _Capilla Real_, where lies the body of St. Ferdinand in
a silver urn, with an inscription in four languages by his son,
Alfonso the Wise, who seems to have had a taste for writing epitaphs.
He composed that of the Cid.
St. Ferdinand was the contemporary and cousin-german of St. Louis of
France, who gave him the _Virgen de los Reyes_ that hangs in this
chapel, and, like him, added the virtues of a saint to the glories of
a warrior. He had such a tender love for his subjects that he was
unwilling to tax them, and feared the curse of one poor old woman more
than a whole army of Moors. He took Cordova, and dedicated the mosque
of the foul Prophet to the purest of Virgins. He conquered Murcia in
1245; Jaen in 1246; Seville in 1248; but he remained humble amid all
his glory, and exclaimed with tears on his death-bed: “O my Lord! thou
hast suffered so much for the love of me; but I, wretched man that I
am! what have I done out of love for thee?” He died like a criminal,
with a cord around his neck and a crucifix in his hands, and so
venerated by foes as well as friends that, when he was buried,
Mohammed Ebn Alahmar, the founder of the Alhambra, sent a hundred
Moorish knights to bear lighted tapers around his bier――a tribute of
respect he continued to pay him on every anniversary of his death. And
to this day, when the body of St. Ferdinand, which is in a remarkable
state of preservation, is exposed to veneration, the troops present
arms as they pass, and the flag is lowered before the conqueror of
Seville.
The arms of the city represent St. Ferdinand on his throne, with St.
Leander and Isidore, the patrons of Seville, at his side. Below is the
curious device――No 8 Do――a rebus of royal invention, to be seen on the
pavement of the beautiful chapter-house. When Don Sancho rebelled
against his father, Alfonso the Wise, most of the cities joined in the
revolt. But Seville remained loyal, and the king gave it this device
as the emblem of its fidelity. The figure 8, which represents a knot
or skein――_madeja_ in Spanish――between the words No and Do, reads: _No
madeja do_, or _No m’ha dejado_, which, being interpreted, is: _She
has not abandoned me_.
St. Ferdinand’s effigy is rightfully graven on the city arms; for it
was he who wrested Seville from Mahound and restored it to Christ, to
use the expression on the _Puerta de la Carne_:
Condidit Alcides; renovavit Julius urbem,
Restituit Christo Fernandus tertius Heros.
――Alcides founded the city, Julius Cæsar rebuilt it, and Ferdinand
III., the Hero, restored it to Christ; a proud inscription, showing
the antiquity of Seville. Hercules himself, who played so great a
_rôle_ in Spain, founded it, as you see; its historians say just two
thousand two hundred and twenty-eight years after the creation of the
world. On the _Puerta de Jerez_ it is written: “Hercules built me,
Julius Cæsar surrounded me with walls, and the Holy King conquered me
with the aid of Garcia Perez de Vargas.” Hercules’ name has been given
to one of the principal promenades of the city, where his statue is to
be seen on a column, opposite to another of Julius Cæsar.
The above-mentioned Garcia Perez and Alfonso el Sabio are both buried
in the Royal Chapel. Close beside it is the chapel of the Immaculate
Conception, with some old paintings of that mystery, which Seville was
one of the foremost cities in the world to maintain. Andalusia is the
true land of the Immaculate Conception, and Seville was the first to
raise a cry of remonstrance against those who dared attack the most
precious prerogative of the Virgin. Its clergy and people sent
deputies to Rome, and had silence imposed on all who were audacious
enough to dispute it. And when Pope Paul V. published his bull
authorizing the festival of the Immaculate Conception, and forbidding
any one’s preaching or teaching to the contrary, Seville could not
contain itself for joy, but broke out into tournaments and banquets,
bull-fights and the roaring of cannon. When the festival came round,
this joy took another form, and expressed itself in true Oriental
fashion by dances before the Virgin, as the Royal Harper danced before
the ark. Nor was this a novelty. Religious dances had been practised
from remote times in Spain. They formed part of the Mozarabic rite,
which Cardinal Ximenes reestablished at Toledo, authorizing dances in
the choir and nave. St. Basil, among other fathers, approved of
imitating the _tripudium angelorum_――the dance of the angelic choirs
that
“Sing, and, singing in their glory, move.”
At the Cathedral of Seville the choir-boys, called _Los Seises_――the
Sixes――used to dance to the sound of ivory castanets before the Host
on Corpus Christi, and in the chapel of the Virgin on the 8th of
December, when they were dressed in blue and white. Sometimes they
sang as they danced. One of their hymns began: “Hail, O Virgin, purer
and fairer than the dawn or star of day! Daughter, Mother, Spouse,
Maria! and the Eastern Gate of God!” with the chorus: “Sing, brothers,
sing, to the praise of the Mother of God; of Spain the royal
patroness, conceived without sin!” There was nothing profane in this
dance. It was a kind of cadence, decorous, and not without religious
effect. Several of the archbishops of Seville, however, endeavored to
suppress it, but the lower clergy long clung to the custom. Pope
Eugenius IV., in 1439, authorized the dance of the _Seises_. St.
Thomas of Villanueva speaks approvingly of the religious dances of
Seville in his day. They were also practised in Portugal, where we
read of their being celebrated at the canonization of St. Charles
Borromeo, as in Spain for that of St. Ignatius de Loyola. These,
however, were of a less austere character, and were not performed in
church. In honor of the latter, quadrilles were formed of children,
personifying the four quarters of the globe, with costumes in
accordance. America had the greatest success, executed by children
eight or ten years old, dressed as monkeys, parrots, etc.――tropical
America, evidently. These were varied in one place by the
representation of the taking of Troy, the wooden horse included.
The Immaculate Conception is still the favorite dogma of this region.
_Ave Maria Purissima!_ is still a common exclamation. There are few
churches without a Virgin dressed in blue and white; few houses
without a picture, at least, of Mary Most Pure. There are numerous
confraternities of the Virgin, some of whom come together at dawn to
recite the _Rosario de la Aurora_. Among the hymns they sing is a
verse in which Mary is compared to a vessel of grace, of which St.
Joseph is the sail, the child Jesus the helm, and the oars are the
pious members, who devoutly pray:
“Es Maria la nave de gracia,
San Jose la vela, el Niño el timon;
Y los remos son las buenas almas
Que van al Rosario con gran devocion.”
There is another chapel of Our Lady in the cathedral of Seville, in
which is a richly-sculptured retable with pillars, and niches, and
statues, all of marble, and a balustrade of silver, along the rails of
which you read, in great silver letters, the angelic salutation: AVE
MARIA!
At the further end of one of the art-adorned sacristies hangs Pedro de
Campaña’s famous “Descent from the Cross,” before which Murillo loved
to meditate, especially in his last days. Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus, in deep-red mantles, let down the dead Christ. St. John
stands at the foot ready to receive him. The Virgin is half fainting.
Magdalen is there with her vase. The figures are a little stiff, but
their attitudes are expressive of profound grief, and the picture is
admirable in coloring and religious in effect, as well as interesting
from its associations. It was once considered so awful that Pacheco
was afraid to remain before it after dark. But those were days of
profound religious feeling; now men are afraid of nothing. And it was
so full of reality to Murillo that, one evening, lingering longer than
usual before it, the sacristan came to warn him it was time to close
the church. “I am waiting,” said the pious artist, rousing from his
contemplation, “till those holy men shall have finished taking down
the body of the Lord.” The painting then hung in the church of Santa
Cruz, and Murillo was buried beneath it. This was destroyed by Marshal
Soult, and the bones of the artist scattered.
In the same sacristy hang, on opposite walls, St. Leander and his
brother Isidore, by Murillo, both with noble heads. The latter is the
most popular saint in Spain after St. James, and is numbered among the
fathers of the church. Among the twelve burning suns, circling in the
fourth heaven of Dante’s Paradiso, is “the arduous spirit of Isidore,”
whom the great Alcuin long before called “Hesperus, the star of the
church――_Jubar Ecclesiæ, sidus Hesperiæ_.” The Venerable Bede classes
him with Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, and Cyprian; and it was after
dictating some passages from St. Isidore that he died.
St. Isidore is said to have been descended from the old Gothic kings.
At any rate, he belonged to a family of saints, which is better; his
sister and two brothers being in the calendar. His saintly mother,
when the family was exiled from Carthagena on account of their
religion, chose to live in Seville, saying with tears: “Let me die in
this foreign land, and have my sepulchre here where I was brought to
the knowledge of God!” It is said a swarm of bees came to rest on the
mouth of St. Isidore when a child; as is related of several other men
celebrated for their mellifluence――Plato and St. Ambrose, for example.
Old legends tell how he went to Rome and back in one night. However
that may be, his mind was of remarkable activity and compass, and took
in all the knowledge of the day. He knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and
wrote such a vast number of works as to merit the title of _Doctor
Egregius_. There are two hundred MSS. of his in the _Bibliothèque
Royale_ at Paris, and still more at the Vatican, to say nothing of
those in Spain. His great work, the _Etymologies_, in twenty books, is
an encyclopædia of all the learning of the seventh century. Joseph
Scaliger says it rendered great service to science by saving from
destruction what would otherwise have been irretrievably lost.
The account of St. Isidore’s death, celebrated by art, is very
affecting. When he felt his end was drawing near, he summoned two of
his suffragans, and had himself transported to the church of San
Vicente amid a crowd of clergy, monks, and the entire population of
Seville, who rent the air with their cries. When he arrived before the
high altar, he ordered all the women to retire. Then one of the
bishops clothed him in sackcloth, and the other sprinkled him with
ashes. In this penitential state he publicly confessed his sins,
imploring pardon of God, and begging all present to pray for him. “And
if I have offended any one,” added he, “let him pardon me in view of
my sincere repentance.” He then received the holy Body of the Lord,
and gave all around him the kiss of peace, desiring that it might be a
pledge of eternal reunion, after which he distributed all the money he
had left to the poor. He was then taken home, and died four days
after.[2]
On the church in which this touching scene occurred is represented San
Vicente, the titular, with the legendary crow which piloted the ship
that bore his body to Lisbon, with a pitchfork in its mouth. Mr. Ford,
whose knowledge of saintly lore is not commensurate with his desire to
be funny, thinks “a rudder would be more appropriate,” not knowing
that a fork was one of the instruments used to torture the “Invincible
Martyr.” Prudentius says: “When his body was lacerated by iron forks,
he only smiled on his tormentors; the pangs they inflicted were a
delight; thorns were his roses; the flames a refreshing bath; death
itself was but the entrance to life.”
Near the cathedral is the Alcazar, with battlemented walls, and an
outer pillared court where pace the guards to defend the shades of
past royalty. As we had not then seen the Alhambra, we were the more
struck by the richness and beauty of this next best specimen of
Moorish architecture. The fretwork of gold on a green ground, or white
on red; the mysterious sentences from the Koran; the curious ceilings
inlaid with cedar; the brilliant _azulejos_; the Moorish arches and
decorations; and the secluded courts, were all novel, and like a page
from some Eastern romance. The windows looked out on enchanting
gardens, worthy of being sung by Ariosto, with orange hedges,
palm-trees, groves of citrons and pomegranates, roses in full bloom,
though in January; kiosks lined with bright _azulejos_, and a fountain
in the centre; fish playing in immense marble tanks, tiny jets of
water springing up along the paths to cool the air, a bright sun, and
a delicious temperature. All this was the creation of Don Pedro the
Cruel, aided by some of the best Moorish workmen from Granada. Here
reigned triumphant Maria de Padilla, called the queen of sorcerers by
the people, who looked upon Don Pedro as bewitched. When she died, the
king had her buried with royal honors――shocking to say, in the
_Capilla Real_, where lies Fernando the Saint! Her apartments are
pointed out, now silent and deserted where once reigned love and
feasting――yes, and crime. In one of the halls it is said Don Pedro
treacherously slew Abou Said, King of the Moors, who had come to visit
him in sumptuous garments of silk and gold, covered with jewels――slew
him for the sake of the booty. Among the spoils were three rubies of
extraordinary brilliancy, as large as pigeons’ eggs, one of which Don
Pedro afterwards gave the Black Prince; it is now said to adorn the
royal crown of England.
There is a little oratory in the Alcazar, only nine or ten feet
square, called the _Capilla de los Azulejos_, because the altar,
retable, and the walls to a certain height, are composed of enamelled
tiles, some of which bear the F and Y, with the arrows and yoke,
showing they were made in the time of Isabella the Catholic. The
altar-piece represents the Visitation. In this chapel Charles V. was
married to Isabella of Portugal.
No one omits to visit the hospital of _La Caridad_, which stands on a
square by the Guadalquivir, with five large pictures on the front, of
blue and white _azulejos_, painted after the designs of Murillo. One
of them represents St. George and the dragon, to which saint the
building is dedicated. This hospital was rebuilt in 1664 by Miguel de
Mañara in expiation of his sins; for he had been, before his
conversion, a very Don Juan for profligacy. In his latter days he
acquired quite a reputation for sanctity, and some years since there
was a question of canonizing him. However, he had inscribed on his
tomb the unique epitaph: “Here lie the ashes of the worst man that
ever lived in the world.” He was a friend of Murillo’s, and, being a
man of immense wealth, employed him to adorn the chapel of his
hospital. Marshal Soult carried off most of these paintings, among
which was the beautiful “St. Elizabeth of Hungary,” now at Madrid; but
six still remain. “Moses smiting the Rock” and the “Multiplication of
the Loaves and Fishes” are justly noted, but the most beautiful is the
picture of San Juan de Dios staggering home through the dark street on
a stormy night, with a dying man on his shoulder. An angel, whose
heavenly radiance lights up the gloom with truly Rembrandt coloring,
is aiding him to bear his burden.
There is a frightful picture among these soft Murillos, by Juan Valdés
Leal, of a half-open coffin, in which lies a bishop in magnificent
pontifical robes, who is partially eaten up by the worms. Murillo
could never look at it without compressing his nose, as if it gave out
a stench. The “Descent from the Cross” over the altar is exquisitely
carved and colored. Few chapels contain so many gems of art, but the
light is ill-adapted for displaying them.
This hospital was in part founded for night wanderers. It is now an
almshouse for old men, and served by Sisters of Charity.
Among other places of attraction are the palace of the Duke de
Montpensier and the beautiful grounds with orange orchards and groves
of palm-trees. Then there is the house of Murillo, bright and sunny,
with its pleasant court and marble pillars, still the home of art,
owned by a dignitary of the church.
The _Casa de Pilatos_ is an elegant palace, half Moorish, half Gothic,
belonging to the Duke of Medina Celi, said to have been built by a
nobleman of the sixteenth century, in commemoration of a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, after the plan of Pilate’s house. Perhaps the name was
given it because the public stations of the _Via Crucis_, or Way of
Bitterness, as the Spanish call it, begin here, at the cross in the
court. The Pretorian chapel has a column of the flagellation and
burning lamps; and on the staircase, as you go up, is the cock in
memory of St. Peter. Beautiful as the palace is, it is unoccupied, and
kept merely for show.
It would take a volume to describe all the works of art to be seen in
the palaces and churches of Seville. We will only mention the _Jesus
Nazareno del Gran Poder_――of great power――at San Lorenzo, a statue by
Montañes, which is carried in the processions of Holy Week, dressed in
black velvet broidered with silver and gold, and bearing a large cross
encrusted with ivory, shell, and pearl. Angels, with outspread wings,
bear lanterns before him. The whole group is carried by men so
concealed under draperies that it seems to move of itself. We had not
the satisfaction of witnessing one of these processions, perhaps the
most striking in the world, with the awful scenes of the Passion, the
Virgin of Great Grief, and the apostles in their traditional colors;
even Judas in yellow, still in Spain the color of infamy and
criminals.
Of course we went repeatedly to the _Museo_ of Seville; for we had
specially come here to see Murillo on his native ground. His statue is
in the centre of the square before it. The collection of paintings is
small, but it comprises some of the choicest specimens of the Seville
school. They are all of a religious nature, and therefore not out of
place in the church and sacristy where they are hung――part of the
suppressed convent of _La Merced_, founded by Fernando el Santo in the
thirteenth century. The custodian who ushered us in waved his hand to
the pictures on the opposite wall, breathing rather than saying the
word _Murillo!_ with an ineffable accent, half triumph, half
adoration, and then kissed the ends of his fingers to express their
delicious quality. He was right. They are adorable. We recognized them
at a glance, having read of them for long years, and seen them often
in our dreams. And visions they are of beauty and heavenly rapture,
such as Murillo alone could paint. His refinement of expression, his
warm colors and shimmering tints, the purity and tenderness of his
Virgins, the ecstatic glow of his saints, and the infantine grace and
beauty of his child Christs, all combine to make him one of the most
beautiful expressions of Christian art, in harmony with all that is
mystical and fervid. He has twenty-four paintings here, four of which
are Conceptions, the subject for which he is specially renowned.
Murillo is emphatically the Painter of the Immaculate Conception. When
he established the Academy of Art at Seville, of which he and Herrera
were the first presidents, every candidate had to declare his belief
in the Most Pure Conception of the Virgin. It was only three months
before Murillo’s birth that Philip IV., amid the enthusiastic applause
of all Spain, solemnly placed his kingdom under the protection of the
_Virgen concebida sin peccado_. Artists were at once inspired by the
subject, and vied with each other in depicting the
“Woman above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
But Murillo alone rose to the full height of this great theme, and he
will always be considered as, _par excellence_, the _Pintor de las
Concepciones_. He painted the Conception twenty-five times, and not
twice in the same way. Two are at Paris, several in England, three at
Madrid, and four in this museum, one of which is called the _Perla_――a
pearl indeed. Innocence and purity, of course, are the predominant
expressions of these Virgins, from the very nature of the subject.
Mary is always represented clothed in flowing white robes, and draped
with an azure mantle. She is radiant with youth and grace, and
mysterious and pure as the heaven she floats in. Her small, delicate
hands are crossed on her virginal breast or folded in adoration. Her
lips are half open and tremulous. She is borne up in a flood of
silvery light, calmly ecstatic, her whole soul in her eyes, which are
bathed in a humid languor, and her beautiful hair, caressed by the
wind, is floating around her like an aureola of gold. The whole is a
vision as intoxicating as a cloud of Arabian incense. It is a poem of
mystical love――the very ecstasy of devotion.
Murillo’s best paintings were done for the Franciscans, the great
defenders of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. From the
Capuchins of Seville perhaps he derived his inspiration. They were his
first patrons. He loved to paint the Franciscan saints, as well as
their darling dogma. Such subjects were in harmony with his spiritual
nature. He almost lived in the cloister. Piety reigned in his
household. One of his sons took orders, and his daughter, Francisca,
the model of some of his virgins, became a nun in the convent of the
_Madre de Dios_.
Among his paintings here is one of “St. Francis at the foot of the
Cross,” trampling the world and its vanities under his feet. Our
Saviour has detached one bleeding hand from the cross, and bends down
to lay it on the shoulder of the saint, as if he would draw him closer
to his wounded side. St. Francis is looking up with a whole world of
adoring love in his eyes, of self-surrender and _abandon_ in his
attitude. Though sombre in tone, this is one of the most expressive
and devotional of pictures, and, once seen, can never be forgotten.
Then there is St. Felix, in his brown Franciscan dress, holding the
beautiful child Jesus in his arms. When we first saw it, the afternoon
sun, streaming through the windows, threw fresh radiance over the
heavenly Madonna, who comes lightly, so lightly! down through the
luminous ether, borne by God’s angels, slightly bending forward to the
saint, as if with special predilection. A wallet of bread is at his
feet, in reference to the legend that St. Felix went out one stormy
night to beg for the poor brethren of his convent, and met a child
radiant with goodness and beauty, who gave him a loaf and then
disappeared. This picture is the perfection of what is called
Murillo’s _vaporous_ style. The Spanish say it was painted _con leche
y sangre_――with milk and blood.
The _Servietta_, so famous, is greatly injured. It is said to have
been dashed off on a napkin, while waiting for his dinner, and given
to the porter of the convent. If so, the friars’ napkins were of very
coarse canvas, as may be seen where the paint has scaled off. The
Virgin, a half-length, has large, Oriental eyes, full of intensity and
earnestness.
Opposite is St. Thomas of Villanueva, giving alms to the poor, with a
look of compassionate feeling on his pale, emaciated face, the light
coming through the archway above him with fine effect. The beggars
around him stand out as if in relief. One is crawling up to the saint
on his knees, the upper part of his body naked and brown from
exposure. A child in the corner is showing his coin to his mother with
glee. Murillo used to call this _his_ picture, as if he preferred it
to his other works.
St. Thomas was Archbishop of Valencia in the sixteenth century, and a
patron of letters and the arts, but specially noted for his excessive
charity, for which he is surnamed the Almsgiver. His ever-open purse
was popularly believed to have been replenished by the angels. When he
died, more than eight thousand poor people followed him to the grave,
filling the air with their sighs and groans. Pope Paul V. canonized
him, and ordered that he should be represented with a purse instead of
a crosier.
Murillo’s SS. Justa and Rufina are represented with victorious palms
of martyrdom, holding between them the Giralda, of which they have
been considered the special protectors since a terrible storm in 1504,
which threatened the tower. They are two Spanish-looking maidens, one
in a violet dress and yellow mantle, the other in blue and red, with
earthen dishes around their feet. They lived in the third century, and
were the daughters of a potter in Triana, a faubourg of Seville, on
the other side of the river, which has always been famous for its
pottery. In the time of the Arabs beautiful _azulejos_ were made here,
of which specimens are to be seen in some of the churches of Seville.
In the sixteenth century there were fifty manufactories here, which
produced similar ones of very fine lustre, such as we see at the _Casa
de Pilatos_. Cervantes celebrates Triana in his _Rinconete y
Cortadillo_. It is said to derive its name, originally Trajana, from
the Emperor Trajan, who was born not far from Seville. It has come
down from its high estate, and is now mostly inhabited by gypsies and
the refuse of the city. The potteries are no longer what they once
were. But there is an interesting little church, called Santa Ana,
built in the time of Alfonso the Wise, in which are some excellent
pictures, and a curious tomb of the sixteenth century made of
_azulejos_. It was in this unpromising quarter the two Christian
maidens, Justa and Rufina, lived fifteen hundred years ago or more.
Some pagan women coming to their shop one day to buy vases for the
worship of Venus, they refused to sell any for the purpose, and the
women fell upon their stock of dishes and broke them to pieces. The
saints threw the images of Venus into the ditch to express their
abhorrence. Whereupon the people dragged them before the magistrates,
and, confessing themselves to be Christians, they were martyred.
There are two St. Anthonies here by Murillo, one of which is specially
remarkable for beauty and intensity of expression. The child Jesus has
descended from the skies, and sits on an open volume, about to clasp
the saint around the neck. St. Anthony’s face seems to have caught
something of the glow of heaven. Angels hover over the scene, as well
they may.
There are several paintings here by the genial Pacheco, the
father-in-law of Velasquez; among others one of St. Peter Nolasco, the
tutor of Don Jayme _el Conquistador_, going in a boat to the
redemption of captives. The man at the prow is Cervantes, who, with
the other _beaux esprits_ of the day, used to assemble in the studio
of Pacheco, a man of erudition and a poet as well as a painter.
Pacheco was a familiar of the Inquisition, and inspector of sacred
pictures. It was in the latter capacity he laid down rules for their
representation, among which were some relating to paintings of the
Immaculate Conception (he has two paintings of this subject in the
museum), which were generally adhered to in Spain. The general idea
was taken from the woman in the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun,
having the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars. The Virgin was to be represented in the freshness of
maidenhood, with grave, sweet eyes, golden hair, in a robe of spotless
white and a blue mantle. Blue and white are the traditional colors of
the Virgin. In the unchanging East Lamartine found the women of
Nazareth clad in a loose white garment that fell around them in long,
graceful folds, over which was a blue tunic confined at the waist by a
girdle――a dress he thought might have come down from the time of the
patriarchs.
But to return to Pacheco. It was he who, in the seventeenth century,
took so active a part in the discussion whether St. Teresa, just
canonized, should be chosen as the _Compatrona_ of Spain. Many
maintained that St. James should continue to be considered the sole
patron, and Quevedo espoused his cause so warmly that he ended by
challenging his adversaries to a combat _en champ clos_, and was in
danger of losing his estates. Pacheco, as seen by existing
manuscripts, wrote a learned theological treatise against him, taking
up the cause of St. Teresa, which proved victorious. She was declared
the second patron of Spain by Philip III.――a decision re-echoed by the
Spanish Cortes as late as 1812. All the prominent men of the day took
part in this discussion, even artists and literary men, as well as
politicians and the clergy.
The place of honor in the museum is given to Zurbarán’s “Santo Tomás,”
a grand picture, painted for the Dominican college of Seville. In the
centre is St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Dominican habit, resting on a
cloud, with the four doctors of the church, in ample flowing robes,
around him. He holds up his pen, as if for inspiration, to the opening
heavens, where appear Christ and the Virgin, St. Paul and St. Dominic.
Below, at the left, is Diego de Deza, the founder of the college, and
other dignitaries; while on the right, attended by courtiers, is
Charles V., in a splendid imperial mantle, kneeling on a crimson
cushion, with one hand raised invokingly to the saint. The faces are
all said to be portraits of Zurbarán’s time; that of the emperor, the
artist himself. The coloring is rich, the perspective admirable, the
costumes varied and striking, and the composition faultless.
Zurbarán has another picture here, of a scene from the legend of St.
Hugo, who was Bishop of Grenoble in the time of St. Bruno, and often
spent weeks together at the Grande Chartreuse. Once he arrived at
dinner-time, and found the monks at table looking despairingly at the
meat set before them, which they could not touch, it being a fast-day.
The bishop, stretching forth his staff, changed the fowls into
tortoises. The white habits and pointed cowls of the monks, and the
varied expressions of their faces, contrast agreeably with the
venerable bishop in his rich episcopal robes, and the beauty of the
page who accompanies him.
The masterpiece of the elder Herrera is also here. Hermenegildo, a
Gothic prince of the sixth century, martyred by order of his Arian
father, whose religion he had renounced, is represented ascending to
heaven in a coat of mail, leaving below him his friends SS. Leandro
and Isidore, beside whom is his fair young son, richly attired, gazing
wonderingly up at his sainted father as he ascends among a whole cloud
of angels. This picture was painted for the high altar of the Jesuits
of Seville, with whom Herrera took refuge when accused of the crime of
issuing false money. It attracted the artistic eye of Philip IV. when
he came to Seville in 1624. He asked the name of the artist, and,
learning the cause of his reclusion sent for him and pardoned him,
saying that a man who had so much talent ought not to make a bad use
of it.
There is no sculpture in the gallery of Seville, except a few statues
of the saints――the spoils of monasteries, like the paintings. The
finest thing is a St. Jerome, furrowed and wasted by penance, laying
hold of a cross before which he bends one knee, with a stone in his
right hand ready to smite his breast. This was done for the convent of
Buenavista by Torrigiano, celebrated not only for his works, but for
breaking Michael Angelo’s nose. He was sent to Spain by his protector,
Alexander VI., who was a generous patron of the arts. Goya considered
this statue superior to Michael Angelo’s Moses.
Our last hours at Seville were spent before all these works of sacred
art, each of which has its own special revelation to the soul; and
then we went to the cathedral. The day was nearly at an end. The
chapels were all closed. The vast edifice was as silent as the grave,
with only a few people here and there absorbed in their devotions. The
upper western windows alone caught a few rays of the declining sun,
empurpling the arches. The long aisles were full of gloom. We lingered
awhile, like Murillo, before “Christ descending from the Cross,” and
then went back to the _Fonda Europa_ with regret in our hearts.
[2] Roelas’ masterpiece, the _Transito de San Isidoro_, in
the church of that name, represents this solemn scene. The
dying saint is on the steps of the altar, supported by two
bishops, who look all the more venerable from contrast with
the fresh bloom of the beautiful choir-boys behind; the
multitude is swaying with grief through the long, receding
aisles; and, in the opening heavens above, appear Christ and
the Virgin, ready to receive him into the glory of which we
catch a glimpse. It is a picture that can only be compared
to Domenichino’s “Last Communion of St. Jerome.”
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER IV.――CONTINUED.
Mr. Bailey had finally, after some management, got Bianca quite to
himself, and, discovering that they had mutual friends, and that she
liked those parts of his writings which he considered the best, the
two were quite over the threshold of a ceremonious acquaintance, and
talking together very amicably.
“You may stay to supper, if you will,” the Signora whispered to him.
“But don’t say so, because I shall not ask any one else. Get yourself
out of sight somewhere.”
“Fly with me!” he said tragically to Bianca. “May we go to the
_loggia_, Signora?”
She nodded.
“If you will watch the windows, and come in the instant I call you;
and if that child will get something on the way to put over her head
and shoulders.”
The two stole out of the drawing-rooms with all the merry pleasure of
children playing a prank.
“Stop a moment!” the young man said when they reached the _sala_. “See
how this room, almost encircled by brightly-lighted chambers, looks
like the old moon in the new moon’s arms. Isn’t it pretty?”
They passed the dining-room, traversed the long western wing, went up
a little stair, and found themselves on the roof of a building that
had been added to the house and used as a studio for sculptors. A
balustrade ran across one side, and at the side opposite a door
entered an upper room of the studio. The two connecting sides, the one
toward the west and that next the house, had trellises, over which
morning-glory vines were running. A few pots of flowers and a chair or
two completed the furniture of the place. Below, the garden and
vineyard pressed close against its walls, breathing perfume, and just
stirring the evening air with a delicate ripple of water and a whisper
of leaves.
Bianca leaned on the balustrade and wished she were alone. The silent
beauty was too solemn for talk; and, besides, it was the hour when one
remembers the absent. Her companion was too sensitive not to perceive
and respect her mood. “Only keep the shawl well about you,” he said,
as if in reply to some spoken word, then left her to herself, and
paced to and fro at the most distant part of the _loggia_, drinking in
the scene, which would some day flow from his pen-point in glowing
words. It seemed not ten minutes when the Signora’s voice was heard
across the silence, “Children, come in!”
Both sighed as they left the charmed spot, and had half a mind to
disobey the summons. “But, after all, it will only be exchanging one
picture for another,” the author said. “And, _ecco_!”
He pointed to the foot of the little stair that led from the _loggia_
down to the passage. Adriano stood there in the shade, like a portrait
framed in ebony, holding in his hand one of the long-handled brass
lamps of Italy, the light from whose three wicks struck upwards over
his handsome dark face peering out sharply, but not at first seeing
them.
“Strong light and shade will make a picture of anything,” Bianca said.
“And there is a companion.”
He glanced at the dining-room window, and saw through the open half of
a shutter Isabel standing under the chandelier, with face and hand
uplifted to examine some pendants that had just caught her attention.
The light poured over her face, and filled her beautiful, undazzled
eyes, and the hand that held the crystal looked as if carved out of
pink transparent coral.
Going in, they found the supper-table set, and Mr. Vane entertaining
the ladies with a story of two politicians, of opposite parties, who
were so candid they were always convincing each other, and,
consequently, were never of the same opinion, except when they were
each half convinced; and even then they were not of the same opinion,
for their minds turned different ways, like two persons who meet on
the threshold of a house, one going in and one coming out. They went
on year after year in this way, arguing, and trying to arrive at the
truth, till at last they both went crazy and were locked up in
separate mad-houses. At length both returned to their first opinions,
and so were restored to reason. But when they were set at liberty,
they became as great bigots as they had before been liberals, and each
was so determined not only not to yield to the other, whom he regarded
as the cause of his misfortunes, but even to own that he could be
sincere in his opinions, that they never met without fighting. Their
rancor went on increasing, till they finally challenged each other at
the same moment; and, in disputing as to which was the challenged and
which the challenger, flew into such a fury that at last they killed
each other, without ever having had time to fight a duel.
“The moral of it is,” Mr. Vane concluded, “that when a man has once
chosen his opinions, he has no more right to hear them abused than he
has to hear his wife abused, no matter what she may be; and the cream
of the moral is that all arguments are not only useless but
dangerous.”
“I know now what is meant by espousing an opinion or a cause,” the
Signora said. “I had supposed the word was used merely for variety of
phrase. It means, then, ‘for better or for worse.’ Poor Truth! how
many buffets she gets! Not from you!” she added hastily, and blushing
as she saw that her words had made Mr. Vane suddenly serious, and that
he was looking at her with an expression almost reproachful. “No
matter what you may say, I am sure you would never see Truth standing
on your threshold without bidding her welcome.”
He looked down, and a faint smile rather shone through his face than
parted his lips. He seemed to thank her so.
“I fancy she comes oftenest in silence and by herself,” he said in a
very quiet tone.
Something in his voice and look made Clive Bailey regard him with a
momentary keenness. He felt that they indicated an almost feminine
delicacy, and a depth of sensitive sweetness he had not looked to find
in Mr. Vane.
The Signora begged to call their attention to the _minestra_ that was
steaming on the table. “Annunciata deserves that we should attend to
it at once,” she said; “for she has given her best thoughts to it the
whole afternoon. I couldn’t tell how many things have gone to its
composition. I do hope it is good, so that we can consistently praise
it. I should feel less disappointment in having a book fall dead from
the press, than she will if we take no notice of her cooking. Don’t
let the vacant chair injure your appetites; it is not for a ghost, but
for Signor Leonardo, your Italian teacher. I told him to come to
supper, and he is just five minutes too late――a wonder for him. He is
the soul of promptness.”
The door opened as she spoke, and Signor Leonardo stood bowing on the
threshold――a dark, circumspect little man, who gave an impression of
such stiffness and dryness that one almost expected to hear him
crackle and snap in moving. He recovered from his low bow, however,
without any accident, and, with some excess of ceremoniousness, got
himself down to the table, where he sat on the very edge of his chair,
looking so solemn and polite that Isabel, as she afterward declared,
longed to get up and shake him. “He would have rattled all to pieces,
if I had,” she said.
This wooden little body contained, however, a cultivated mind and a
good heart, and he was one of the most faithful, modest, and patient
of men.
He had been at the Vatican that morning, he said, in answer to the
Signora’s questions, and had seen the Holy Father in good health and
spirits, laughing at the cardinals who were with him, all of whom
carried canes. “‘I am older than any of you,’ he said, ‘and, see! I
can walk without my cane. Oh! I am a young man yet.’”
“I saw Monsignor M――――,” the professor added, “and he requested me to
give you this,” presenting a little package.
The Signora opened it in smiling expectation, and held up a small
half-roll of bread out of which a piece had been bitten. “See how we
idolaters love the Pope!” she said to Mr. Vane. “I begged Monsignor to
get me a piece of bread from his breakfast-table. Let me see what he
has written about it,” reading a card that accompanied this singular
gift.
“My dear Signora,” the prelate wrote, “behold your keepsake! I stood
by while the Holy Father breakfasted, like a dog watching for a bone,
and the moment I saw the one bite taken out of this bread I begged the
rest for you. ‘What!’ said the Pope, ‘my children take the very bread
from my mouth!’ and gave it to me, laughing pleasantly.”
“The dear father,” the Signora said, kissing her treasure, as she rose
to put it away in safety.
This little incident led the talk to the Pope, and to many incidents
illustrative of his goodness and the affection the people bore him.
“A few years ago, in the old time,” the Signora said, “the price of
bread was raised in Rome, for some reason or other, or for no reason.
Some days after the Holy Father passed by here on his way to his
favorite church, and ours, Bianca. He was walking, and his carriage
following. I can see him now, in his white robe, his hands behind his
back, holding his hat, and his sweet face ready with a kind glance for
all. A poor man approached, asked to speak to him, and was allowed.
‘Holy Father,’ he said, kneeling down, ‘the price of bread is raised,
and the people are hungry, for they cannot afford to buy it.’ The Pope
gave him an alms and his benediction, and passed on. The next day the
price of bread was reduced to its former rate.
“‘Such grace had kings when the world began.’”
One anecdote led to another; and then there was some music, Isabel
playing rather brilliantly on the piano in the _sala_, a group of
candles at either hand lighting up her face and person and that part
of the room. Afterward, when the rest of the company had gone into the
drawing-rooms, Bianca, sitting in a half-dark, sang two or three
ballads so sweetly that they almost held their breaths to listen to
her.
Her singing made them feel quiet, and as if the evening were over; and
when it ended, Mr. Bailey and the _signore_ took leave. The family sat
a while longer in the _sala_, with no light but a lamp that burned
before a Madonna at the end of the long room. Outside, a pine-tree
lifted its huge umbrella against the pure sky, and a great tower
showed in the same lucid deep. The streets in front were still and
deserted, the windows all dark and sullen. The moon had long since
set, and the stars were like large, wide-open eyes that stare with
sleepiness. Some Campagna people, who had been in the city, and were
going home again, passed by, and stirred the silence with the sound of
an accordeon, with which they enlivened their midnight walk; then all
was still again.
“The night-sounds of Rome are almost always pleasant,” the Signora
said. “Sometimes the country people come in with a tambourine and
singing, but it is not noisy, and if it wakes you it is only for a few
minutes. Sometimes it is a wine-cart, with all its little bells.”
The clock of _Santa Maria Maggiore_ was heard striking twelve. “My
bells!” she exclaimed; then added: “I wish I could tell you all their
lovely ways. For one, when they have the Forty Hours at the basilica,
only the great bell strikes the hours, instead of three smaller ones,
as now; and for the Angelus the four bells ring steadily together
their little running song, while the great bell strikes now and then,
but so softly as to be only a dream of a sound, as if _Maria Assunta_
were talking to herself. It is delicious!”
“I hear a bell now――a little bell,” Mr. Vane said.
They listened, and found that his keen hearing had not deceived him.
There was a sound of a little bell in the street, faint, but coming
slowly nearer. What could it be? They looked out and saw nothing but
the long, white street, stretching its ghostly length from hill to
hill. The sound, however, was in the street, and at a spot where they
looked and saw nothing, and it came constantly nearer. At length, when
it was almost under their windows, they perceived a motion, slow and
colorless, as if the paving-stones were noiselessly turning over and
rolling off toward the Quirinal, and then the paving-stones became a
tide of pale water tossing a black stick as it flowed; and, at last,
it was sheep, and the stick was a man. The whole street was alive with
their little bobbing heads and close pressed, woolly bodies. Soft and
timid, they trotted past, as if afraid of waking the terrible lion of
a city in whose sleeping jaws they found themselves. The dogs made no
sound as they kept the stragglers in bounds, the men spoke not a word
as they moved here and there among their flocks; there was only the
small trotting of a multitude of little feet, and bell after bell on
the leader of flock after flock. It seemed as if the world had turned
to sheep.
“I didn’t know there were so many in the world!” Isabel whispered.
And still they came, stretching a mile, from beyond the Esquiline to
beyond the Quirinal――an artery full of tender and innocent life
flowing for an hour through the cruel, unconscious town.
The Signora explained that the flocks were being taken from one
pasture-ground to another, their shortest way being through the city.
“I once saw a herd of cattle pass,” she said. “It was another thing,
as you may imagine. Such a sense of the presence of fierce, strong
life, and anger barely suppressed, I never experienced. It was their
life that called my attention, as one feels lightning in the air. Then
I heard their hoofs and the rattling of their horns, and then here
they were! They were by no means afraid of Rome, but seemed, rather,
impatient and angry that it should be here, drying up the pleasant
hills where they would have liked to graze, reposing under the trees
afterward, and looking dreamily off to the soft sea-line. How sleepy
sheep make one!”
The soft procession passed at length, and the family bade each other
good-night.
The next morning Isabel resolved not to be outdone by the other two
ladies, and accordingly, when she heard the door shut softly after
them as they went out to early Mass, she made haste to dress and
follow. They, meanwhile, walked slowly on, unconscious of her
intention, which would scarcely have given them the pleasure she
imagined; for they were bound on an errand which would have rendered
her society particularly uncongenial.
Isabel went scrupulously to Communion three or four times a year, on
certain great festivals, and at such times, according to her light,
strove to do what she thought was required. She made her confession,
but with scarcely more feeling than she would have reckoned up her
money accounts, scrupulous to pay every cent, and, when every cent was
paid, having a satisfied conviction that the account was square. Of
that generous, higher honesty which, when casting up its accounts with
God, blushes and abases itself in view of the little it has paid, or
can pay, and which would fain cast itself into the balance, and, by an
utter annihilation of every wish, hope, and pleasure that was not
penitence, strive to express its gratitude at least for the ever
unpayable debt――of this she knew nothing. She acknowledged freely that
she was a sinner. “Of course I am a sinner!” she would say. “We are
all sinners”; as if she should say, “Of course I am a biped!” but all
as a matter of course. If anything decidedly offensive to her human
sense of honor lay on her conscience, she certainly had a feeling of
shame for it, and resolved not to transgress in that manner again; but
there was no tremulous self-searching, no passion of prayer for
illumination, unless at some odd time when sickness or peril had made
death seem near. The confession over, she went to church quietly, not
talking much, and read respectfully the prayers in her prayer-book,
which were, indeed, far warmer on her lips than in her heart. She
tried not to look about, and, while her face was buried in her hands,
shut her eyes, lest she should peep in spite of herself. Then, the
whole over, she left the church, feeling much relieved that it was
over, hoping that she had done right, and remaining rather serious for
several hours after. Ordinarily, too, since the merciful Lord accepts
even the smallest gift, and answers even the most tepid prayer, if
they are sincerely offered, she felt some faint sweetness as she
turned away, a tender touch of peace that brushed her in passing, and,
moved by that slight experience of the rapture of the saints, as if a
drop of spray from one of their fountains had fallen on her, she was
conscious of an inexplicable regret that made her renew her good
resolutions, and say a tiny prayer in her own words far more fervent
than any she had breathed through the words of her book. For two days
after her prayers were usually longer and more attentive, and she went
to Mass; then Richard was himself again.
Knowing all this, then, as we know things without thinking of them, or
allowing ourselves to know that we know them, both the Signora and
Bianca would far rather have been by themselves in going to church,
especially when going to Holy Communion.
They walked through the morning, already hot, though the hour was so
early, with a sultry, splendid blue over their heads, and the air too
sweet as it flowed over the garden-walls. The orange-trees seemed to
be oppressed by the weight of their own odors, and to throw them off
in strong, panting respirations. The sun was blazing directly behind
one of the cupolas of the basilica, as they went up the hill, seeming
to be set in the lantern; and then a light coolness touched them in
the shadow, and they entered the beautiful church, where perpetual
freshness reigns, rivalling the climate of St. Peter’s.
The bells were just dropping off for the last fifteen minutes’
tolling, and the canons were coming in for choir, one by one, or two
by two. One or two of the earlier ones, in their snow-white _cottas_
and ermine capes, were kneeling before a shrine or strolling slowly
across the nave toward the choir-chapel. Here and there a Mass was
being said, with a little group of poor people gathered about the
altar, kneeling on the magnificent pavement of involved mosaic work,
or sitting on the bases of the great columns. A woman with a white
handkerchief on her head received communion at one altar, two little
children playing about her, and clinging to her skirts as she got up
to go to her place, her hands folded, her face wrapt in devotion, as
undisturbed by the prattling and pulling of the little ones as St.
Charles Borromeo over his altar by the winged cherubs that held up and
peeped through his long scarlet train.
Our American ladies knelt near the door, by the side of the tribune,
facing the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at the other side of the
church. The morning light entering this chapel set all its marbles
glittering, and made the gilt tabernacle in the centre brighter than
the lamps that burned before it, and, shining out into the church, set
the great porphyry columns of the canopy in a glow. One might fancy
that the blood of the martyrs whose bodies and relics reposed beneath
was beginning to rise and circulate through the rich stone, above
which the martyr’s crown and palm stood out in burning gold.
Having finished their prayer to “His Majesty,” as the Spaniards
beautifully express it, the two knelt at the _prie-dieu_ before the
entrance to the gorgeous Borghese Chapel, to salute Our Lady in sight
of St. Luke’s portrait of her. The face was doubly covered by its
curtain of gold-embroidered silk and gates of transparent alabaster;
but their eyes were fixed on the screen as they prayed, and these
needed no more than they saw. Of this picture it has been said that
sometimes angels have been found chanting litanies about it.
There was no Mass in this chapel, and our friends went down the
basilica to the chapel of the Sacred Heart, where a Mass was just
beginning. The celebrant was an old man with hair as white as snow,
and a face as peaceful and happy as a child’s. The Signora often
encountered him in the church, and always felt like touching his robe
in passing.
“I am glad we shall receive communion from his hands,” she whispered
to Bianca. “I always feel as if he were an angel only half disguised.”
Half an hour afterward they left the chapel, but still lingered in the
church, loath to go. There was no one in sight, but the strong, manly
chorus of voices from the canons’ choir came out to them, now faintly
heard as they moved out of its range, now clear and strong as they
went nearer.
“We really must go. They will be waiting for us at home,” the Signora
said.
Turning back for one more glance at the door, they saw the procession
coming from the sacristy for the canons’ Mass, the vestments
glittering brightly as they passed a streak of sunshine coming into
the middle of the nave.
“It is a constant succession of pictures,” sighed Bianca, who seemed
hardly able to tear herself away.
They stopped a few minutes on the steps.
“Whatever else is injured by these new people, this basilica has
certainly profited,” the Signora said. “The tribune front was a little
low for the breadth. By digging down the hill, and, consequently,
adding so many more steps to this superb flight, they have made the
proportion perfect. Then they have also had to make a deeper pedestal
to the obelisk, which is an improvement. The new white stone shows now
in harsh contrast with the soft-toned old, but time will soon mellow
it. And, moreover, they are doing their work well. They really seem to
take pride in it. The _piazza_ was formerly muddy or dusty. Now they
have made a solid foundation, and it will be all covered, when done,
with that gold-colored gravel you see in patches. Fancy a golden
_piazza_ leading up to my golden basilica!”
She led her young friend along to the other end of the steps, and
pointed up to where beautiful spikes of pink flowers were growing in
interstices of the carving, and lovely plants made a fine fringe high
in the air. Flights of birds came and went, brushing the flowers with
their wings, and alighted, singing and twittering, all about the
cupola over the Blessed Sacrament, going away only to return.
“The little wild birds come to our Lord’s cupola,” she said, “and
there are always flocks of doves about Our Lady’s. I wonder why it
is?”
Going home, they found Isabel sitting with her bonnet on, taking
coffee, and talking to her father, who seemed amused.
“Here they are at last!” she exclaimed. “I have been to _Santa Maria
Maggiore_, hoping to find you, and you weren’t there.”
“Indeed we were there!” she was told.
“You were hiding from me, then,” she went on. “No matter, I had a very
pleasant morning, though rather a peculiar one. I searched and
searched for you, and saw nothing of you; finally, seeing a movement
of clergy toward a chapel at the right side as you go in, half-way
down the church, I thought that must be the proper place to go.
Accordingly, I went in and took a seat. Some clergymen seated
themselves on the same bench, lower down, and I thought it more modest
to move up. Then more clergy came, and I kept moving up toward the
altar. I began to wish that some woman would come in, if it were only
a beggar-woman; even the sight of a poor man or of a child would have
been a relief. But there was no one but me besides the clergy. Well, I
stood my ground, hoping that when the services should begin some
people would come, and, on the whole, rather congratulating myself
that I had secured so good a post. I kept moving up till at length I
found myself close to the altar, and with a great stand before me on
which was a great book. It was one of those turning lecterns, aren’t
they?――set on a post about six feet high, and having five or six sides
at the top. After a while I began to feel myself getting in a
perspiration. Not a soul came but priests. I looked in their faces to
see if they were astonished at my being there, but not one seemed to
be even conscious of my presence. They sat in two rows, facing each
other, part of them in ermine capes, part in gray squirrel, and with
the loveliest little white tunics all crimped and crimped. I didn’t
enjoy the crimping much, though, for I perceived at last that I was
the right person in the wrong place. The bell stopped ringing, a
prelate took his place before the big stand and opened the big book,
and there was I in the very highest place in the synagogue,
“Canons to right of me,
Canons to left of me,
Canons in front of me,”
and, at length, one of them smiling, I caught sight of a sidelong
glance from him, and saw that he was shaking with laughter. He was a
young man, and I forgive him.” Isabel paused to wipe the perspiration
from her flushed face, then addressed the Signora solemnly: “My dear
Signora, that choir-chapel is a mile long!”
“I dare say you found it so,” was the laughing response. “But, also, I
do not doubt that you made the best of the matter, and came out with
deliberate dignity. Don’t cry about it, child. They probably thought
you were a Protestant stranger. Protestants are expected to commit
almost any enormity in Roman churches, and they do not disappoint the
expectation. Last Christmas two women, well dressed and
genteel-looking, went into the tribune during the High Mass, one of
the assistants having left the gate open, and coolly took possession
of a vacant seat there, in the face, not only of the assembled chapter
and officiating prelate, but of a large congregation. I wonder what
they would say if a stranger should walk into one of their
meeting-houses and take a seat in the pulpit? I will explain to you
now what I thought you understood. The canons always sing their office
together in choir, morning and afternoon, while other clergy say it
privately, and the public have nothing to do with it. There is no harm
in assisting, but it is not usual to do so. I like to listen, though,
and there are certain parts that please me very much. When you hear
them again, mark how the _Deo gratias_ comes out; and once in a while
they will respond with an _Amen_ that is stirring. However, it is
merely the office rapidly chanted by alternate choirs, and is not
intended as a musical feast. They have a High Mass a little later, and
then one can enter, if there should be room. I never go. There is
always a Low Mass in the basilica or the Borghese.”
“Doesn’t the Borghese Chapel belong to the basilica?” Mr. Vane
inquired.
“Yes, and no. The Prince Borghese is at the head of it, and, I think,
supports it. It has its own clergy, and its separate services
sometimes; for example, there is always the Litany of Our Lady
Saturday evening, and they have their own Forty Hours. On some other
_festas_ the chapter of the basilica go there for service――as Our Lady
of Snow, Nativity of Our Lady, and the Immaculate Conception. Now I
must leave you for an hour or two, and take my little baroness to see
Monsignore. And, if you wish, I will at the same time arrange for an
audience for you at the Vatican. Some time within a week, shall I say?
It will have to be after Ascension, I think.”
“How beautiful life begins to be!” said Bianca softly, after the three
had sat awhile alone.
Mr. Vane smiled, but made no reply.
Isabel sighed deeply, buried in gloomy reflections. “I wish I knew,”
she said, “what they call the man who stands at the desk and sings a
part of the office alone; because that is the name by which the canons
are calling me at this minute. I feel it in my bones.”
CHAPTER VI.
CARLIN’S NEST.
Yes, life was beginning to grow beautiful to them――beautiful in the
sweet, natural sense. Here and there a buckle that held the burden of
it was loosed, here and there a flower was set. That uneasy feeling
that one ought to be doing something, which often haunts and wearies
even those who do nothing and never will do anything, began to give
place to a contentment far more favorable to the accomplishment of
real good. A generous wish to share their peacefulness with others
made them practise every little kindness that occurred to them. Not a
hand was stretched to them in vain, no courtesy from the humblest
remained unacknowledged, and thus, accompanied by a constant
succession of little beneficences, like a stream that passes between
flowery banks its own waters keeping fresh, their lives flowed sweetly
and brightly on from day to day.
Of course they had the reputation of being angels with the poor about
them. It is so easy for the rich and happy to be canonized by the
poor. A smile, a kind word, and a penny now and then――that is all that
is necessary. But the kindness of these three women was something more
than a mere good-natured generosity; for no one of them was very rich,
and all had to deprive themselves of something in order to give.
Life was indeed becoming beautiful to them; for they had not yet
settled, perhaps were not of a nature to settle, into the worse sort
of Roman life, in which idle people collected from every part of the
world gradually sink into a round of eating, visiting, gossip, and
intrigue, which make the society of the grandest city of the world a
strange spectacle of shining saintliness and disgusting meanness and
corruption moving side by side.
There is, indeed, no city that tries the character like Rome; for it
holds a prize for every ambition, except that of business enterprise.
The Christian finds here primitive saintliness flowering in its native
soil, and can walk barefoot, though he have purple blood in his veins,
and not be wondered at; the artist, whether he use chisel, brush, or
pen, finds himself in the midst of a lavish beauty which the study of
a life could not exhaust; the lover of nature sees around him the
fragments of an only half-ruined paradise; the tuft-hunter finds a
confusion of ranks where he may approach the great more nearly than
anywhere else, and, perhaps, chat at ease with a princess who, in her
own country, would pass him without a nod of recognition; the idle and
luxurious can live here like Sybarites on an income that, in another
country, would scarcely give them the comforts of life; the lover of
solitude can separate himself from his kind in the midst of a crowd,
and yet fill his hours with delight in the contemplation of that
ever-visible past which here lies in the midst of the present like an
embalmed and beautiful corpse resting uncorrupted in the midst of
flowers. But one must have an earnest pursuit, active or intellectual;
for the _dolce far niente_ of Italy is like one of the soulless masks
of women formed by Circe, which transformed their lovers into beasts.
“I have heard,” the Signora said, “of a man who, lying under a tree in
summer-time and gazing at the slow, soft clouds as they floated past,
wished that that were work, and he well paid for doing it. My life is
almost a realization of that man’s wish. What I should choose to do as
a pleasure, and the greatest pleasure possible to me, I have to do as
a duty. It is my business to see everything that is beautiful, and to
study and dream over it, and turn it into as many shapes as I can. If
I like to blow soap-bubbles, then it becomes a trade, and I merit in
doing it. If a science should catch my fancy, and invite me to follow
awhile its ordered track, I go in a palace-car, and the wheels make
music of the track for me. And what friends I have, what confidences
receive! The ugliest, commonest object in the world, scorned or
disregarded by all, will look at me and whisper a sweet word or reveal
a hidden beauty as I pass. You see that log,” pointing to the
fire-place, where a mossy stick lay wreathed about by a close network
of vine-twigs clinging still in death where they had clung and grown
in life. “The moment my eyes fell on that it sang me a song. In every
balcony, every stair, every house they are cutting down to make their
new streets, every smallest place where the wind can carry a feathered
seed, the seed of a story has lodged for me, and, as I look, it
sprouts, grows, blossoms, and overshadows the whole place. But for the
pain of bringing out and putting into shape what is in my mind, my
life would be too exquisite for earth. If I could give immediate birth
to my imaginings, I should be like some winged creature, living for
ever in air. I’m glad I work in words, and not in marble, like Carlin
here. And, apropos, suppose we should go in there.”
Carlin was the sculptor whose studio was attached to _Casa
Ottant’-Otto_. He was a great friend of the Signora, who had
permission to see him work when she liked, and to go and come with her
friends as it pleased her.
“We may as well take our work,” she said. “It is pleasanter there than
here this morning. When Mr. Vane and Isabel come in from their visit,
we shall hear them ring the bell.”
The two went out to the _loggia_, where the morning sun was blazing
hotly on the pink and purple morning-glories, and, passing an
ante-room where two marble-workers were chipping away, each at his
snowy block, tapped at the door of an inner chamber.
A loud “_Avanti!_” answered the knock.
“Welcome!” said a voice when they entered. “Make yourselves at home.
I’m busy with a model, you see.”
Bianca glanced about in search of the source of this salutation, and
perceived presently a large head looking at them over the top of a
screen. The rest of the body was invisible. This head was so colossal
and of such a height that for a moment she doubted if it might not be
a colored bust on a shelf. But its eyes moved, and in a second it
nodded itself out of sight, leaving on the gazer an impression of
having seen a large, kind Newfoundland dog. Poor Carlin was very
shaggy, his hair almost too profuse, and constantly getting itself
tangled, and his beard growing nearly to his eyes. But the eyes were
bright, dark, and pleasant, the nose superlatively beautiful, and, by
some unexplained means, every one was aware at once that under this
mass of shadowy beard there were two deep dimples, one in the cheek
and another in the chin.
Before they had well shut the door, the screen was swept aside and the
sculptor’s whole form appeared. It was so large as to reduce the head
to perfect proportion, and was clad in a suit of dull blue cotton worn
with a careless grace that was very picturesque. One hand held a bit
of clay; the other pulled off his skull-cap in reverence to his
visitors. He said nothing, but immediately replaced the cap, and began
rolling the clay between his hands.
He was modelling a group, and his model, a beautiful young
_contadina_, stood before him with her arms up, holding a copper
water-vase on her head. Her mother sat near, a dark, bilious, wrinkled
Lady Macbeth, who wore her soiled and faded clothes as if they had
been velvets and embroideries, and reclined in an old leather chair as
superbly as if she sat on a gilded throne with a canopy over her head.
A pair of huge rings of pure gold hung from her ears, and two heavy
gold chains surrounded her dark neck, and dropped each its golden
locket on her green bodice.
“We won’t mind them,” the Signora said to her friend. “Come and be
introduced to the bird of our country.”
“He’s been behaving badly to-day,” the sculptor said, “and I had to
beat him. Look and see what he has done to my blouse! The whole front
is in rags. He flew at me to dig my heart out, I suppose, with his
claws, and screamed so in my face that I was nearly deafened. It took
both the men to get him off.”
This contumacious eagle was chained to his perch, and had the stick
with which he had been beaten so placed as to be a constant reminder
of the consequences attending on any exhibition of ill-temper. He was
greatly disconcerted when the two ladies approached him, changed
uneasily from foot to foot, and, half lifting his wide wings, curved
his neck, and seemed about to hide his head in shame. Then, as they
still regarded him, he suddenly lifted himself to his full height, and
stared back at them with clear, splendid eyes.
“What pride and disdain!” exclaimed Bianca. “I had no idea the
creature was so human. Let’s go away. If we stay much longer, he will
speak to us. He considers himself insulted.”
Three walls of the room and a great part of the central space were
occupied by the usual medley of a sculptor’s studio――busts, groups,
masks, marble and plaster, armor, vases, and a hundred other objects;
but the fourth side was hung all over with fragments of baby contours.
Single legs and crossed legs; arms from the shoulder down, with the
soft flattening of flesh above the elbow, and the sustained roundness
below; little clenched fists, and hands with sprawling, dimpled
fingers; chubby feet in every position of little curled toes, each as
expressive of delicious babyhood as if the whole creature were
there――the wall was gemmed with them. In the midst was a square
window, without a sash, and just then crowded as full as it could be.
A vine, a breeze, and as much of a hemisphere of sunshine as could get
in were all pressing in together. The breeze got through in little
puffs that dropped as soon as they entered; the sunshine sank to the
tiled floor, where it led a troubled existence by reason of the
leaf-shadows that never would be still; and the vine ran over the
wall, and in and out among the little hands and feet, kissing them
with tender leaf and bud, which seemed to have travelled a long
distance for nothing else but that.
Bianca put her face to this window, and drew it back again. “There is
nothing visible outside,” she said, “but a fig-tree, half the rim of a
great vase, a bit of wall, and a sky full of leaves.”
She seated herself by the Signora, and they made believe to work,
dropping a loop of bright wool or silken floss now and then, and
glancing from time to time at the artist as he punched and pressed a
meaning into the clay before him.
“I never see a sculptor make a human figure in clay without thinking
of the creation of Adam and Eve,” the Signora said. “The Mohammedans
say that angels first kneaded the clay for I don’t know how many
years. How beautiful they must have been! ‘_In His own image._’ Did
you observe in the Barbarini gallery Domenichino’s picture of Adam and
Eve driven out of Paradise? You were too much occupied with the Cenci.
Everybody is at first. I was thinking, while I looked at that
representation of the Creator, reclining on his divan of cherubim,
what a pity it is that artists should have tried to do it, or, trying,
should not have been able to do more. How that eagle does fret! It
requires all my friendship for Carlin to prevent my cutting the
leather thong that holds the chain to its leg some fine day. Wouldn’t
it be pleasant to see him shoot like a bomb out through the window,
tearing the vines away like cobwebs with his strong wings, and
carrying off little green tendrils clinging to his feathers! The
sunlight would be shut out a moment, there would be a rush as of
waters, then the room would be light again. But, in such an event, the
only gain would be a change of personality in the prisoner, and thirty
_lire_ out of my pocket. That is what Carlin paid for this unhappy
wretch, and what I should be bound to pay him to buy another unhappy
wretch to languish in his place. How do you like Carlin?”
“I don’t know,” Bianca answered slowly. “Isn’t he a sort of savage?――a
good one, you know.”
“Precisely! All the polish he has is inside. Fortunately, however, he
is transparent, and the brightness is bright enough to shine out
through him. He is full of good-nature and enthusiasm. Once liking
him, you will like him always, and better and better always. None but
dishonest people dislike him, though there are some very good people
who say he is not to their taste. Dear me! he is making a mistake in
that group. O Carlin!” she called out, “do let me say something. Your
water-carrier is going to look like a teapot if you place her so. Let
her put the other arm out for a spout, and the thing will be perfect.”
It was a group of a girl and her lover at a fountain.
He was just knitting his brows over the hand that held the handle of
the vase, rolling bits of clay between his palms and arranging them
for fingers. He threw the last one away. “I know it’s a stupid thing,”
he said discontentedly; “but what can I do? It struck me as a pretty
subject; but now I have begun to work it out, it seems to me I
remember having seen a hundred like it, each one as stupid as mine. I
was this instant thinking my grandmother must have had a cream-pitcher
of this design.”
“Why don’t you make her stooping a little to lift the vase to her
head, and looking up at the fellow?” the Signora suggested. “It will
bring out your knowledge of anatomy a little more, and it will wake
her up. Don’t you see her face is as dull as her sandal?”
This conversation, being in English, was not understood by the model,
who stood stupid, and straight, and tired, trying to look picturesque.
The artist considered a minute, then said abruptly: “Put down the
vase, not on the floor, but in a chair.”
She obeyed.
“Now take it up――slowly――and stop the instant I tell you.”
She bent her strong and supple figure a little, and began lifting the
vase.
“Stop there!” he called out, “and look up at me. Look as pretty as you
can. Think that I am some _giovanotto_ who is going, perhaps, to ask
you of your mother.”
Half shy, half saucy, she looked up as commanded, gratified vanity and
friendly regard uniting to give her face as much expression as it was
capable of.
Carlin seized his pencil and began sketching rapidly.
“He hasn’t a particle of imagination,” the Signora said in a low tone,
“but he has excellent eyes and much humor. I sometimes think that
humor and imagination never go together. Indeed, I don’t believe they
ever do in any superlative degree.”
A little bell sounded timidly at her side, pulled by a cord that she
perceived now by its vibration coming in at the window, the bell
itself being quite hidden by the vine-leaves, where it was held
between two large nails driven into the window-frame.
“Would――you――be so very kind――as to throw――that――loaf of bread out of
the window, Signora?” the artist asked, abstractedly dropping one word
at a time between the strokes of his pencil and glances at his model,
whose fire was beginning to fade. “I can’t stop.”
The lady looked at him in wonder.
“It’s a beggar,” he explained after a moment, scratching away rapidly.
“I can’t be bothered with them in here.”
She looked out of the window as well as she could for the leaves, and
saw an arm in a ragged coat-sleeve, and a hand stretching toward the
wall, and, at the same instant, the bell rang in her very ear with a
force that made her start back. The bread was on a little shelf near
by, an old knife beside it. She prudently cut the loaf in two, and
dropped half to the unseen mendicant.
“That’s just like Carlin!” she exclaimed. “I don’t suppose any one
else would think of rigging up a beggars’ bell.”
“I shall know where to go when I want bread,” she said aloud, seeing
him pause in his work. “It will be only to come under your window,
pull a string, and hold up my apron.”
“Oh! by the way, please to pull in the string,” he added. “I never let
it hang out, except when I have made an appointment. I told him to
come if he didn’t get anything for dinner. Said he hadn’t eaten
anything for twenty-four hours. It’s a disagreeable thing to go
twenty-four hours without eating.”
Carlin knew what it was well. He had come to Rome fifteen years before
without a dollar in his pocket, except what had paid his passage, and,
without patronage, almost without friends, had climbed, step by step,
through all the dark, steep ways of poverty, suffering what no one but
himself knew, till at length a modest success rewarded his efforts. He
never told his experiences, seemed to choose to forget them; but never
a pitiful tale of suffering from poverty was told him without the
ready answer, “Yes, yes, I know all about it,” springing as if
involuntarily to his lips.
There was a knock at the door, which immediately opened without a
permission, and a young man entered――one of those odious,
well-dressed, rather handsome, and easy-mannered men who repel one
more than rags, and ugliness, and stupidity.
“Good-morning!” he said with confident politeness. “Don’t let me
interrupt you. I only want to see Mrs. Cranston’s bust. Promised her I
would take a look at it.”
His coming produced the effect of a slight frost in the air. The
Signora grew dignified, and made a little sign to Bianca to take a
seat which would turn her back to the new-comer. Carlin frowned
slightly and bent to his work; the old _contadina_ glared from the man
to her daughter, and the daughter blushed uneasily.
The young man seemed to be entirely unconscious of not having received
a welcome, sauntered across the studio, pausing here and there, and at
length, stopping under the pretence of examining a bust, fixed his
eyes on the model.
“Look here, sir!” said Carlin, after five minutes of silence, “you’d
better come in some other time, when I’m not busy.”
“Oh! don’t mind me,” was the careless reply.
Carlin waited a minute longer, then swung the screen round between his
model and her tormentor.
The young man smiled slightly, gave his shoulders the least possible
shrug, and began to saunter about the studio again, pausing finally at
a spot that gave him a still better view of the girl.
The pencil quivered in Carlin’s hands, but his voice was gentle enough
when he spoke again. “I don’t care to have visitors in the morning,”
he said. “Come in in the afternoon, when I am working in marble. I
work in clay always in the morning.”
“My dear fellow, I don’t want you to trouble yourself in the least
about me. I can amuse myself,” the visitor replied.
Carlin seemed to be galvanized so suddenly he started upright, with
anger in every nerve of him. “Confound you!” he cried out, “do you
want me to pitch you out of the window? Go about your business.”
He had no cause to repeat the request. Coolly and disdainfully, but
with a paleness that showed both fear and anger, the young exquisite
walked out as leisurely as he had come in.
A laugh as sharp and bright as a blade shot across the old woman’s
face, but she said not a word.
“You are getting acquainted with him rapidly,” the Signora whispered
to her friend. “Isn’t he refreshing? It is so beautiful to see a man
whose first impulse is to protect a woman from annoyance, even when
the woman doesn’t belong to him. Carlin is truly a manly, honorable
fellow.”
“I hear a faint little song, sweet and low,” said Bianca, listening
with her pretty head aside and her eyes lifted.
“It is Carlin’s bird,” said the Signora.
The girl glanced about, but saw no cage.
“It is a soft, cooing sound,” she said.
“It is Carlin’s dove,” the Signora replied.
Bianca looked at her inquiringly, her lips still apart, and her head
turned to listen to the melody.
“He doesn’t keep it in a cage, but in a nest,” the Signora went on,
smiling. “Come, and I will show you. Step lightly, and do not speak.
He is too busy to notice, and this great tapestry will hide us. You
must examine this some time, by the way. It is all in rags, but very
precious. See that foot on it! Doesn’t it look as if it were just set
on the green ground――after a bath, too? It is so fresh and perfect.”
She led the way to an alcove of the studio hidden from the other rooms
by this tapestry, and pointed to the inner wall, where a small, low
door showed, half hidden by draperies and armor. “Some day we will go
in; but to-day I will give you a peep only.”
She went to the door, and noiselessly pushed away a little slide in
the panel, then motioned Bianca to look through. The girl obeyed, and
found herself looking into a square room whose one great arched window
had a snow-white fringed curtain waving slowly in the slight breeze,
alternately giving glimpses of, and hiding, a _loggia_ full of flowers
and the green outside curtain of a grape-vine. Only tiny glints of
sunshine entered through this double drapery, making the white curtain
look as if it were embroidered with spots of gold. From the centre of
a vaulted white ceiling hung a brass lamp, swinging slowly on its
chain, and catching a point of light in place of the extinguished
flame. On the white wall opposite the door hung high up an ebony
crucifix, with a blue niche below, in which stood a marble statue of
the Madonna. A tiny lamp burned before the two, and a branch of roses
was twisted about the statue’s feet. In the centre of the room a
green-covered table stood on a large green cloth that covered nearly
the whole of the stone floor, and two or three cane-seated chairs were
visible. The bird still sung her low, cooing song, an improvised
melody set to inarticulate murmurs that now and then broke softly into
words――a word of human love and blessing, a word of prayer, or a word
of happiness. As when a gentle brook flows with only its waters now,
and now with a flower or leaf, and now a little boat on its tide, and
now a break of foam, and then a clear reflection as vivid as a
tangible object, so the song flowed, with its word here and there.
Carlin’s dove was a young woman with a sweet, motherly face, and, as
she sang, she swung to and fro a hammock that was hung directly under
the blue niche of the Virgin; and her eyes were raised from time to
time to the statue or the crucifix, with an _Ave_ or a _Gesù mio_, or
dropped to the baby she hushed to sleep with a word as tender. All the
room seemed to swing with the hammock, as if it were in a tree-top; to
float in an atmosphere of love and happiness with the mother and her
child. Slowly the white lids of the little one dropped, like two
rose-petals that cover two stars, and a dimpled hand clinging to the
mother’s loosened its hold, as the angel of sleep unclasped it gently,
finger by finger. Silence settled over the song, the hammock ceased to
swing, and the mother, shining with love and happiness, bent over her
sleeping babe, gazing at it as if her eyes were gifted to see through
its white and rosy flesh, and behold the resting, folded soul hidden
there like a sleeping butterfly in a shut flower.
The Signora closed the slide as noiselessly as she had opened it, and
the two, exchanging a smile of sympathetic pleasure, turned away from
Carlin’s nest.
The sculptor had made his sketch, and was just sending his model away.
He turned immediately to his visitors, and began to show them his
latest works, half a dozen things in clay, some finished, some
requiring still a few touches. One group was especially pretty. It
represented a family scene in one of the little Italian towns where
all the business of life goes on in the street. On the rude stone
steps outside a door sat a mother winding a skein of yarn held for her
by a pretty girl of ten years or thereabouts, whose small arms were
stretched to their utmost extent in the task. A little chubby boy
leaned on the mother’s lap, and put up his finger to pull at the
thread. At the front of the steps sat the father cobbling shoes.
“I found that at Monte Compatri,” he said; “and the figures are all
portraits. I was afraid I couldn’t do it, for it is better adapted for
canvas than marble; but the walls hold them together, you see.”
“We must go to Monte Compatri, Bianca,” the Signora said. “It’s one of
the most primitive places in the world――a Ghetto perched on a
mountain-top, as filthy and as picturesque as can be imagined. The air
is delicious, the view superb, and the salads beggar description.”
All Carlin’s best groups and figures were, like this, copies from
nature. When he attempted anything else, he unconsciously copied the
works of others or he failed.
“I’m so glad you made that suggestion about the water-carrier,” he
said, taking up his sketch. “I find it is always better for me to put
considerable action into my figures. If I give them a simple _pose_,
they are stupid. Would you have her looking up or down?”
“Let the little minx look up, by all means,” the Signora said. “She’s
a good girl, enough, as a butterfly or a bird may be good. There isn’t
enough of her for a down look; but that saucy little coquettish
up-look is rather piquant. Besides, it is true to her nature. If she
thought any one were admiring her, she wouldn’t have subtilty enough
to look down and pretend not to see, and she wouldn’t have
self-control enough, either. She would wish to know just how much she
was admired, and to attitudinize as long as it paid her vanity to do
so. Bianca, my dear, there is our bell. Your father and Isabel must
have come home.”
They went down again through the complicated passages and stairs,
where arched windows and glimpses into vaulted rooms and into gardens
crowded with green made them seem far from home.
“How beautiful orange-trees are!” Bianca exclaimed, stopping to look
at one that filled roundly a window seen at the end of a long passage.
“It has the colors of Paradise, I fancy. I don’t like yellow to wear,
not even gold; but I like it for everything else.”
“Wait till you see the snow on an orange-tree, if you would see it at
its perfection,” was the reply. “Perhaps you might wait many years, to
be sure. I saw it once, and shall never forget. A light snow came down
over the garden a few winters since, and dropped its silvery veil over
the orange-trees. Fancy the dark green leaves and the golden fruit
through that glittering lace! I had thought that our northern cedars
and pines, with their laden boughs, were beautiful; but the oranges
were exquisite. Would you believe that our kitchen door was so near?”
Isabel ran to meet the two, all in a breeze.
“Hurry on your things in two minutes to go to the Vatican,” she said.
“Here are the cards. Monsignor forgot to send them, and has only now
given them to us. The carriage is at the door.”
Off came the summer muslins in a trice, and in little more than the
time allowed the three ladies tripped, rustling, down the stairs, in
their black silk trains and black veils.
“I am constantly going to the Vatican in this breathless way,” the
Signora said, as they drove rapidly through the hot sunshine. “With
the usual sublime ignorance of men, and especially of clergymen, of
the intricacies of the feminine toilet, my kind friends always give me
ten minutes to prepare. One needs to keep one’s papal court dress laid
out all ready for use at a moment’s warning. Fortunately, it is very
simple. But Bianca has found time to mount the papal colors,” she
added, seeing a bunch of yellow jasmine tucked into her friend’s belt.
“Is it allowed?” the girl asked doubtfully. “I can leave it in the
carriage. But I always like to have a flower about me.”
“Oh! keep it,” her friend replied, and smiled, but suppressed the
words that would have followed. For while Bianca Vane carried that
face about with her, she never lacked a flower.
They were just in time for the audience, and an hour later drove
slowly homeward through the silent town. Bianca was leaning back in
the corner of the carriage with her eyes shut. The audience had been
especially pleasant for her; for the Holy Father, seeing her kneel
with her hands tightly clasped, and her eyes, full of delight, raised
to his face, had smiled and laid his hand on her head, instead of
giving it to her to kiss. The others said but little. The languor of
the hour was upon them.
“Does any one say, Signora, that the Pope has a shining face?” Mr.
Vane asked.
“Certainly,” she replied.
“Then I am not original in thinking that I found something luminous
about him,” the gentleman went on. “It is as if I had seen a lamp. And
what a sweet voice he has! He said ‘_la Chiesa_’ in a tone that made
me think of David mourning over Absalom.”
Mr. Vane had been much impressed by the beautiful presence of the
reverend Pontiff, and had behaved himself, not only like a gentleman,
but like a Catholic. The Signora had seen how he blushed in kissing
the Pope’s hand, not as if with shame at paying such an act of homage,
but as if some new sentiment of tender reverence and humility had just
entered his heart. It had been very pleasant to her to see this, both
on account of the love she bore the object of the homage, and the
respect she had, and wished to retain, for him who paid it.
The driver held in his panting horses, and walked them on the side of
the streets where a narrow strip of shadow cooled the heat of the
burning stones; the pines and cypress in the gardens they passed,
which in the morning had been so full of silvery twitterings that the
fine, sweet sounds seemed almost to change the color of them and make
them glisten with brightness, were now sombre and silent. The birds
were all hid in their dark green shadows, or perched in cool, sunless
angles and nooks of vases, balustrades, statues, and cornices of
church or palace. Here and there a workman lay stretched at length on
the sidewalk or on steps, sleeping soundly.
At length they reached home. The porter sat sleeping in his chair at
the great door, and a family of beggars, four or five women and
children, lay curled up outside on the curbstone.
Inside all was deliciously cool and tranquil. Dinner was on the table;
for the servants had been watching for them, and had brought the soup
in directly, and they sat down with appetites improved by the delay.
The Signora poured out some wine for herself.
“The people here say that you should take a little wine before your
soup,” she said. “My former _padrona_ told me the nuns in the convents
she knew always did. I don’t know why it is good for the stomach, but
bow to their superior wisdom.”
“Doesn’t the hair on the top of my head look unusually bright?” Bianca
asked after a while. She was still thinking of the sacred hand that
had rested there, still feeling its gentle pressure.
The others looked, not understanding.
“Why, your veil covers it,” Isabel said. “But there’s a bright garnet
and gold pin at the top.”
Bianca lifted her arms to loosen the veil, took the gold hairpin out
and kissed it. “He must have touched it,” she said, “and so it has
been blessed. Do you know, Signora, what thought came into my mind at
the moment? I thought as he touched me, ‘It is the hand that holds the
keys of purgatory and of heaven!’”
“My own thought!” her friend exclaimed. “I had the same benediction
once, and it set me rhyming. I do not set up for a poet, you know, but
there are feelings that will sing in spite of one. This was one, and I
must show you the lines some time soon, to see if they express you. I
don’t know where they are.”
“I know where something of yours is,” Bianca said eagerly. “I saw it
in your blotting-book, and had to call up all my honesty not to read
it. Reward me now! I will bring it.”
She looked so bright and coaxing, and the others so cordially joined
in her request, that the Signora could not but consent, though usually
shy of reading her unpublished productions to any one.
“How I like hot noons!” she sighed through a smile of languid
contentment, leaning back in her chair, and dropping in her lap the
folded paper Bianca had brought her. “I found out the charm of them
when I was in Frascati. At this early season the heat of the city,
too, is good――a pure scorch and scald. In August it is likely to be
thick and morbid. That first noon in Frascati was a new experience to
me. I went to see Villa Torlonia, which was open to the public only
between the hours of eleven and five――a time when scarcely any one,
especially any Italian, wants to go out in hot weather. I wished to
see the villa, however, and I went, stealing along the shadowy edges
of streets, and down a long stairway street that is nearly or always
shaded by the tall houses at either side and the hill behind, catching
my breath as I passed through the furnace of sunshine in the open
_piazza_, finally, with my face in a flame, stepping under the great
trees inside the gate, and pausing to refresh myself a little before
going on. There was still the open terrace to pass, and the grand
unshaded steps to ascend; but it was easier to go forward than back,
for a few minutes would bring me to avenues as dim as _Ave Maria_
time. I stood a little and dreaded the sun. The _casino_ and the
gravel of the terrace and the steps were reflecting it so that one
might almost have fancied the rays clashed on each other in the midst
of the opening. The rose-trees in the flower-garden looked as if they
bore clusters of fire-coals, and some sort of flowering tree in the
green spaces between the stairs seemed to be breaking out into flame
with its red and yellow blossoms. I remembered Mrs. Browning’s
“‘The flowers that burn, and the trees that aspire,
And the insects made of a song or a fire.’”
She paused to lay a laurel leaf over a _carafon_ of cream that a fly
was buzzing about, then exclaimed: “Why wasn’t that woman a Catholic,
and why isn’t she alive now, that I may kiss her hand, and her cheek,
if she would let me? Fancy such a genius consecrated to religion! You
know the other stanza of that poem I have just quoted:
“‘And, oh! for a seer to discern the same,’
Sighed the South to the North;
‘For the poet’s tongue of baptismal flame,
To call the tree and the flower by its name,’
Sighed the South to the North.
“It seems to me that not one person in a thousand――Italians no more
than strangers――would know there were anything remarkable here, if a
small, small number of persons hadn’t told them there is. How they all
repeat the same words, from the teeth out, and talk learnedly of what
they know nothing about! They don’t one of them find a beauty that
isn’t in the guidebooks.”
She sighed impatiently, and returned to her subject.
“I was telling you about noon in Villa Torlonia: I stood under the
great solid trees awhile, then took courage and walked into the sun
again, across the terrace, with only a glance at the vast panorama
visible from it, up the steps that were hot to my feet, and then
plunged into the upper avenues as into a cool bath. There was another
opening to cross, for I wanted to go to the upper fountain; but here
the cascade cooled the eyes, at least. I went up the cascade stairs as
the waters came down, and found myself alone in that beautiful
green-walled drawing-room, with the fountain leaping all to itself in
the centre, and the forty masks of the balustrade about the basin each
telling its different story. Beside the tall central jet there used to
be, perhaps may now be, a jet from each of these masks that are carved
on the great posts of the balustrade, no two alike. I made a circuit
of the place to assure myself that no one else was there; looking down
each path that led away through the over-arching trees. Not a soul was
in sight. There was no danger of Italians being there; and as for
_forestieri_, there were none in Frascati. How delicious it was simply
to sit on one of the stone benches and live! A spider’s web glistened
across the place, starting straight from a tree behind me. Where it
was fastened at the other end I could not guess; for the nearest
object in that line was the tossing column of foamy water, fifty feet,
may be more, distant, then an equal distance to the trees at the other
side. There was no sound but that of falling water, that seemed to
carry the chirp of the _cicali_ and the whisper of the trees, as the
waters themselves carried the dry leaves and twigs that fell into
them. All around the sun searched and strove to enter through the
thick green, so near that his fiery breath touched my face. How my
chains melted off! How pure the heat was, and how sweet! One bird sang
through it now and then――sang for me: he the only lark abroad at that
hour, as I was the only signora. I answered him with a little faint
song, to which again he replied. I never was so happy, never felt so
free from all that could annoy. Probably Adam and Eve had some such
delight in the mere feeling that they were alive. And so I sat there,
hour after hour, half asleep, half fainting with the heat, in which I
seemed to float. If I had been called on then to say what God is, I
should have said, He is a fire that burns without consuming. Fire and
its attendant heat were the perfection of all things, and coldness was
misery――but a pure, clear fire which an anemone could pass through
unscathed.”
The Signora drew a breath that was half a sigh, and took up the folded
paper from her lap. “How happy I am in Italy in the summer!” she said,
half to herself. “I can work in the cool months, but I live in the hot
ones.”
“Bianca wants me to read this rhyme? It is a summer rhyme, too, and
commemorates a little incident of my first summer here――a visit to
_Santa Maria della Vittoria_. You have not been there yet. It is very
near, just out on the _Via della porta Pia_, which the new people call
_Venti Settembre_, because the invaders came in that way on the 20th
of September. They try to keep the anniversary, and to make the city
look as if the people cared for it, but it is a dreary pretence. A
military procession, a few flags hung out here and there from houses
of government officials and foreigners, chiefly Americans――that is
all.”
She read:
Never so fair a rose as this, I think,
E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;
So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,
Was never given to me.
Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,
The gentle word to strife,
Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,
It dropt into my life.
Hid in the silence of a darkened room,
With sleepless eyes I lay,
And an unresting mind, that vainly strove
To shut its thoughts away.
When through the loosened _perslane_ slipped
A sunbeam, sharply bright,
That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,
And put my dreams to flight.
Before the windows, in a dusty square
Fretted by restless feet,
Where once a palace-garden had unrolled
Its alleys green and sweet,
Men rooted up a fountain-base that lay
Whitened like bleaching bones,
Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.
The weary, ancient stones.
And all about the slowly-growing work,
In warlike mantles drest,
Disputing with the spade for every sod,
The angry poppies prest.
And when I thought how fate uproots always
My gardens, budding sweet,
The hot _scirocco_ of an angry pain
Blew me into the street.
The unveiled heights of sapphire overhead
Dazzled the lifted eyes;
The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from out
The keystone of the skies;
And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,
Yellow with fervid heat,
And scorched the green Campagna, where it crept
And clung about her feet.
The ways were silent where the sunshine poured
Its simmering, golden stream;
For half the town slept in its shaded halls,
Half worked as in a dream;
The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,
Pillowed in their own foam,
I only, and the poppies, it would seem,
Were wide awake in Rome.
There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooks
Nodded each wild flower-bell,
Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, like
A pearl within its shell.
There marched the Piedmont robber and his host
In through the long, long street;
And there the open portal of a church
Drew in my straying feet.
Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,
At first I saw no more
Than circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’s
Bright bubble floating o’er;
Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,
The hovering Bird divine;
And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lamps
That marked each hidden shrine.
Then marble walls and gilded galleries
Grew slowly into sight;
And holy visions peered from out the gloom
Of chapels left and right;
And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,
With a good, pleasant face,
Who sat alone within an altar-rail
To guard the sacred place.
He showed me all their treasures――the dead saint
Within her altar-shrine;
Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,
Blessing the bread and wine;
Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form
’Tis half a sin to see――
Bernini’s St. Teresa――and betrayed
Her dying ecstasy;
Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,
Painted the glorious field――
Lepanto’s――and he told the ancient tale,
How, like a magic shield,
Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloft
In the dread battle’s shock.
Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,
Like foam from off a rock.
When all was seen and said, my parting foot
A soft “Aspetti!” stayed
Just where a tiny garden ’mid the walls
Its nook of verdure made.
And while I waited, was broke off for me
A bright geranium bloom,
And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breath
Has sweetened the whole room.
“_O Rosa Mystica!_” I thought, and felt
Consoled, scarce knowing why;
It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrong
Had righted silently,
As when, new-shriven, we go forth to tread
The troubled ways of men.
Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,
Ever to speak again.
Lady invincible! Her grander fields
Are praised ’neath every sun;
But who shall count the secret victories
Her gentler arms have won?
Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;
But there is one who knows
That on a certain summer day in Rome
She conquered with a rose.
LONDON GUILDS AND APPRENTICES.
The halls of the old London guilds or companies are still among the
most interesting sights of London. They are not only interesting as
the relics of by-gone times and manners, but as living and active
representatives of the influential bodies whose names they bear. Many
of the companies give an annual dinner to the members of the Cabinet
(of no matter which of the two great political parties), and all are
wide awake and progressive. They bestow the honorary membership of
their various crafts upon outsiders as a very great distinction and
favor, and with many of the proudest names of the nobility this or
that company has a hereditary connection. Their actual halls are none
of them of great antiquity, as they can date no further back than
1666, the year of the great fire of London, when every building of any
consequence in the city was destroyed; and many are far more modern
than that, having been rebuilt in our own century. The Company of the
Goldsmiths, which at present ranks fifth in the order of precedence
among the London guilds, boasts of being one of the oldest of all, its
first charter dating from 1327 (before its rivals possessed a similar
royal license), and its records prove that it existed more than two
hundred years previous to that date, and was even fined in 1180 for
its irregular and independent being. This was under Henry II., and it
is presumable that it was not even then in its infancy. The craftsmen
of the capital were obliged to protect themselves by associations of
mutual comfort and defence, and the goldsmiths especially, as they
were most often liable to taxation and forcible levies for the benefit
and at the caprice of the king. They were the earliest bankers, both
in England and in other countries. Their power and organization,
before they obtained the charter of incorporation under Edward III. in
1327, is shown by the following account given by Maitland, the
historian of the city of London, and copied by him from an old
chronicler, Fabyan――no doubt a witness of the fray:
“About the same time (1269) a great difference happened
between the Company of Goldsmiths and that of the Merchant
Tailors [or, as it was written, ‘Taylors’]; and other
companies interesting themselves on each side, the animosity
increased to such a degree that on a certain night both
parties met (it seems by consent) to the number of 500 men,
completely armed; when fiercely engaging, several were
killed and many wounded on both sides; and they continued
fighting in an obstinate and desperate manner, till the
sheriffs raised a great body of citizens, suppressed the
riot, and apprehended many of the combatants, who were soon
after tried by the mayor and Laurence de Brooke, one of the
king’s justices; and thirteen of the ringleaders being found
guilty, they were condemned and hanged.”
The goldsmiths stood, both to individuals and to the government, in
the relation of agents in the transfer of bullion and coin, in making
payments and obtaining loans, and in the safe custody of treasure.
This branch of their business has not been relinquished so very long
ago; for we find a statement made in a book called _A General
Description of all Trades_, and published in 1747, to the effect that――
“Goldsmiths, the fifth company, are, strictly speaking, all
those who make it their business to work up and deal in all
sorts of wrought gold and silver plate; but of late years
the title of goldsmith has been generally taken to signify
one who banks, or receives and pays running cash for others,
as well as deals in plate; but he whose business is
altogether cash-keeping is properly a banker.”
To distinguish such of the craft as did not bank, the name silversmith
was used; and these again were sub-divided into the working
silversmiths, who fashioned the precious metals, and the shopkeepers,
who only sold them. This statement has been preserved by Malcolm in
his work on the city, called _Londinium Redivivum_. The distinction is
practically obsolete in our day, and the whole craft goes more
generally by the name of jewellers. It would be difficult at present
to find one jeweller who is still a banker, though there is no doubt
that private negotiations of the sort described may sometimes take
place; but as to the safe-keeping of jewels and plate, the London
jewellers do a very extensive business. Full as many people keep their
family heirlooms at the great jewellers’――Hancock, Emmanuel, Garrett,
Tessier, Hunt, and Roskell, etc., etc.――as they do at banks; and,
again, the secret loans on valuable jewels, and the sale of some, to
be replaced by cunningly-wrought paste, constitute, as of old, an
important though private branch of their traffic. The great goldsmiths
of old times were pawnbrokers on a magnificent scale, as well as
bankers, and even church plate often came for a time into their
keeping. Royal jewels and the property of the nation were not seldom
in their hands as pledges, and through their aid alone could war be
carried on or clamoring mercenaries paid.
Italy was more liberal towards her goldsmiths than England. Here they
were artists and ranked as such; in England they were artificers and
traders. In the latter country they were powerful, but only through
the wealth they controlled; in Italy they were admired, courted, and
flattered in society, but politically their power was less. The
English at all times excelled rather in manual skill than in design;
and to this day the designers of jewellers, lamp-makers,
furniture-makers, house-decorators, and even silk, ribbon, and cotton
merchants, in England, are generally not English.
In ancient times the London goldsmiths all lived in or near Cheapside,
or, as it was often called, West Cheap, to distinguish it from the
other Cheap Street, more to the east. “Cheap” was the same as market.
Close by was the Royal Exchange, where the bullion for the coinage of
the realm was received and kept, and the street in which stood this
building is still called the Old Exchange. Whether by law or custom,
only goldsmiths were allowed to have shops in this neighborhood; but
even if the right was at first but a prescriptive one, the company
soon contrived to have laws passed to forbid any other craft from
encroaching on their domains. This localizing of various crafts was
common all over Europe in the middle ages, and in many instances was
really a convenience to purchasers, as well as a means of defence for
the members of the guilds. In the case of the goldsmiths the
government had an object of its own. It might have been thought that
the concentration of other turbulent companies would have been rather
a danger and a provocation to the royal authority; but it was
obviously the policy of the king to make the services of this wealthy
company as accessible as might be, in case of any sudden emergency
requiring a loan or a tax. It was not politic to let any of the
fraternity escape contribution by hiding himself in some obscure part
of the city; so that not only were other tradesmen prohibited from
opening shops among the goldsmiths, but the latter were themselves
forbidden from setting up their shops elsewhere. Although neither law
nor custom now interferes with them, the majority of the great
jewellers have their glittering shops in Bond Street, London, while in
other countries the same rule, on the whole, still prevails. The _Rue
de Rivoli_ and the _Palais Royal_ are the chief emporiums for these
precious goods in Paris; in Vienna they are mainly sold in the
_Graben_, and one street leading out of it; Rome has its _Via
Condotti_, thronged with jewelry shops and those selling objects of
_virtu_; Venice has its _Procurazie_, an arcade beneath which nearly
all the jewellers in the city are congregated; and in many old Italian
cities the _Strada degli Orefici_ (goldsmiths’ street) still fully
deserves its name. This is particularly the case at Genoa, where this
old, crooked lane, bordered by the booths and dens that we moderns
would take for poor cobblers’ shops, is still one of the most
surprising and picturesque sights of the city. Goldsmiths’ Row is thus
described in Maitland’s _History_:
“The same was built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, one of the
sheriffs of London in the year 1491. It contained in number
ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame,
uniformly built, four stories high, beautified towards the
street with the goldsmith’s arms and the likeness of
_woodmen_, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous
beasts, all of which were cast in lead, richly painted over
and gilt. The said front was again new painted and gilt over
in the year 1594, Sir Richard Martin being then mayor, and
keeping his mayoralty in one of them.”
The Row, however, before this embellishment, had existed in the same
place, and covered adjoining parts of Cheapside, betwixt Bread Street
end and the Cross in Cheap. This beautiful monument is now gone, but
it stood at the west end of the street, in the middle of an open space
from which St. Martin-le-Grand (still one of the London parishes)
branches out on the one hand, and St. Paul’s churchyard on the other.
The “churchyard,” still retaining its name, is now filled with gay
shops, mostly for the sale of silks, feathers, and other female gear,
and quite equal to the resplendent shops of the West End of London.
The Cross in Cheap was one of a series which Edward I. built at every
place where the body of his wife, Queen Eleanor, rested on the way
from Herdeley in Lincolnshire to Westminster, where she was buried.
In 1629 the appearance of the goldsmiths’ shops is thus described:
“At this time the city greatly abounded in riches and
splendor, such as former ages were unacquainted with; then
it was beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of
goldsmiths’ shops in the South Row of Cheapside, which in a
continued course reached from the Old ’Change to
Bucklersbury, exclusive of four shops only of other trades
in all that space.”
Another reason that had been early alleged for the concentration of
the guild was that “it might be seen that their works were good and
right”; for as early as 1327 complaints were made of the substitution
of paste for real gems, and of plated ware for genuine metal. Some of
the fraternity were wont to hide themselves in by-lanes and obscure
turnings, and buy stolen plate, melt it down, and resell it secretly
to merchants about to put to sea.
“And so they made also false work of gold and silver, as
bracelets, lockets, rings, and other jewels; in which they
set glass of divers colors, counterfeiting real stones, and
put more alloy in the silver than they ought, which they
sold to such as had no skill in such things. And that the
cutlers in their workhouses covered tin with silver so
subtilly, and with such slight,[3] that the same could not
be discerned and severed from the tin; and by that means
they sold the tin so covered for fine silver, to the great
damage and deceit of the king and his people.”
All this was very distasteful to the respectable members of the
company, from whose petition the above words are quoted, and
henceforward the law did all it could to protect both the public from
deceit and the guild from dishonor. Yet, since human law never yet
reached an abuse upheld by obstinate men interested in law-breaking or
law-evading, the ordinances had to be constantly renewed. As years
went on the law was more and more disregarded. One order was passed in
1629 to confine the goldsmiths to Cheapside and Lombard Street;
another in 1635, another in 1637, and two in 1638. Summary proceedings
were taken against the intrusive shopkeepers who paraded their “mean
trades” among the privileged goldsmiths. For instance, “if they should
obstinately refuse and remain refractory, then to take security of
them to perform the same by a certain day, or in default to commit
them to prison until they conform themselves.” The arbitrary Star
Chamber, whose rule under the later Stuarts became a real “Reign of
Terror,” threatened that if such shops were not forthwith shut up, the
alderman of the ward, or his deputy, should be committed to prison.
But these were the last among the despotic threats of the terrible
tribunal, which was soon after abolished, and the twenty-four common
shops which were enumerated in 1638 as spoiling the fair appearance of
Goldsmiths’ Row were soon reinforced by many others. The prohibitory
ordinances ceased, and custom alone was not strong enough to expel
intruders. Besides, the great fire soon came to sweep away almost the
whole city, and the plague that preceded it did much to break up all
local customs and attachments. The tide of fashion afterwards carried
the jewellers with it, setting every year more and more to the west of
the city, and the old landmarks and restrictions died a natural death.
Lombard Street, however, originally named from the Lombard refugees
who settled in London as bankers and pawnbrokers as well as jewellers,
is still distinguished by the number of banks and imposing warehouses
it contains, and by the comparatively stately architecture of some of
its great commercial buildings.
The Goldsmiths’ Company, by letters-patent of Edward III., was granted
the privilege of assaying (or testing) all gold and silver plate
before it could be exposed for sale. But this was probably only a
renewal of a right already exercised by them; for it is mentioned in
the document that all work ascertained to be of the proper fineness
shall have upon it “a stamp of a puncheon with a leopard’s head, as of
ancient time it hath been ordained.” The company also has the
privilege of assisting at what is called “the trial of the pyx”――that
is, the examination of the coinage of the realm, with a view of
ascertaining whether it is of the sterling weight and purity. The pyx
is the box in which the coins to be weighed and analyzed are
contained. The jury of goldsmiths summoned on this occasion usually
consists of twenty-five, and they meet with great formalities and
ceremonies in a vaulted chamber on the east side of the cloisters at
Westminster, called the Chapel of the Pyx.
Since the great fire the company has built two halls, the present one
dating only from 1829, when the old one was pulled down. It stands
immediately behind the new post-office, and is an Italian building,
more worthy of examination inside than out. The hall which preceded
the present one was celebrated for a court-room elaborately decorated
and possessing a richly-sculptured marble chimney-piece and a massive
bronze grate of the value of a hundred pounds, in days when that sum
meant thrice as much as it does now. Like all the companies, that of
the goldsmiths possessed some valuable pictures, chiefly portraits of
distinguished members or protectors. Hawthorne mentions the hall of
the Barber-Surgeons’ Company, in Monkwell Street, which boasted of a
picture by Holbein, representing the company of barber-surgeons
kneeling before Henry VIII., receiving their charter from his hands,
and for which the company very rightly refused $30,000, and even
$6,000 for a single head of a person of the name of Pen, which the
late Sir Robert Peel wished to cut out from the canvas and replace by
a copy which should rival the original in fidelity and minuteness. The
heads in this picture were all portraits, and represent grave-looking
personages in dark, sober costumes. The king is in scarlet. Round the
banqueting-room of this hall were other valuable pictures of the
distinguished men of the company, and notably one, by Vandyke, of an
elderly, bearded personage, very stately in demeanor, refined in
feature, and dressed in a style of almost courtly though chastened
elegance. The company also treasures its old vellum manuscript book of
records, all in black letter, and in which there has been no entry
made for four hundred years. The hall has a lofty, carved roof of
wood, and a sombre, rich appearance from its antique furniture and
numerous old portraits. There is a sky-light in the roof, which may
have served to cast light on bodies dissected on the great table
below. In old times the barbers and surgeons formed but one company;
but we believe that the latter alone now claim the possession of this
hall (one of the oldest now standing in London, and the work of Inigo
Jones), although, in official nomenclature, they still retain the
double title of barber-surgeons. Close by Monkwell Street is shown a
dilapidated Elizabethan row of almshouses, erected by a pious and
charitable alderman for six poor men. Their successors and
representatives still enjoy the founder’s bounty, but the almshouses
are now choked up by a network of unwholesome streets, and the funds
of the institution, which have enormously increased in relative value,
remain in the hands of the trustees. The number of those who, under
different names, belong to the fraternity of goldsmiths, is, at a
rough calculation, nearly eight hundred, exclusive of watchmakers who
are also jewellers. Indeed, in the country these two trades are always
joined, and even many shops of this mixed kind are found in London.
The Fishmongers were the fourth of the incorporated companies, ranking
just before the goldsmiths. At one time they were the wealthiest and
most powerful; but although they existed and flourished as a civic
association long before they obtained a regular charter, they referred
the latter privilege to no earlier date than 1433. The inherent spirit
of division and local jealousy which seems to animate all bodies
corporate, whether political, commercial, or artistic, caused the
fishmongers punctiliously to keep asunder and form two separate
companies――that of the salt-fishmongers (which had the earliest
charter), and that of the stock-fishmongers, whose letters-patent were
not granted till 1509. In Catholic times, of course, the consumption
of fish was great among all classes, and its sale a very important
business. The salt-fishmongers naturally had the largest trade, and at
one period so great was the influence of their company that it gave to
the city six lord-mayors in the space of twenty-four years. The last
and most famous of these was Sir William Walworth, who in 1381, under
Richard II., slew the rebel Wat Tyler with his own hand, in the
market-place at Smithfield, when that leader was at the head of thirty
thousand rebels. The king knighted him for this act of prowess――a far
different cause for the honor from that which is so indulgently
thought sufficient now, _i.e._, the accident of a royal visit during a
mayor’s term of office, irrespective of any merit in the holder of the
office.
The glory and power of the fishmongers stirred up the envy and
ill-will of their fellow-citizens, and Walworth’s successor, John of
Northampton, a draper of an imperious and turbulent character, well
known in his day by the popular titles of Troubletown and Cumbertown,
was able to array the interest of several rival companies against the
too prosperous fishmongers, and to procure from the crown leave for
foreigners (meaning strangers or persons not freemen) to sell fish in
London, in violation of the company’s right of monopoly. Maitland even
records that he made the company acknowledge that its occupation was
“no craft, and was therefore unworthy of being reckoned among the
other mysteries.” It was also enacted that for the future no
lord-mayor should be chosen from among the fishmongers. But the credit
of the fishmongers revived as soon as John of Northampton’s term of
office ended, and the company was soon restored by Parliament to all
its old rights and privileges, except the right of holding courts for
the trial of complaints. This was transferred to the supreme city
court, that of the lord-mayor himself. In 1536 the two companies of
salt and stock fishmongers were incorporated into one by Henry VIII.
under the title of “The Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery of
Fishmongers.”
After the Reformation the sale of fish diminished so as to endanger
the trade of the company, and a curious act of Parliament was passed
in 1563, under Elizabeth, enjoining the exclusive use of fish on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, “as well for the maintenance of shipping,
the increase of fishermen and mariners, and the repairing of
port-towns, as for the sparing and increase of the flesh victual of
the realm.” The cases excepted, of course, were those of sickness, and
of ability and willingness to pay for a license to eat flesh-meat on
those days. The fine for disobeying the law was £3 for each offence,
and the licenses of exemption cost for a peer £1 6s. and 8d., for a
knight and a gentleman 13s. and 4d., for the commonalty 6s. and 8d.
Even the license, however, only authorized the eating of mutton and
fowl, not beef; but that there might be no mistake as to the motive of
this odd, restrictive law――so like the sumptuary laws, and almost as
unavailing――this clause was added:
“But because no person shall misjudge the intent of this
statute, be it enacted that whoever shall, by preaching,
teaching, writing, or open speech, notify that any eating of
fish, or forbearing of flesh, mentioned in this statute, is
of any necessity for the soul of man, or that it is the
service of God, otherwise than as other politic laws are and
be, then such persons shall be punished as spreaders of
false news ought to be.”
It is probable that this regulation failed of its effect, for a
subsequent statute again renewed the prohibition, though limiting it
to Saturdays only; still, the concession was but partial, for the
_sale_ of flesh was forbidden on Fridays and Saturdays and during all
Lent.
There were three streets in the city named after the Fishmongers’
Company――Old Fish Street, New Fish Street, and Fishmonger Row, now
called Thames Street. In each of these the two original companies had
each one hall, making no less than six halls for the whole guild; but
on their fusion they chose one in Thames Street for their common hall,
since which time there have been three successive buildings on or
about the same spot. The first, a very old one, originally the gift of
Sir John Cornwall, Lord Franhope, was destroyed in the great fire of
1666, and soon after Sir Christopher Wren built them another, famed
for a magnificent double flight of stone stairs on the wharf.
According to old historians, those were the times when the Strand was
an open road, bordered sparsely with pleasant houses, having large
gardens down to the river’s edge. This hall was taken down about 1830
to make room for the approaches of the new London Bridge, and the
present hall was built just a little to the west of the site of its
predecessor. This is another of those heavy, would-be-palatial
buildings which attest the bad architectural taste of the first half
of the present century.
It has long been customary to enroll as honorary members of the civic
companies many royal and noble personages; and when, in 1750,
Frederick, Prince of Wales, was admitted as a freeman, the clerk of
the Fishmongers’ Company, Mr. Tomkyns, proudly reminded him that “this
company, sir, is famous for having had near threescore lord-mayors of
the city of London, besides many of the most considerable merchants
and eminent citizens, free of it.”
King James I. incorporated himself with the guild of cloth-workers in
1607, and Stow’s _Chronicle_, continued by Howes, gives the following
description of the occurrence:
“Being in the open hall, he [the king] asked who was master
of the company, and the lord-mayor answered, ‘Sir William
Stowe,’ unto whom the king said: ‘Wilt thou make me free of
the cloth-workers?’ ‘Yea,’ quoth the master, ‘and think
myself a happy man that I live to see this day.’ Then the
king said: ‘Stowe, give me thy hand; and now I am a
cloth-worker.’”
Sir Samuel Pepys was master of the company seventy years later, and
presented them with a rich loving-cup, which is still used on solemn
occasions. The Winthrops, ancestors of the famous governor of the
Massachusetts Company, were hereditarily connected with this
cloth-workers’ guild, several of them becoming members by regular
apprenticeship to the trade; and Adam Wyntrope, the governor’s
grandfather, is mentioned as master of the company in 1551, having
previously held all the minor offices leading to that dignity.
Intimately connected with the system of the companies was the status
of the London apprentices. Both have been materially modified, and
their representatives have ceased to exercise the tangible power they
once possessed. But when the system was in full operation, every trade
having its separate guild; and when, in order that any one might
exercise a trade, it was necessary he should have the freedom of the
guild, this freedom could only be obtained by serving an
apprenticeship to a member of the company. In old times the
apprentices were a superior class of men, and it was not permitted to
every one to exercise the chief trades. Under Henry IV. an act was
passed containing a clause to the effect that no one should put his
son or daughter apprentice to a handicraft trade, “except he have land
or rent to the value of 20s. by the year,” which in those days would
be a fair competency. The regulations of the city of London forbade
any to be admitted to be bound apprentice except such as were
“gentlemen born,” by which was understood freeborn, and not in a state
of villeinage――the son of a free-holder or a yeoman. In the days of
the Tudors and Stuarts even the younger sons of gentlemen often served
in the commercial establishments of rich citizens. The chronicler Stow
attributes to this cause their “costly apparel, their wearing weapons,
and frequenting schools of dancing, fencing, and music.”
But this very pretension to “gentility” it was which Ben Jonson
rebuked in his _Eastward Hoe_, a comedy, the counterpart of Hogarth’s
subsequent caricatures in pencil. The old goldsmith boasts that he
made his wealth by “hiring me a little shop; bought low; took small
gain; kept no debt-book; garnished my shop, for want of plate, with
good, wholesome, thrifty sentences, as, ‘Touchstone, keep thy shop,
and thy shop will keep thee’; ‘Light gains make heavy purses,’ etc.”
The apprentices were very clannish, and ready to defend each other to
the death, and this spirit often led to riots and serious
disturbances, but a curious poem published in 1647, called _The Honor
of London Apprentices_, mentions that this bravery had led them to
distinguish themselves in a nobler field than a city brawl――namely, in
the Crusades and on the field of Crécy.
Their duties, it seems to us, corresponded in their way to the service
required from youths of good birth as pages and esquires in the house
of a knight, before they themselves could aspire to the honor of
knighthood. These waited at table, served the ladies, and performed
many offices now termed menial; and, as a tract published in London in
1625 avers, so too did the apprentices:
“He goes bare-headed, stands bare-headed, waits bare-headed,
before his master and mistress; and while as yet he is the
youngest apprentice, he doth perhaps, for discipline’s sake,
make old leather over-night shine with blacking for the
morning; brusheth a garment, runs of errands, keeps silence
till he have leave to speak, follows his master or ushereth
his mistress, and sometimes my young mistresses their
daughters (among whom some one or other of them doth not
rarely prove the apprentice’s wife), walks not far out but
with permission, and now and then, as offences happen, he
may chance to be terribly chidden or menaced, or [for?] what
sometime must be worthily corrected.”
Stow, in his _Survey of London_, says that “when apprentices and
journeymen attended upon their masters and mistresses at night, they
went before them carrying a lantern and a candle in their hands, and a
great long club on their necks; and many well-grown, sturdy
apprentices used to wear long daggers in the daytime on their backs or
sides.” All this the master in his young days had done for _his_
master, and all this the present apprentice had the prospective right
of claiming for himself in the future; so in this inequality for the
nonce there was no element of caste and no room for foolish murmuring.
The turbulence of these young fellows was turned now against the city
authorities, now against foreign or unlicensed traders and artificers,
now against their masters. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth
century――times when all classes were turbulent enough――these
occasional riots went on and were punished; but what chiefly led to
their cessation was the gradual falling to pieces of the old system,
and the more effectual police force which patrolled the city after
1688. But the peculiarity of the apprentices’ privileges and of the
influence of the companies in England was that, no matter how low a
man began, his industry and good behavior could raise him to high
public honor. This was not the case in most other European countries.
Wealth and domestic happiness, of course, attended virtue and
application to business, but such advancement as the English
Constitution offered existed nowhere, unless, perhaps, in the Low
Countries. This has been significantly commented upon by Lichtenberg,
an admirer and critic of Hogarth, and professor of natural history at
the University of Göttingen. “In Hogarth’s country,” says he, “it is
not unfrequent that the son of a weaver or a brewer may distinguish
himself in the House of Commons, and his grandson or great-grandson in
the House of Lords. Oh! what a land, in which no cobbler is certain
that the favors of his great-grandson may not one day be solicited by
kings and emperors. And yet they grumble!”
Although there are no restrictive laws as to trade in the London of
our day, and though much of the state of the companies has dwindled
into formalities, and is more interesting from a historical than a
political point of view, still the foundations on which the system was
built are unalterable. In these days, as in centuries gone by, the
pride in one’s work, the personal industry, and the _esprit de corps_
of tradesmen are the real steps by which they mount to civic and
political success. They were once embodied in the close system of
alliance and defence encouraged by the guilds; times and customs have
changed, and each man stands more or less on his own merits alone, but
the underlying principle is the same. It is not every tradesman or
merchant who, because he is honest and thrifty, becomes lord-mayor of
London, is knighted, or elected M.P.; but these prizes are within the
reach of all. The city records for the latter half of the eighteenth
century, for instance, witness to the perseverance of many men born in
the lowest and most hopeless circumstances, and that, too, when the
ancient prestige of the companies had somewhat faded. Sir James
Sanderson, sheriff and lord-mayor of London, was the son of a poor
grocer of York, who died young, leaving his widow to manage the
business till his son should be old enough to carry it on. The son
left the shop to his mother for her support, and went to London,
entered the service of a hop-merchant, and throve so well through his
industry that he attained great wealth and position. He was afterwards
made a baronet. Alderman Boydell came to London on foot, from
Shropshire, and worked as an engraver. After great trials, he too
succeeded and became lord-mayor, besides being a great patron of the
arts. Skinner was apprenticed to a box-maker and undertaker, and,
through obscure local influence, began a small business of
auctioneering; he ended by becoming lord-mayor, and the first
auctioneer of the kingdom. Sir William Plomer began life in an
oil-shop in Aldgate, a dingy old part of the city. Brooke Watson, M.P.
for the city of London,[4] was the son of a journeyman tailor, and
served his apprenticeship to that trade. Sir John Anderson, lord-mayor
and member for the city, was the son of a day laborer. Macauley was
the son of a captain of a coasting vessel, who died leaving nine
children unprovided for. Sir William Staines and Alderman Hamerton
were both working paviors and stone-masons. Aldermen Wright and Gill
were servants in a warehouse of which they afterwards became masters;
they lived for sixty years in partnership as stationers, and never
disagreed, although the latter married the former’s sister. Wright
made £400,000. The two old friends died the same year, beloved and
regretted by many who had experienced their kindness and generosity.
To point out contrary instances would not be so easy――they are legion;
but the typical idle apprentice of Hogarth is a fair specimen of those
who wreck their lives through weakness of resolve and inordinate love
of so-called enjoyment. These we have under our eyes every day, in
every country.
[3] Sleight or skill.
[4] The members for the city have the right to wear scarlet
gowns on the first or opening day of every Parliament, and
sit all together on the right hand of the chair, next the
speaker. No other members, except the speaker and the
clerks, have the right of wearing robes.
THE SAINTE CHAPELLE OF PARIS AND THE CROWN OF THORNS.
In the very heart of Paris, to the northwest of _Notre Dame_, and as
if a flower detached from her garland, or a graceful sapling from the
majestic parent tree, sprang up, more than six centuries ago, the
_Sainte Chapelle_.
It almost seems as if Heaven had extended a special protection to the
sanctuary raised to enshrine the precious relics of the Passion of our
Lord; for although injured and despoiled by evil hands in the time of
the First Revolution, it was subsequently restored to all the splendor
of its pristine beauty; and again, when the conflagrations kindled by
the _Commune_ were raging around it, the _Sainte Chapelle_, with its
fearless _flêche_, its protecting angel, and its golden crown, stood
unharmed in the very midst of the flames, and so remained when they
had died out, amid the heaps of ashes and the crumbling ruins left
around its unscathed walls.
Since the time of St. Louis France has possessed the crown of thorns
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is great interest in tracing the
vicissitudes through which this priceless treasure has passed, and in
learning the circumstances under which the saintly monarch obtained
it. In the year 1204 the French and the Venetians, having captured
Constantinople, established there as emperor Baldwin, Count of
Flanders. On the division of the booty this prince requested for his
share the sacred crown of our Saviour, which was found among the
treasure of the emperors of the East, offering, if it were adjudged to
him, to give to the Doge of Venice a large portion of the true cross
in exchange.
His successor, Baldwin II., finding his empire, in the year 1238,
threatened by the Greeks on the one side, and on the other by the
Bulgarians, came into the West to seek aid and protection against his
enemies. Whilst at the court of France, whither he had gone to entreat
the assistance of St. Louis, tidings reached him that the nobles whom
he had left at Constantinople, finding their resources completely
exhausted, were on the point of pledging the holy crown to the
Venetians for a sum of money. The young emperor, strongly disapproving
of this measure, offered as a free gift to St. Louis the precious
relic which the lords of Byzantium were wishing to sell. “For,” said
he, “I greatly desire to bestow it upon you, my cousin, who are my
lord and benefactor, as well as upon the realm of France, my country.”
St. Louis eagerly accepted such a gift as this, and immediately, at
the same time that Baldwin despatched one of his officers with
letters-patent commanding that the holy crown should be sent to him,
the French monarch sent two of the Friars Preachers, named James and
Andrew, to receive it in his name. Journeys in those days, however,
were by no means expeditious, and on the arrival of the messengers at
Constantinople they found the sacred relic gone from the treasury, and
pledged to the Venetians for 13,075 hyperperia, or about £157,000
sterling. It had been deposited by their chamberlain, Pancratius
Caverson, in the church of Panta Craton, that of his nation at
Byzantium. On receiving the emperor’s orders the Latin lords
rearranged the matter with the Venetians, and it was agreed that, if
within a reasonably short time the latter did not receive the
reimbursement of the sum they had paid, the sacred crown should become
their undoubted property. Meanwhile, it was to be carried to Venice,
accompanied by the envoys of the King of France, one of whom, Father
Andrew, had formerly been guardian of the convent of his order at
Constantinople, and, having on several occasions seen the crown, knew
its appearance perfectly well. It was this circumstance which had
determined St. Louis to send him as one of his messengers.
Every possible precaution was taken to secure the identification of
the holy crown, which was enclosed in three chests, the first of gold,
the second of silver, on which the Venetian lords affixed their seals,
the third of wood, which was sealed by the French nobles.
The season, being Christmas, was unfavorable for the voyage by sea,
but the envoys had no hesitation in embarking, secure in the
conviction that the crown of Jesus would be their protection in the
tempest and the perils of the wintry seas. Nor was their trust
disappointed. They escaped unharmed from other dangers also; for the
galleys of Vataces, the Greek pretender to the imperial throne, having
started in pursuit of their vessel, were unable to overtake or even to
discover them, and they reached Venice in safety.
The holy crown was at once borne to St. Mark’s, and there placed among
the treasures in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, where reposed
the body of the Evangelist, between the two columns of alabaster which
are said to have been brought from the Temple of Solomon. At the same
time one of the Dominican Fathers set out for France to acquaint St.
Louis with the terms agreed upon.
These were approved of by the king, who directed the French merchants
to repay the Venetians the sum they had advanced. The sacred relic was
then delivered into the hands of the French envoys, who, after
assuring themselves that the seals were intact, started homewards with
their treasure on the road to France. No sooner had the king heard of
the arrival of the holy crown at Troyes, in Champagne, than he
immediately set out, with the queen-mother, Blanche of Castile, the
princes his brothers, and several of the chief prelates and nobles, to
receive and accompany it to the capital. The meeting took place at
Villeneuve l’Archevêque, five leagues from Sens, on the 10th of
August, 1239. The seals were then broken, and in the midst of an
indescribable emotion the sacred relic was displayed.
The king and his brother, the Comte d’Artois, both barefooted and
wearing a simple tunic of wool, taking it upon their shoulders, bore
it in great pomp to the metropolitan church of Sens, where it remained
exposed for the veneration of the faithful until the following day,
when the march towards Paris was resumed, and they reached the capital
in eight days’ time. A platform had been raised at St. Antoine des
Champs, where the crown was placed; and when everyone had contemplated
it with an inexpressible joy, the king and his brother, taking it, as
before, upon their shoulders, carried it in procession to the palace
chapel, at that time dedicated to St. Nicholas, where it was
deposited.
Besides all the precautions taken to render any substitution
impossible, we may add that Baldwin, on being required to examine and
identify the relic, declared its authenticity in a document written on
parchment, which was in existence until the Revolution of 1793, signed
with his own hand in Greek characters, traced in cinnabar, and having
his own seal, of lead covered with gold, affixed. On one side of this
seal the emperor was represented enthroned, with the inscription:
“_Balduinus Imperator Romaniæ semper Augustus_.” On the other he was
on horseback, with the inscription in Greek letters: “_Baudoin,
Empereur, Comte de Flandre_.” It must also be borne in mind that the
Venetians, before lending so considerable a sum for such a pledge,
would be certain to satisfy themselves beyond all doubt as to its
authenticity, and that, even had he been so minded, Baldwin could not
in this matter have imposed upon the credulity of St. Louis, as some
modern writers have asserted, but that he did really receive that
which the whole Christian world regarded as the crown of thorns of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Still, some additional proof may be required, and
for this we must go back to an earlier period. We must also consider
the nature of this crown; for many churches affirm, and with good
reasons, that they possess thorns or fragments of the same, and yet
these portions frequently do not resemble that which is at Paris.
In the first place, it is certain that a century and a half before the
reign of St. Louis, at the time of the First Crusade, all the world
admitted that a very large portion of the crown was preserved at
Constantinople, in the chapel of the Greek emperors. When Alexis
Comnenus wished to induce the Christian princes to go to his
assistance, he spoke to them of the very precious relics which they
would help to save, amongst which he especially designated the crown
of thorns.
Also, in the time of Charlemagne, all the West had the certainty that
Constantinople possessed this treasure, of which a considerable part
was equally known to be at Jerusalem. Towards the year 800, according
to Aimoin, the Patriarch of Jerusalem had detached some of the thorns,
which he sent to Charlemagne, who deposited them at Aix-la-Chapelle
with one of the nails of the true cross, and it was these relics which
were afterwards given by Charles le Chauve to the Abbey of St. Denis.
The existence of the crown is a fact constantly alluded to in the
sixth century, by St. Gregory of Tours amongst others; and about the
year 409 St. Paulinus of Nola knew of its preservation. He writes:
“The thorns with which the Saviour was crowned, and the other relics
of his Passion, recall to us the living remembrance of his presence.”
No written testimonies of an earlier date remain, but these appear to
be fully sufficient, as they are the expression of an oral tradition
well known to every one. As for the idea that such a relic as this
could have been _invented_ in those ages of conscience and of faith,
it is wholly inadmissible.
The crown was not found with the cross and nails on Mount Calvary, nor
is it probable that it was there buried with them, but that, when
Joseph of Arimathea took down the body of Jesus from the cross, he
would have preserved it apart. That no mention of this remains to us
is easily accounted for by the silence and the exceeding precautions
necessary so long as the persecutions by Jews and pagans continued.
During this time the relics of the Passion which had been in the
custody of the Blessed Virgin, or by her entrusted to others, could
not, for reasons of safety, have been distributed to the various
churches, but were honorably preserved in private dwellings, to be
brought forth and publicly acknowledged when peace was granted to the
church by the conversion of Constantine. Then it was that St. Helena
sought with pious eagerness for every memorial that could be found of
the Crucifixion, and distributed them chiefly among the churches of
Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome.[5]
An apparent difficulty still remains, which obliges us to inquire into
the nature and form of the sacred crown, with respect to which ancient
authors differ from one another, some asserting that it was formed of
reed (_juncus palustris_), about which, however, there are no points
of any great sharpness; while others maintain it to have been made
from the branches of a shrub belonging to the genus _Rhamnus_, several
species of which, especially the _Zizyphus Spina Christi_, or the
thorn of Christ, are furnished with exceedingly long, hard, and
sharply-pointed thorns, exactly similar to those venerated in several
churches, but bearing no resemblance whatever to the holy crown at
Paris, which is, in fact, of reed.
How is this diversity to be accounted for? Thanks to the learned
researches of M. Rohault de Fleury,[6] it is fully explained. The
crown at Paris is a circle formed of small reeds bound together, and
from which only a small number of particles have been taken. The
opening is large enough to encircle the head and to fall rather low
over the brow. But this circle is only the support or foundation, so
to speak, of the painful crown of our Lord. The branches of those
thorns of which we have been speaking were twined alternately within
and without, and twisted across in such a manner as to form of these
sharp spines not only a _circlet_ but a _cap_, as it were, of torture,
which covered the Redeemer’s head.
The year 1241 added new treasures to those already acquired by St.
Louis. These were also from Constantinople, and sent as expressions of
the homage paid by the Emperor Baldwin to the “Most Christian King.”
These relics were accompanied by a parchment document to establish
their authenticity, and which especially designated three remarkable
portions of the true cross: the first and largest, _Crucem Sanctam_;
the second, _Magnam partem Crucis_; and the third, which was smaller,
and known as the Cross of Victory, because it had been borne before
the armies of Constantine and his successors, _Aliam crucem mediocrem
quam Crucem Triumphalem veteres appellabant_. With these was sent also
the point of the lance which had pierced our Saviour’s side, and
which, from the beginning of the seventh century, had been kept in the
chapel of the _Martyrion_, raised by Constantine on Mount Calvary over
the very place of the Crucifixion. Heraclius, fearing lest the lance
should fall into the hands of the Persians, sent it to Constantinople,
from which the greater part of it was later taken to Antioch, where
the Crusaders found it in 1097, but the point had been retained in the
former city, and was sent from thence to Paris.
It was also in the palace of the _Bucoleon_ at Byzantium that were for
a long period preserved a portion of the purple robe, the reed, and
the sponge of the Passion. Baldwin I., by means of certain concessions
made to the other crusading princes, obtained that the chapel in this
palace should remain undisturbed, and thus secured for himself the
greater part of its treasures, which were so largely drawn upon by his
successor for the benefit of St. Louis and of France.
On their arrival the king immediately prepared to erect an edifice
that should be as worthy as possible to receive relics so precious;
nor were there wanting at that time great artists well able to furnish
the design. The middle of the thirteenth century was perhaps the best
and purest period of religious architecture. Churches and cathedrals
then arose the majesty of whose beauty has never been surpassed or
even equalled. For the execution of his work Louis chose his own
architect, Pierre de Montereau, the most renowned master-worker in
stone of the great school of Philippe Auguste, whom he charged to
construct, in place of the chapel of St. Nicholas, which was old and
ruinous, another which should be not so much a church as a delicate
reliquary in stone, with open-worked carving like a filigree of gold,
paved with enamel, and lighted by windows filled with richly-colored
glass.
The artist was no less ready to enter into the ideas of the king than
he was competent to realize them. A plan, wonderful in the beauty of
its proportions and the gracefulness of its design, was soon ready and
submitted to the monarch’s approval, who found it so excellent that
his one desire was to see it carried out as expeditiously as possible.
The legendary spirit of the middle ages, which did not easily allow
that a too perfect work could be the result of a man’s own thought and
labor, has, as usual, embroidered facts with fancies, and attributed
the conception of so exquisite a design to supernatural and magical
means. It is not difficult to understand that the simple imagination
of the people may have had some scope in the colossal construction of
the ancient cathedrals, which required centuries for their completion,
and which often left no name of the master who conceived the design or
of those who executed it; but the _Sainte Chapelle_ was not to have
such dimensions as to require time and labor either very great or
prolonged, and, moreover, he who cut this jewel would engrave on it
his name.[7]
It is evident that the chief intention of the architect was to give to
his work as spiritual a character as it is possible to impress upon
matter, and to translate into stone the _sursum corda_ of religious
aspiration.
The first stone was laid by the king in the year 1245. The proportions
of the plan are considered perfect by competent judges. It forms a
lengthened parallelogram, terminated at the east end by an apse, and
formed of two chapels, one above the other, without aisles or
transepts. The edifice measures outside 36 metres 33 centimetres in
length, by 17 in width; the exterior elevation from the ground of the
lower chapel to the front gable is 42m. 50cm.; the spire[8] rises 33m.
25cm. above the roof. The interior elevation measures 6m. 60cm. in the
lower chapel, and from 20m. to 50m. in the upper. The king’s desire
for the speedy completion of the building was so great that,
notwithstanding the conscientious care bestowed upon every detail, the
work went on with such rapidity that in three years the whole was
finished, and the fairy-like beauty of the edifice excited the most
enthusiastic admiration, tempered, however, by serious apprehensions
as to the stability of the fabric――apprehensions which raised a
tempest of reproaches against the daring architect. Pierre de
Montereau was himself for a time dismayed at the possible consequences
of his boldness. How could he be certain that a church so slight, so
delicate, and, in comparison with its area, so lofty, would stand
securely, almost in defiance of possibilities?
Sebastien Rouillard declares that scarcely was the _Sainte Chapelle_
erected when it was seen to oscillate in the wind, and the spire to
sway to and fro in the air when its bells were rung. Thus, _Quasimodo_
or “Low” Sunday of the year of grace 1248, on which the church was
consecrated, far from being a festival or triumph for the hapless
architect, was to him a day of anguish. So effectually had he hidden
himself that, though everywhere sought for, he could nowhere be found;
and, to quote the words of Paul de St. Victor, “The very workmen had
all fled, fearing that they might be taught the laws of equilibrium
from the top of a gibbet. But time has proved that the seeming
rashness of the mediæval master was well reasoned, and that this fair
flower of his planting has the roots of an oak.”
The proportions had been so carefully drawn, and the laws of
mathematics so exactly observed, the materials so well chosen and
shaped with such precision, that the aerial structure could not fail
to consolidate itself in settling firmly upon its foundation. “One
cannot conceive,” writes M. Viollet-le-Duc, “how a work so wonderful
in the multiplicity and variety of its details, its purity of
execution, its richness of ornamentation, could have been executed in
so short a time. From the base to the roof-ridge it is built entirely
of hard freestone, every layer of which, cramped together by iron
hooks run into the lead, is cut and placed with perfect exactness; the
composition and carving of the sculpture likewise give evidence of the
utmost care. Nowhere can one find the least indication of negligence
or hurry!”[9]
Nor was it the _Sainte Chapelle_ alone that was completed by the end
of these three years, but also the beautiful sacristy adjoining, which
was in itself a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, with a touch of
peculiar refinement about it suggestive of some influence from the
East.
The upper and lower chapels corresponded with the two divisions of the
palace. The lower one, which is less a crypt than a splendid church,
with its sparkling windows, its paintings, its slender pillars with
sculptured capitals, was destined for the officers and domestics of
the royal household. Over the principal door was placed the image of
the Blessed Virgin, which, according to a graceful legend, bent its
head to Duns Scotus, in sign of thanks to that learned theologian, who
had defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and which ever
afterwards retained this attitude. The upper chapel was reserved for
the king and court, and the cell which was the oratory of St. Louis,
may still be seen adjacent to the southern wall.
This church was his especial delight. He had it solemnly consecrated
by two illustrious prelates on the same day; the lower chapel to the
Blessed Virgin, by Philippe de Berruyer, Archbishop of Bourges, and
the upper dedicated to our Lord’s Crown of Thorns, by Eudes de
Châteauroux, Bishop of Tusculum and legate of the Holy See. The sacred
treasures which the king had received from Constantinople were placed
in reliquaries of marvellous richness, wrought in gold and enamel,
adorned with carbuncles and pearls. These again were enclosed in what
was called _La Grande Châsse_, or “The Great Shrine,” which was in the
form of an arch of bronze, gilt, and adorned with figures in the
front. It was raised on a kind of Gothic pedestal behind the high
altar, and closed with ten keys, each fitting a different lock, six of
which secured the two exterior doors, and the four others an inner
trellis-work or grating. The relics themselves were in frames or vases
of gold and crystal. There the holy crown was placed, in the centre,
between the largest portion of the true cross on the one side and the
lance on the other. Thanks to the luxury of locks and to the six
archers who every night kept guard within the _Sainte Chapelle_, its
riches were safe from all possibility of robbery or fraud.
All these things could not be accomplished without enormous outlay.
The cost of the _Sainte Chapelle_ amounted to more than £800,000. The
sums sent to the Emperor of Constantinople, and those spent upon the
reliquaries, amounted to two millions; and when it was suggested to
the king that this lavish expenditure, even upon holy things, was
somewhat excessive, he replied: “Diex m’a donné tout ce que possède;
ce que dépenserai pour lui et pour les nécessiteux sera tousiours le
mieux placé.”[10]
He did not wait until the completion of the church before establishing
there a college of seventeen ecclesiastics, amply endowed. The clergy
of the _Sainte Chapelle_, in virtue of certain privileges and
exemptions granted by Pope Innocent IV., were under the immediate
jurisdiction of the Holy See. The same pope, at the prayer of the
king, enriched the relics with numerous indulgences, and at the same
time granted to St. Louis and his successors the privilege of making
the exposition of them every Shrove Tuesday. On this day, therefore,
the court of the palace was filled, from the hour of seven in the
morning, by the inhabitants of the twelve parishes of Paris, who there
waited, as it was impossible for the chapel to contain the multitude.
Then the king, taking the cross, elevated it, whilst the people sang
_Ecce Crux Domini_; after which he exposed it before the central
window of the apse in such a manner that through the open portal of
the church the crowds could behold and venerate it from the court
outside.
Those days were occasions of exceeding happiness to the saintly
monarch, who, besides, took delight in everything connected with the
sanctuary he had raised, whether in the pomp of its religious
solemnities or in the solitude of the holy place. There he devoutly
followed the divine Office, and there he was wont to pass long hours,
alone, in prayer, kneeling in his oratory, or prostrate on the
pavement near the altar. He had there created for himself something of
that East towards which the thoughts and desires of his heart were
ever turning, and around this glorified Calvary which he had raised to
the honor of God he seemed to behold an ideal representation of the
Holy Land. All the neighboring streets had taken the names of towns or
villages of Palestine: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, etc. But the
pious illusion did not satisfy a soul so in love with the cross as
that of St. Louis; his knightly heart bounded at the story of the
misfortunes in the East, and on the 25th of May, 1270, he again
enrolled himself among the Crusaders; his sons and barons did the
same. He first directed his operations against Tunis in Africa, but
before he reached that place he died near it, in August, 1270.
Great was the mourning in France when tidings came of the death of the
king. The _Sainte Chapelle_ seemed plunged, as it were, into
widowhood, and the poet Rutebeuf, in his _Regrets au Roy Loeys_, has
not forgotten the desolation which seemed to be shed over it:
“Chapèle de Paris, bien êres maintenue,
La mort, ce m’est advis, t’a fest desconvenue,
Du miex de tes amys, t’a laissé toute nue.
De la mort sont plaintifs et grant gent et menue.”[11]
A day of joy and renewed life, as it were, was, however, in store for
the royal sanctuary, when the departed monarch received within its
precincts the first homage of the Christian world as one of the
glorious company whom the church had raised to her altars. Pope
Benedict VIII., in accordance with the ardent prayers of the whole of
France, had, in his bull of the 11th of August, 1297, declared the
sanctity of Louis IX. The following year Philip le Bel convoked in the
abbey church of St. Denis all the prelates, abbots, princes, and
barons of the realm; the body of St. Louis was placed in a _châsse_ or
coffer of silver, and borne by the Archbishops of Rheims and Lyons to
the _Sainte Chapelle_, where immense multitudes were assembled to
receive it, and where it remained three days exposed for the
veneration of the faithful. Philip would fain have kept it there in
future, but, fearing to violate the rights of the royal abbey of St.
Denis, he restored it thither, excepting the head, which he caused to
be enclosed in a bust of gold, and placed amongst the sacred treasures
of the holy monarch’s favorite sanctuary.
Long and prosperous days were yet in store for the _Sainte Chapelle_,
which reckons in its annals a series of great solemnities. Although
its circumscribed space did not allow large numbers of people to
assemble at a time within its precincts, it was very suitable for
certain festivals of a family character, such as royal marriages and
the coronation of queens, at which none but the principal prelates and
nobles were present. Here it was that, in 1275, Mary of Brabant,
daughter of Philip le Hardi, received the royal consecration, and
that, in 1292, Henry VII., Emperor of Germany, in presence of the
king, espoused Margaret of Brabant. In due time the daughter of this
prince, Mary of Luxemburg, here became the wife of Charles le Bel, who
had been married once before, and who, on the death of his second
wife, not long afterwards took a third, Jeanne d’Evreux. Here also the
too famous Isabel of Bavaria gave her hand to the unfortunate Charles
VI. About a century previous a noble and touching ceremony had taken
place within these walls, when the Emperor Charles IV., accompanied by
his son Wenceslaus, King of the Romans, after having, together with
the King of France, assisted at the first Vespers of the Epiphany, on
the following day, at the High Mass, which was sung by the Archbishop
of Rheims, these three august personages, representing the Magi, bore
their gifts to the altar, and there offered gold and frankincense and
myrrh.
The _Sainte Chapelle_ was always the place of meeting and departure of
every expedition, public or private, to the Holy Land. Even at the
period when the Crusades were no longer in favor, it was here that the
last sparks of religious enthusiasm were kindled in their regard. In
1332 a noble assemblage was gathered in the upper chapel. There were
present Philippe II. of Valois; John of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia;
Philippe d’Evreux, King of Navarre; Eudes IV., Duke of Burgundy; and
John III., the Good, Duke of Brittany; prelates, lords, and barons.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierre de la Pallu, who was addressing the
assembly, drew so heartrending a picture of the misfortunes of the
Holy Land that all present arose as one man, and, with their faces
turned to the altar and their right hands stretched out towards the
sacred cross and crown of the Saviour, vowed to go to the rescue of
the holy places. Alas! the days of Tancred and Godfrey de Bouillon
were gone by, and this generous ardor was doomed to be paralyzed by
circumstances more powerful than the courage of brave hearts.
The clergy appointed by St. Louis were more than sufficient for the
service of the chapel, which for a long period retained its privileges
and organization. Up to the time of the Revolution it was served by a
treasurer, a _chantre_ or (chief) “singer,” twelve canons, and
thirteen clerks. The chantry had been founded in 1319 by le Long. The
treasurer was a person of very considerable importance, wore the
episcopal ring, and officiated with the mitre. He was sometimes called
the pope of the _Sainte Chapelle_. This office was borne by no less
than five cardinals, as well as by many archbishops and other
prelates.
There were certain ceremonies peculiar to the chapel. For example, on
the Feast of Pentecost flakes of burning flax were let fall from the
roof, in imitation of the tongues of fire, and a few moments
afterwards a number of white doves were let fly in the church, which
were also emblematic of the Holy Spirit. Lastly, at the Offertory one
of the youngest children of the choir, clad in white garments, and
with outspread golden wings, suddenly appeared hovering high above the
altar, by the side of which he gradually descended, and approached the
celebrant with a silver ewer for the ablutions. Again, on the festival
of the Holy Innocents, and in their honor, the canons gave up their
stalls to the choir-children, who, being made for a few hours superior
to their masters, had the honor of chanting the divine Office and of
carrying out all the ceremonial. These juvenile personages sat in
state, wore the copes, and officiated with the utmost gravity and
propriety. Nothing was wanting; even the cantoral baton was entrusted
to the youthful hands of an improvised _præcentor_. This custom was
observed with so much reverence and decorum that it continued in
existence until as late as the year 1671.
The splendors of the _Sainte Chapelle_ began to decline from the day
that the kings abandoned the _Ile du Palais_ to take up their abode on
the northern bank of the Seine; and from the commencement of the
sixteenth century it gradually fell almost into oblivion. The
subsequent events which have from time to time called attention
towards it have nearly all been of a dark and distressing character.
Scarcely had the Reformation, by its appearance in France, roused the
evil passions which for long years plunged the land into all the
miseries of civil war, when fanaticism here signalized itself by the
commission of a fearful sacrilege. On the 25th of August, 1503, a
scholar, twenty-two years of age, rushed into the chapel during the
celebration of holy Mass, snatched the Host out of the hands of the
priest, and crushed it to pieces in the court of the palace. He was
arrested, judged, and condemned to be burnt. A solemn service of
expiation was held in the church, and the pavement upon which the
fragments of the sacred Host had fallen was carefully taken up and
deposited in the treasury.
We mentioned before that the largest portion of the cross, as well as
the smallest (the _Crux Triumphalis_), were preserved in the great
shrine, together with the sacred crown; but the intermediate one,
designated _aliam magnam partem_, being the portion exposed, from time
to time, for the veneration of the faithful, was deposited in the
sacristy. All at once, on the 10th of May, 1575, it was found that
this piece had disappeared, together with the reliquary that contained
it. Great was the general grief and consternation. No pains were
spared in the search for it, and large rewards were offered to any
persons who should discover any trace of the robbers: all in vain,
although public prayers and processions were made to obtain the
recovery of the lost relic.
But the guilty person was one whom no one thought of suspecting. Grave
historians have nevertheless affirmed that the robber was none other
than the king himself, Henry III., who, under the seal of secrecy,
had, for a very large sum of money, given back this portion into the
hands of the Venetians. A true cross, however, must be had for the
solemn expositions customary at the _Sainte Chapelle_. In September of
the same year Henry III. caused the great shrine to be opened, and cut
from the _Crucem Sanctam_ a piece which was thenceforth to take the
place of that which was missing, and which he caused to be similarly
shaped and arranged. A reliquary was also to be made like the former
one, the decoration of which furnished the unblushing monarch with a
fresh opportunity of enriching himself at the expense of the treasures
of the _Sainte Chapelle_, from which he managed to abstract five
splendid rubies of the value of 260,000 crowns, and which his
successor, Henry IV., was unable to recover from the hands of the
usurers to whom they had been pledged. About thirty years later the
church narrowly escaped destruction by a fire which, owing to the
carelessness of some workmen, broke out upon the roof; but although
the timber-work was burnt and the sheets of lead that covered it
melted, yet the lower roof resisted, and even the windows were
uninjured. The beautiful spire was consumed, and replaced by one so
poor and ill constructed that a century and a half later it was found
necessary to take it down.
But where the fire had spared man destroyed. A devotion to the
straight line led certain builders to commit, in 1776, an act of
unjustifiable vandalism. The northern _façade_ of the _Palais de
Justice_ was to be lengthened; and as the exquisite sacristy which
Pierre de Montereau had placed by the _Sainte Chapelle_, like a
rosebud by the side of the expanded flower, was found to be within the
line of the projected additions, these eighteenth-century architects
hesitated not: the lovely fabric was swept away to make room for heavy
and unsightly buildings which well-nigh hid the _Sainte Chapelle_ and
took from its windows half their light.
The days of the Revolution soon afterwards darkened over France. The
National Assembly, at the same time that it declared the civil
constitution of the clergy, suppressed all church and cathedral
chapters, together with all monasteries and abbeys. The _Sainte
Chapelle_ was deprived of its priests and canons, and the municipality
of Paris set seals upon the treasury until such time as it should
choose to take possession. Louis XVI., who only too truly foresaw the
fate that was in store for all these riches, resolved to save at least
the holy relic, and sending for M. Gilbert de la Chapelle, one of his
counsellors, in whom he could place full confidence, he charged him to
transfer them from the treasury to some place where they would be
secure.
On the 12th of March, 1791, therefore, the king’s counsellor, assisted
by the Abbé Fénelon, had the seals removed in presence of the
president of the Chamber of Accounts and other notable personages;
took out the relics, and, after having presented them to the monarch,
accompanied them himself to the royal abbey of St. Denis, where they
were at once deposited in the treasury of the church. No one then
foresaw that the sacrilegious hand of the Revolution would reach not
only thither, but to the very extremities of the land.
In 1793 a mocking and savage crowd forced itself into the _Sainte
Chapelle_, and made speedy havoc of the accumulated riches of five
centuries. Besides the great shrine and the bust containing the head
of St. Louis, there were statues of massive gold and silver, crosses,
chalices, monstrances, and reliquaries, of which the precious material
was but of secondary value in comparison with their exquisite
workmanship. There were delicate sculptures in ivory, richly-illuminated
Missals and Office-books of which even the jewelled binding alone was
of enormous value. Every tiling was hammered, twisted, broken,
wrenched down, torn, or dragged to the mint to be melted into ingots.
But, worse than this, the relics that had been taken to St. Denis were
soon after to be snatched from their place of shelter. On the night of
the 11th-12th of November in that dismal year this venerable cathedral
was desecrated in its turn. We will not dwell upon the horrible
saturnalia enacted there; but first of all the treasures of the
sanctuary were carried off to Paris, with the innumerable relics they
contained, and handed over to the Convention as “objects serving to
the encouragement of superstition.”
What was to become of the true cross and of the holy crown in such
hands as these? They who burnt the mortal remains of St. Denis and of
St. Geneviève would not scruple to destroy the sacred memorials of the
Passion. But they were to be saved. Happily, it was put into the heads
of the Convention that, in the light of curiosities, some of these
“objects” might serve to adorn museums and similar collections, and
they were therefore submitted to the examination of learned
antiquarians. The Abbé Barthélemy, curator of the _Bibliothèque
Nationale_, affirmed the crown to be of such great antiquity and
rarity that no enlightened person would permit its destruction; and
having obtained that it should be confided to him, preserved it with
the utmost care in the National Library. M. Beauvoisin, a member of
the commission, took the portion of the cross (_Crucem magnam_) and
placed it in the hands of his mother. The nail was saved in the same
manner, besides a considerable number of other very precious relics,
which, in various places of concealment, awaited the return of better
days.
But the hand of the spoiler had not yet finished its work upon the
_Sainte Chapelle_. Not that, like many other ancient sanctuaries, it
was wholly demolished, but its devastation was complete. The grand
figure of our Lord on the principal pier of the upper chapel, the
Virgin of Duns Scotus, the admirable bas-reliefs, the porch, the
richly-sculptured tympanum and arches, the great statues of the
apostles in the interior, the paintings and enamels which adorned the
walls――not one of these escaped destruction at the hands of the
iconoclasts of the Revolution, who left this once dazzling sanctuary
not only bare but mutilated on every side. And as if this had not been
ruin enough, the pitiless hardness of utilitarians put the finishing
stroke to the havoc already made by anti-Christian fanaticism. The
administrators of 1803 thought they could do nothing better than make
of the _Sainte Chapelle_ a store-room for the records of the Republic.
Then were the walls riddled with hooks and nails, along the arcades
and in the defoliated capitals. Up to a given height a portion of the
rich glazing of the windows was torn down round the whole compass of
the building, and the space walled up with lath and plaster, along
which was fixed a range of cupboards, shelves, and cases with
compartments. Dulaure, in his _Description of Paris_, highly applauds
these proceedings, and considers that the place had rather gained than
lost by being turned into a store for waste paper. “The _Sainte
Chapelle_,” he says, “is now consecrated to public utility. It
contains archives, of which the different portions are arranged in
admirable order. The cupboards in which they are placed occupy a great
part of the height of the building, and present by their object and
their decoration a happy mixture of the useful and the agreeable. O
Prudhomme! thou art eternal.”[12]
And yet this poor flower, so rudely broken by the tempest, had tried
to lift her head, as it were, and recover something of the past, when
the dawn of a brighter day shed some of its first rays on her.
In the year 1800, while Notre Dame, still given up to schismatic
ministers, was utterly deserted, two courageous priests, the Abbé
Borderies, since Bishop of Versailles, and the Abbé Lalande,
afterwards Bishop of Rodez, first gathered together the faithful
within the walls of the _Sainte Chapelle_ for holy Mass, and also for
catechisings which were long afterwards remembered. In 1802 these good
priests held there a ceremony which for years past had been unknown in
France――the First Communion of a large number of children and young
persons, whom they had carefully watched over and prepared. This
earliest ray of light after the darkness soon shone upon all the
sanctuaries of the land.
When the churches were opened again, priests were needed for them, and
of these there remained, alas! but too few. The _Sainte Chapelle_ had
to be left without any, and it was then put to the use we have
described. A few years later, when an endeavor was about to be made to
have it employed for its original purposes, it was found to require so
much repairing that the question arose whether it would not be
advisable to pull it down rather than attempt to restore it. Happily,
neither course was then taken. The architects of the Empire and of the
Restoration were alike incapable of touching unless irremediably to
spoil so delicate a mediæval gem. Its state was, however, so ruinous
that after the Revolution it was impossible to think of replacing the
sacred relics in a building no longer capable of affording them a safe
shelter; they were therefore, in 1804, at the request of Cardinal
Belloy, Archbishop of Paris, given into the hands of the vicar-general
of the diocese, the Abbé d’Astros, by M. de Portalis, then Minister of
Public Worship. The holy crown, of which the identity was established
beyond all doubt, was at first carried to the archbishop’s palace,
where it remained two years, during which time a fitting reliquary was
prepared for its reception, and on the 10th of August it was
transferred to Notre Dame and solemnly exposed for veneration.
Beyond the removal of a few small particles, it had not undergone the
least alteration, nor had it certainly been broken into three parts,
as has been stated. M. Rohault de Fleury, who was permitted to examine
it minutely, could not discover the least trace of any fracture. It is
now enclosed in a reliquary of copper gilt, measuring 3 feet 2 inches
in height and 1 foot in width, of which the rectangular pedestal rests
on lions’ claws, while upon it kneel two angels, supporting between
them a globe on which is inscribed _Vicit Leo de Tribu Juda_. The
background is of lapis lazuli veined with gold. In the flat mouldings
about the base are various inscriptions relating to the principal
facts in the history of the holy crown. The globe, which is made to
open in the middle, encloses a reliquary of crystal within another of
silver, in the form of a ring, and it is within this circular tube of
ten inches and a half in diameter that the precious relic is
enshrined.
Another crystal reliquary contains the portion of the _Crucem magnam_
which had replaced that which disappeared from the sacristy in 1575.
This remarkable fragment is no less than eight inches in length. The
nail of the Passion which was formerly in the great shrine is also at
Notre Dame.
In addition to several other relics which were part of the treasure of
the _Sainte Chapelle_, there are also various articles that belonged
to St. Louis, and amongst others the discipline, which is accompanied
by a very ancient inscription, as follows: “_Flagellum ex catenulis
ferreis confectum qua SS. rex Ludovicus corpus suum in servitutem
redigebat._” William of Nangis mentions this discipline, with which
Louis IX. caused himself to be scourged by his confessor every Friday.
The ivory case in which it was kept contains a piece of parchment
whereon is written in Gothic letters: “_Cestes escourgestes de fer
furent à M. Loys, roy de France._”[13] The sacred relics of the
Passion are exposed at Notre Dame on all Fridays in Lent. In their
crystal reliquaries, which are suspended from a cross of cedar-wood,
they are placed on a framework covered with red hangings, which
occupies the central space at the entrance of the choir, and is
separated from the nave by a temporary railing. The nail is placed
within the holy crown, and above them is the portion of the true
cross.
We must return, for a few parting words, to the _Sainte Chapelle_,
which for more than thirty years remained in a state of
ever-increasing dilapidation and decay, until, in 1837, M. Duban was
charged to commence repairing it by strengthening the fabric, and soon
afterwards two other architects were associated with him in the work
of careful and complete restoration which it was intended should be
effected. It is enough to mention the names of MM. Lassus and
Viollet-le-Duc to show how wise a choice had been made, these
gentlemen having not only a thorough and scientific knowledge of
mediæval architecture, an appreciation of its beauty and a sympathy
with its spirit, but also that power of patient investigation, coupled
with an accurate instinct, which would accomplish the reconstruction
of a building from the study of a fragment, just as Cuvier, from a
fossil bone, would delineate the entire form of an extinct animal.
The _Sainte Chapelle_ was built in three years, but its restoration
occupied nearly twenty-five. Every breach and rent was studied with an
attentive eye and closed by an experienced hand. Nothing was left to
imagination or caprice. Here the original foliage must be restored to
the broken capital; there the modern paint and whitewash must be
carefully removed to discover what remained beneath of the ancient
paintings, and supply with accurate similarity of coloring and design
the numerous portions that had been disfigured or destroyed. Fragments
of the ancient statues and stained glass were carefully sought for in
private gardens and in heaps of rubbish, and in some cases it was
found practicable to reconstruct an entire statue from the pieces
discovered here and there at different times; otherwise, from the
indications afforded by a portion, a copy of the original was
produced.
This long and painstaking labor, which alone could ensure the
restoration of the _Sainte Chapelle_ to its former condition, has been
crowned with complete success. Nothing is wanting. Exteriorly the
buttresses and pinnacles rise as heretofore, with their flowered
finials and double crowns; that of royalty being dominated by the
crown of Christ. The bas-reliefs and statues are in their places; the
roofs have recovered their finely-cut crests of leaden open-work; the
golden angel stands as of old over the summit of the apse; and
springing above all, from amid the group of saintly figures at its
base, loftily rises the light and slender spire, its open stone-work
chiselled like a piece of jewelry.
The lower chapel, standing on a level with the ground, is entered by
the western porch, to the pier of which the Virgin of Duns Scotus has
returned. It is lighted by seven large openings, and also by the seven
narrower windows of the apse. The low-arched roofs rest upon fourteen
very graceful though not lofty pillars with richly-foliated capitals
and polygonal bases. Arcades, supported by light columns, surround the
walls, which are entirely covered by paintings. The roof is adorned by
_fleurs-de-lis_ upon an azure ground.
Quitting the lower chapel by a narrow and winding staircase, which
still awaits its restoration, you arrive beneath the porch of the
upper one, and, entering, suddenly find yourself in an atmosphere of
rainbow-tinted light. The characteristics of this beautiful sanctuary
which at once strike you are those of lightness, loftiness, and
splendor. A few feet from the floor the walls disappear, and slender,
five-columned pillars spring upwards to the roof, supporting the
rounded mouldings by which it is intersected. The space between these
pillars is occupied by four great windows in the nave, while in the
apse the seven narrower ones are carried to the roof. Half-figures of
angels bearing crowns and censers issue from the junction of the
arches, and against the pillars stand the majestic forms of the twelve
Apostles, in colored draperies adorned with gold, each of them bearing
a cruciform disc in his hand. It was these discs which received the
holy unction at the hands of the Bishop of Tusculum when the building
was consecrated.
The walls beneath the windows are adorned by richly gilt and
sculptured arcades filled with paintings. No two of the capitals are
alike, and the foliage is copied, not from conventional, but from
natural and indigenous, examples.
The windows are all of the time of St. Louis, with the exception of
the lower compartments, which were renewed by MM. Steinheil and
Lusson, and the western rose-window, which was reconstructed under
Charles VIII. The ancient windows are very remarkable, not only for
the richness of their coloring, but for the multitudes of little
figures with which they are peopled. Subjects from the Old Testament
occupy seven large compartments in the nave and four windows in the
apse, the remaining ones being devoted to subjects from the Gospels
and the history of the sacred relics. The translation of the crown and
of the cross affords no less than sixty-seven subjects, in several of
which St. Louis, his brother, and Queen Blanche appear; and
notwithstanding the imperfection of the drawing, these representations
very probably possess some resemblance to the features or bearing of
the originals. In the window containing the prophecies of Isaias the
prophet is depicted in the act of admonishing Mahomet, whose name is
inscribed at length underneath his effigy.
The altar, which was destroyed, has not yet been replaced. That of the
thirteenth century had in bas-relief on the retable the figures of our
Lord on the cross, with the Blessed Virgin and St. John standing
beneath, painted, on a gold ground. A cross hung over it, at the top
of which was balanced the figure of an angel with outspread wings,
bearing in his hands a Gothic ciborium, in which was enclosed the
Blessed Sacrament. And why not still? Why is the mansion made once
more so fair when the divine Guest dwells no longer there? When the
magistracy assembles to resume its sittings, Mass is said. One Mass a
year said in the _Sainte Chapelle_!
[5] A branch from the crown of thorns was presented to the
church at Treves. Two of the thorns also are in that of
_Santa Croce in Gerusalemme_ at Rome.
[6] _Mémoire sur les Instruments de la Passion._
[7] Until the Revolution the tomb of Pierre de Montereau
still existed in the abbey church of St. Germain des Près,
where he had built an exquisitely beautiful chapel to the
Blessed Virgin, and where he was buried, at the age of
fifty-four.
[8] The present spire was erected by M. Lassus, who has
faithfully followed the character of the rest of the
building.
[9] _Dictionnaire Archéologique._
[10] God has given me all that I possess; that which I shall
spend for him and for the needy will be always the best
invested.
[11] “Chapel of Paris, erst so well maintained,
Death, as I am advised, has robbed thee
Of thy best friend, and left thee desolate
Great folk and small, all make complaint at death.”
[12] See Paul de St. Victor, _Sainte Chapelle_.
[13] These _escourgettes_ of iron belonged to Monsieur
Louis, King of France.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
XIV.
The following day, toward noon, Thomas More was seated, as usual after
dinner, in the midst of his children. No one could discover in his
countenance any trace of anxiety. He conversed with his customary
cheerfulness. Margaret was a little pale, and it was evident that she
had been weeping. She alone kept silence and held aloof from Sir
Thomas. Near the window overlooking the garden, on the side next the
river, sat Lady More engaged in knitting, according to her invariable
habit, and murmuring between her teeth against the monkey, which had
three or four times carried off her ball of yarn and tangled the
thread.
Sir Thomas from time to time raised his eyes to the clock; he then
began to interrogate his children about the work each had done during
the morning. At last he called the little jester, who was pulling the
dog’s ears and turning summersaults in one corner of the room, trying
to make his master laugh, whom he found less cheerful than usual.
“Come hither,” said Sir Thomas. “Henry Pattison, do you hear me?”
The fool paid no attention to what his master said to him.
“Henry Pattison!” cried Sir Thomas.
“Master, I haven’t any ears.” He turned a summersault and made a
hideous grimace, which he thought charming.
“Since you have no ears, you can hear me as well where you are.
Understand, then, little fool, that I have given you to the
lord-mayor. I have written to him about you this morning, and I have
no doubt but that he will send for you to-day or to-morrow.”
Had a pail of boiling water been thrown on the poor child, he could
not have jumped up more suddenly. On hearing these words he ran toward
Sir Thomas, and, throwing himself at his feet, burst into a torrent of
tears.
“What have I done, master?” he cried. “How have I offended you? Why
have you not told me? Forgive me, I will never do so any more; but
don’t drive me away. I will never, never displease you again! No! no!
don’t send me away!”
“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “you are mistaken. I am not at all
displeased or vexed with you; on the contrary. You will be very happy
with the lord-mayor; he will take good care of you, and that is why I
prefer giving you to him.”
“No! no!” cried Henry Pattison, sobbing. “Don’t let me eave you, I
implore you! Do anything you please with me, only don’t send me away.
Why is it you no longer want me? Dame Margaret, take pity on me, and
beg your father to let me stay!”
But Margaret, usually very willing to do what she was requested,
turned away her head and paid no attention to this petition.
“Master, keep me!” he cried in despair. “Why do you not want me with
you any longer?”
“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “I am very much distressed at it; but I
am too poor now to keep you in my house, to furnish you with scarlet
coats and all the other things to which you are accustomed, You will
be infinitely better off with the lord-mayor.”
“I want nothing with the lord-mayor. I will have no more scarlet coats
nor gold lace; and if I am too expensive to feed, I will go eat with
the dog in the yard. You don’t send him away; he is very happy. It is
true that he guards the house, and that I――I am good for nothing.
Well, I will work; yes, I will work. I implore you, only keep me. I
will work. I don’t want to leave you, my dear master. Have pity on
me!”
Sir Thomas was greatly disturbed. Alas! his heart was already so full,
it required so much courage to conceal the state of his soul, he was
in such an agony, that he felt if the dwarf said any more he would be
forced to betray himself.
Assuredly it was not the thought of being separated from his jester
that afflicted him to such a degree, but the attachment of this
deformed and miserable child, his tears, his entreaties, his dread of
losing him, reminded him but too forcibly of the grief which later
must seize on the hearts of his own children; for the composure which
they saw him maintain at this moment alone prevented them from
indulging in expressions of affection far more harrowing still.
“Margaret,” he said, “you will take care of him, will you not?” And
fearing he had said too much, he arose hurriedly, and went to examine
a vase filled with beautiful flowers, which was placed on the table in
the centre of the apartment, and thus concealed the tears which arose
and filled his eyes. But the dwarf followed, and fell on his knees
before him.
“Come, come, do not distress yourself,” said Sir Thomas; “I will take
care of you. Be quiet. Go get your dinner; it is your hour now.”
Sir Thomas approached the window. While he stood there William Roper
entered, and, going to him, told him that the boat was ready and the
tide was up. More was seized with an inexpressible grief. For an
instant he lost sight of everything around him; his head swam.
“Whither go you?” asked his wife.
“Dear Alice, I must to London.”
“To London?” she replied sharply. “But we need you here! Why go to
London? Is it to displease his majesty further, in place of staying
quietly here in your own house, and doing simply whatever they ask of
you? Well did I say that you did wrong in giving up your office. That
is what has made the king displeased with you. You ought to write to
Master Cromwell; he has a very obliging manner, and I am sure that all
this could be very easily arranged; but you are ever loath to give up
anything.”
“It is indispensably necessary for me to go,” replied Sir Thomas. “I
much prefer remaining. Come!” he said.
“Father! father!” exclaimed all the children, “we will go with you to
the boat.”
“Lead me, dear papa,” said the youngest.
Sir Thomas cast a glance toward Margaret, but she had disappeared. He
supposed she did not wish to see him start, and he was grieved.
However, he felt that it would be one trial less.
“No, my children,” he replied; “I would rather that you come not with
me.”
“Why not, dear father?” they cried in accents of surprise and regret.
“The wind is too strong, and the weather is not fair enough,” said Sir
Thomas.
“Yes, yes!” they cried, and threw their arms around his neck.
“You cannot go to-day. I do not wish it,” said Sir Thomas in a decided
manner.
Words cannot describe the sufferings of this great man; he knew that
he would no more behold his home or his children, and that, determined
not to take the oath which he regarded as the first step toward
apostasy in a Christian, they would not pardon him. He cast a last
look upon his family and hurried toward the door.
“You will come back to-morrow, will you not, father?” cried the
children in one voice.
He could not reply; but this question re-echoed sadly in the depths of
his soul. He hastened on still more rapidly. Roper, who knew no more
than the others, was alarmed at the alteration he saw in the features
of Sir Thomas, and began to fear that something had happened still
more distressing than what he had already heard. However, More had
told them so far that it was impossible for him to be found guilty in
the affair of the Holy Maid of Kent, but Roper knew not even who she
was. The absence of Margaret alone seemed to him inexplicable.
Entirely absorbed in these reflections, he followed Sir Thomas, who
walked with extraordinary rapidity, and they very soon reached the
green gate.
“Come, my son,” said Sir Thomas, “hasten and open the gate; time
presses.”
Roper felt in his belt; he found he had not the key.
“I have not the key,” he said. “I must return.”
“O God!” exclaimed Sir Thomas when he found himself alone; and he
seated himself on the step of the little stairway, for he felt no
longer able to stand on his feet.
“My God!” he cried, “to go without seeing Margaret! Oh! I shall see
her again; if not here, at least before I die. Adieu, my cherished
home! Adieu, thou loved place of my earthly sojourn! Why dost thou
keep within thy walls those whom I love? If they had left thee, then I
could abandon thee without regret. I shall see them no more. This is
the last time I shall descend these steps, and that this little gate
will close upon me. Be still, my soul, be still; I will not listen to
you; I will not hear you; you would make me weak. I have no heart; I
have no feeling; I do not think. Well, since you will have me speak,
tell me rather why this creeping insect, why this straw, has been
crushed in the road? Ah! here is Roper.”
He at once arose. They went out and descended to the boat. Then Sir
Thomas seated himself in the stern, and spoke not a word. Roper
detached the cable, and, giving a push with the bar against the
terrace wall, the boat immediately put off and entered the current of
the stream.
“This is the end,” said Sir Thomas, looking behind him. He changed his
seat, and remained with his eyes fixed upon his home until in the
distance it disappeared for ever from his view. He continued, however,
gazing in that direction even when the house could no longer be seen,
and after some time he observed some one running along the bank of the
river, which ascended and descended, and from time to time waving a
white handkerchief. He was not able to distinguish whether it was a
man or a woman, and told Roper to approach a little nearer to the
bank. Then his heart throbbed; he thought he caught a glimpse of, he
believed he recognized, Margaret, and he immediately arose to his
feet.
“Roper! Margaret! there is Margaret! What can be wrong?”
They drew as near the bank as they could, and Margaret (for it was
indeed she) leaped with an unparalleled dexterity from the shore into
the boat.
“What is it, my dear child?” exclaimed Sir Thomas, with eager anxiety.
“Nothing,” replied Margaret.
“Nothing! Then why have you come?”
“Because I wanted to come! I also am going to London.” And looking
round for a place, she seated herself with a determined air. “Push off
now, William,” she said authoritatively.
“My daughter!” exclaimed Sir Thomas.
She made no reply, and More saw that she had a small package under her
left arm. He understood very well Margaret’s design, but had not the
courage to speak of it to her.
“Margaret, I would rather you had remained quietly at Chelsea,” he
said.
She made no reply.
“Your mother and sisters need you!”
“Nobody in this world has need of me,” replied the young girl coldly,
“and Margaret has no longer any use for anybody.”
“Margaret, you pain me sorely.”
“I feel no pain myself! Row not so rapidly,” she said to Roper; “I am
in no hurry; it is early. Frail bark, couldst thou only go to the end
of the earth, how gladly would I steer thee thither!” And she stamped
her foot on the bottom of the boat with passionate earnestness.
Sir Thomas wished to speak, but his strength failed him. His eyes
filled with tears, and, fearing to let them flow, he bowed his head on
his hands. It was the first time in her life that Margaret had
disobeyed him, and now it was for his own sake. Besides, he knew her
thoroughly, and he felt sure that nothing could change the resolution
she had taken not to leave him at that moment.
They all three sat in silence. The father dared not speak; Roper was
engaged in rowing the boat; and Margaret had enough in her own heart
to occupy her. She became pale and red alternately, and turned from
time to time to see if they were approaching the city. As soon as she
perceived the spires of the churches she arose.
“We are approaching the lions’ den,” she cried; “let us see if they
will tear Daniel.”
And again she took her seat.
They were soon within the limits of the city, and found, to their
astonishment, the greatest noise and excitement prevailing. Crowds of
the lowest portion of the populace thronged the bridges, were running
along the wharves, and gesticulating in the most violent manner. This
vile mob, composed of malefactors and idlers, with abuse in their
mouths and hatred in their hearts, surges up occasionally from the
lowest ranks of society, of which they are the disgrace and the enemy,
to proclaim disorder and destruction; just as a violent storm disturbs
the depths of a foul marsh, whose poisonous exhalations infect and
strike with death every living being who imprudently approaches it. At
such times it takes the names of “the people” and “the nation,”
because it has a right to neither, and only uses them as a cloak for
its hideous deformity and a covering for its rags, its filthy
habiliments. They buy up its shouts, its enthusiasm, its incendiaries,
terrors, and assassinations; then, when its day is ended, when it is
wearied, drunk, and covered with crimes, it returns to seethe in its
iniquitous depths and wallow in contempt and oblivion.
Cromwell was well aware of this. Delighted, he moved about among the
rabble, and smiled an infamous smile as he heard the cries that burst
on the air and pierced the ear: “Long live Queen Anne! Death to the
traitors who would dare oppose her!”
“And yet men say,” he repeated to himself, “that it is difficult to do
what you will. See! it is Cromwell who has done all this. Not long
since the streets resounded with the name of Queen Catherine; to-day
it is that of Anne they proclaim. What was good yesterday is bad
to-day; is there any difference? What are the masses? An agglomeration
of stupid and ignorant creatures who can be made to howl for a few
pieces of silver, who take falsehood for wine and truth for water. And
it is Cromwell who has done all this. Cromwell has reconciled the
people and the king; he has made his reckoning with virtue, and seen
that nothing would remain for him. He has then taken one of the scales
of the balance; he has placed therein the heart of a man branded and
dishonored by an impure passion, which has sufficed to carry him out
of himself; the beam has inclined toward him. He has added crimes; he
has added blood, remorse, treason; he will heap it up until it runs
over, rather than suffer him to recover himself in the least. Shout,
rabble! Ay, shout! for ye shout for me.” And he looked at those red
faces, blazing, perspiring; those features, disfigured by vice and
debauchery; those mouths, gaping open to their ears, and which yet
seemed not large enough to give vent to their thousand discordant and
piercing sounds.
“There is something, then, viler than Cromwell,” he went on with a
fiendish glee; “there is something more degraded and baser than he.
Come, you must confess it, ye moralists, that crime, in white shirts
and embroidered laces, is less hideous than that which walks abroad
all naked, and with its deformities exposed to the bold light of day.”
He looked toward the river, but the light bark which carried Sir
Thomas and his party escaped his keen vision: carried along by the
force of the current, she shot swiftly as an arrow under the low
arches of the first bridge.
“Alas!” said Sir Thomas, “what is going on here?”
He looked at Margaret and regretted she was there; but she seemed
entirely unmoved. Margaret had but one thought, and that admitted of
no other.
On approaching the Tower they were still more surprised to see an
immense crowd assembled and thronging every avenue of approach. The
bridges and decks of the vessels were covered with people, and there
seemed to be a general commotion and excitement.
“Thither she comes,” said some women who were dragging their children
after them at the risk of having them crushed by the crowd.
“I saw her yesterday,” said another. “She is lovely; the fairest
plumes on her head.”
“And how her diamonds glittered! You should have seen them.”
“Be still there, gabblers!” said a fat man mounted on a cask, leaning
against a wall. “You keep me from hearing what they are shouting down
yonder.”
“My troth! she is more magnificent than the other.”
“They say we are to have fountains of wine at the coronation, and a
grand show at Westminster Hall.”
“All is not gold that glitters,” said the fat man, who appeared to
have as much good sense as flesh.
He made a sign to a man dressed like himself, who advanced with
difficulty through the crowd, pushing his way by dint of effort and
perseverance. He seemed to be swimming on a wave of heads, each
oscillation of which threw him back in spite of the determined
resistance he made. The other, perceiving this, extended his hand to
him, and, supporting himself by a bar of iron he found near, he drew
his companion up beside him.
“Eh! good-day to you, Master Cooping. A famous day, is it not? All
this scum goes to drink about five hundred gallons of beer for the
monks.”
“May they go to the devil!” replied the brewer, “and may they die of
thirst! Hark how they yell! Do you know what they are saying? Just now
I heard one of them crying: ‘Long live the new chancellor.’ They know
no more about the names than the things. This Audley is one of the
most adroit knaves the world has ever seen. There is in him, I
warrant, enough matter to make a big scoundrel, a good big vender of
justice. I have known him as an advocate; and as for the judge, I
remember him still.” As he said this he struck the leathern purse he
carried in the folds of his belt.
“These lawyers are all scoundrels; they watch like thieves in a market
for a chance to fleece the poor tradesmen.”
Above these men, who complained so harshly of the lawyers and of those
who meted out justice to all comers, there was a window, very high and
narrow, placed in a turret that formed the angle of a building of good
appearance and solid construction. This window was open, the curtains
were drawn back, and there could be seen coming and going the heads of
several men, who appeared and disappeared from time to time, and who,
after having looked out and surveyed the river and the streets
adjacent, returned to the extremity of the apartment.
This house belonged to a rich merchant of Lucca named Ludovico
Bonvisi; he was a man of sterling integrity, and in very high repute
among the rich merchants of the city. Established in England for a
great number of years, he had been intimate with Sir Thomas More at
the time the latter was Sheriff of London, and he had ever since
retained for him a particular friendship and esteem. On this day
Ludovico had invited four or five of his friends to his house; he was
seated in the midst of them, in a large chair covered with green
velvet, before a table loaded with rare and costly wines, which were
served in decanters of rock crystal banded with hoops of silver. There
were goblets of the same costly metal, richly carved, and a number of
these were ornamented with precious stones and different kinds of
enamel. Superb fruits arranged in pyramids on rare porcelain china,
confectioneries, sweetmeats of all kinds and in all sorts of figures,
composed the collation he offered his guests, among whom were John
Story, Doctor of Laws; John Clement, a physician of great celebrity,
and most thoroughly versed in the Greek language and the ancient
sciences; William Rastal, the famous jurist; his friend John Boxol, a
man of singular erudition; and Nicholas Harpesfield, who died in
prison for the Catholic faith during the reign of Elizabeth. They were
all seated around the table, but appeared to be much more interested
in their conversation than in the choice viands which had been
prepared for them by their host. John Story, particularly, exclaimed
with extraordinary bitterness against all that was being done in the
kingdom.
“No!” said he, “nothing could be more servile or more vile than the
course Parliament has pursued in all this affair. We can scarcely
believe that these men, not one of whom in his heart approves of the
divorce and the silly and impious pretensions of the king, have never
dared to utter a single word in favor of justice and equity! No, each
one has watched his neighbor to see what _he_ would do; and when there
has been question for debate, they have found no other arguments than
simply to pass all that was asked of them. The only thing they have
dared to suggest has been to insert in this shameful bill that those
who should speak against the new queen and against the supremacy of
the king would be punished only so far as they had done so
_maliciously_. Beautiful and grand restriction! They think to have
gained a great deal by inserting that, so closely are they pursued by
their fears.
“When they have instituted proceedings against those unfortunates who
shall have offended them, do you believe that Master Audley, and
Cromwell, and all the knaves of that class will be at great pains to
have entered a well-proven maliciousness? No; it is a halter that will
fit all necks――their own as well as those of all others. I have often
told them this, but they will believe nothing. Later they will repent
it; we shall then be in the net, and there will be no way to get out
of it. Yes, I say, and I see it with despair, there is no more courage
in the English nation, and very soon we shall let ourselves be seized
one by one, like unfledged birds trembling on the edge of their
devastated nest.”
“It is very certain,” replied William Rastal, “that I predict nothing
good from all these innovations; there is nothing more immoral and
more dangerous to society than to let it become permeated, under any
form whatever, with the idea of divorce――at least, unless we wish it
to become transformed into a vast hospital of orphans abandoned to the
chance of public commiseration, into a camp of furious ravishers,
excited to revenge and mutual destruction. Take away the
indissolubility of marriage, and you destroy at the same blow the only
chances of happiness and peace in the interior and domestic life of
man, in order to replace them by suspicions, jealousies, crimes,
revenge, and corruption.”
“Or rather,” said John Clement, “it will be necessary to reduce women
to a condition of slavery, as in the ancient republics, and place them
in the ranks of domestic animals.”
“And, as a natural consequence, be ourselves degraded with them,”
cried John Story, “since we are their brothers and their sons.”
“With this base cowardice in Parliament, all is possible,” interrupted
Harpesfield, “and I do not see how we are to arrest it. When they no
longer regard an oath as an inviolable and sacred thing, what
guarantee is left among men? You know, I suppose, what the Archbishop
of Canterbury has done with the king’s approval, in Westminster even,
at the moment of being consecrated?”
“No!” they all answered.
“He took four witnesses aside before entering the sanctuary, and
declared to them――he, Cranmer――that the antiquity of the usage and
custom of his predecessors requiring that he should take the oath of
fidelity to the pope on receiving the pallium from him, he intended,
notwithstanding, to pledge himself to nothing in opposition to the
reforms the king might desire to make in the church, of which he
recognized him as the sole head. What think you of the invention of
this preservative of the obligations that bear the sanctity and
solemnity of an oath made at the foot of the altar, in presence of all
the people, accustomed to listen to and see it faithfully observed?
That proceeding sufficiently describes the age in which we live, our
king, and this man.”
“But everybody knows very well that Cranmer is an intriguer, void of
faith or law,” replied Rastal, “who has been foisted into his present
position in order to do the will of the king and accommodate himself
to his slightest desires.”
“He has given him a wife,” said John Clement, pouring out a glass of
Cyprus wine, whose transparent color testified to its excellent
quality; “I verily believe she will not be the last.”
“What kind of a face has she, this damsel Boleyn? Is she dark or fair?
Fair, without doubt; for the other was dark. This is perfect nectar,
Ludovico! Have you more of it?”
“You are right; she has lovely blue eyes. She sings and dances
charmingly.”
“How much more, Ludovico? A small barrel――hem!――of the last invoice?
_Excellentissimo_, Signor Ludovico!”
“Well, we will see her pass very soon; they escort her to the Tower,
where she will remain until the coronation. They say the king has had
the apartments in the Tower furnished with an unparalleled
magnificence.”
“Yes; and to sustain that magnificence he is contracting debts every
day, and all his revenues do not cover his expenses.”
“A good king is a good thing,” said Harpesfield; “but nothing is worse
than a bad one, and the good ones are so rare!”
“That is because,” replied Boxol, who was very deliberate, “the power,
renown, and flattery surrounding the throne tend so much to corrupt
and encourage the passions of a man that it is very difficult for him,
when seated there, to maintain himself without committing any faults.
Besides, my masters, we must remember that the faults of private
individuals, often quite as shameful, remain unknown, while those of a
king are exposed to all eyes and counted on all fingers.”
“Well,” said John Clement; “but this one is certainly somewhat
weighty, and I would not care to be burdened by having his sins
charged to my account, to be held in reserve against the day of the
last judgment.”
“Good Bonvisi, give me a little of that dish which has nothing in
common with the _brouet spartiate_.”
“A good counsellor and a true friend,” said John Story――“that is what
is always wanting to princes.”
“When they have them, they don’t know how to keep them,” said
Ludovico. “See what has happened to More! Was not this a brilliant
light which the king has concealed under a bushel?”
“Assuredly,” replied Boxol; “he is an admirable man, competent for,
and useful in, any position.”
“He is a true Christian,” said Harpesfield; “amiable, moderate, wise,
benevolent, disinterested. At the height of prosperity, as in a humble
position, you find him always the same, considering only his duty and
the welfare of others. He seems to regard himself as the born servant
and the friend of justice.”
“Hold, sirs!” replied Clement, turning around on his chair. “There is
one fact which cannot be denied; which is, that nothing but religion
can render a man ductile. Otherwise he is like to iron mixed with
brimstone. We rely upon him, we confide in his face and in the
strength of his goodness; but suddenly he falls and breaks in your
hands as soon as you wish to make some use of him.”
“There must be a furious amount of sulphur in his majesty’s heart,”
replied Harpesfield, “for he is going to burn, in Yorkshire, four
miserable wretches accused of heresy. For what? I know not; for having
wished, perhaps, to do as he has done――get rid of a wife of whom he
was tired! There is a fifth, who, more adroit, has appealed to him as
supreme head of the church; he has been immediately justified, and
Master Cromwell set him at liberty. Thus the king burns heretics at
the same time that he himself separates from the church. All these
actions are horrible, and nothing can be imagined more absurd and at
the same time more criminal.”
“As for me,” replied Clement, who had been watering his sugared fruits
with particular care for a quarter of an hour, “I have been very much
edified by the pastoral letter of my Lord Cranmer to his majesty. Have
you seen it, Boxol?”
“No,” replied Boxol, who was not disposed to treat this matter so
lightly as Master Clement, as good an eater as he was a scholar, and
what they call a _bon vivant_; “these things make me very sick, and I
don’t care to speak of them lightly or while dining.”
“For which reason, my friend,” replied Clement, “you are excessively
lean――the inevitable consequence of the reaction of anxiety of soul
upon its poor servant, the body; for there are many fools who confound
all and disown the soul, because they are ashamed of their hearts and
can discern only their bodies. As if we could destroy that which God
has made, or discover the knots of the lines he has hidden! He has
willed that man should be at the same time spirit and matter, and that
these two should be entirely united; and very cunning must he be who
will change that union one iota. They will search in vain for the
place of the soul; they will no more find where it is than where it is
not. Would you believe――but this is a thing I keep secret because of
the honor of our science――that I have a pupil who asserts that we have
no soul, because, says this beardless doctor, he has never been able
to distinguish the moment when the soul escaped from the body of the
dying! Do you not wonder at the force of that argument? And would it
not be in fact a very beautiful thing to observe, and a singular
spectacle to see, our souls suddenly provided with large and handsome
wings of feathers, or hair, or some other material, to use in flying
around and ascending whither God calls them? Now, dear friends,
believe what I tell you: the more we learn, the more we perceive that
we know nothing. Our intelligence goes only so far as to enable us to
understand effects, to gather them together, to describe them, and in
some cases to reproduce them; but as for the causes, that is an order
of things into which it is absolutely useless to wish to penetrate.”
“Come, now, here is Clement going into his scientific dissertations,
in place of telling us what was in Cranmer’s letter!” cried Ludovico,
interrupting him.
“Ah! that is because I understand them better; and I prefer my
crucibles, my nerves and bones, to the subtleties, the falsehoods, of
your pretended casuists. Boxol could tell you that very well; but
after all I have been obliged to laugh at the sententious manner,
grave and peremptory, in which this archbishop, prelate, primate,
orthodox according to the new order, commands the king to quit his
wicked life and hasten to separate from his brother’s wife, under pain
of incurring ecclesiastical censure and being excommunicated. What
think you of that? And while they distribute copies of this lofty
admonition among the good tradesmen of London, who can neither read
nor write, nor see much farther than the end of their noses and the
bottom of their money-bags, they have entered proceedings at Dunstable
against that poor Queen Catherine, who is cast out on the world and
knows not where to go. Can anything more ridiculous or more pitiable
be found? Ha! ha! do you not agree with me?”
“Verily,” said Boxol, who became crimson with anger, “Clement, I
detest hearing such things laughed at.”
“Ah! my poor friend,” replied Clement, “would you have me weep, then?
Your men are such droll creatures! When one studies them deeply, he is
obliged to ridicule them; otherwise we should die with weeping.”
“He is right,” said John Story. “We see how they dispute and flay each
other daily for a piece of meadow, a rut in the road which I could
hold in the hollow of my hand. They write volumes on the subject; they
sweat blood and water; they compel five hundred arrests; then
afterwards they are astonished to find they have spent four times as
much money as the thing they might have gained was worth. Why cannot
men live at peace? If you put them off without wishing to press the
suit, they become furious; and yet they always begin by representing
their affairs to you in so equitable a light that the devil himself
would be deceived. There is one thing I have observed, and that is,
there is nothing which has the appearance of being in such good faith
as a litigant whose case is bad, and who knows his cause to be
unjust.”
“Come, my friends,” cried Clement, “you speak well; all that excites
compassion. You often ridicule me and what you please to call my
simplicity, and yet I see everything just as clearly as anybody else;
but I have a plain way of dealing, and I do not seek so much cunning.
If God calls me, I answer at once: Lord, here I am! I have spent the
nights of my youth in studying, in learning, in comparing; I have
examined and gone to the depths of all the philosophers of antiquity,
apparently so lucid, so luminous; I have found only pride, weakness,
darkness, and barrenness. I have recognized that it was all profitless
and led to no good; it was always _the man_ that I was finding; and of
that I had enough in myself to guide and support. Then I took the
Bible, and I felt that it was God who spoke to me from its inspired
pages; whereat I abandoned my learning and all those philosophical
wranglings which weary the mind without bettering the heart. I go
straight to my object without vexing myself with anything. There are
things which I do not understand. That is natural, since it has
pleased God to conceal them from me. Evidently I do not need to
comprehend them, since he has not revealed them; and there is no
reason, because I find some obscurities, why I should abandon the
light which burns in their midst. ‘Master Clement,’ they ask me, ‘how
did God make that?’ ‘Why that?’ My dear friends, this is just as far
as we know. ‘And this, again?’ This I know nothing about, because it
cannot be explained. When our dear friend More read us his _Utopia_, I
remember that I approached him and said: ‘Why have you not founded a
people every man of whom followed explicitly the laws of the church?
That would have given you a great deal less trouble, and you would at
once have arrived at the art of making them happy, without employing
other precepts than these: to avoid all wrong-doing, to love their
neighbor as themselves, and to employ their time and their lives in
acquiring all sorts of merits by all sorts of good works. There you
would find neither thieves nor slanderers, calumniators nor
adulterers, gamblers nor drunkards, misers nor usurers, spendthrifts
nor liars; consequently, you would have no need of laws, prisons, or
punishments, and such a community would unite all the good and exclude
the bad.’ He smiled and said to me: ‘Master Clement, you are in the
right course, and you would walk therein with all uprightness, but
others would turn entirely around and never even approach it.’
Therefore, when I see a man who has no religion, I say: ‘That man is
capable of the utmost possible wickedness’; and I am by no means
astonished, when the occasion presents, that he should prove guilty. I
mentally exclaim: ‘My dear friend, you gain your living by selfish and
wicked means’; and I pass by him, saying, ‘Good-day, my friend,’ as to
all the others. He is just what he is; and what will you? We can
neither control him nor change his nature.”
His companions smiled at this discourse of John Clement, whom they
loved ardently, and who was a man as good as he was original. A little
brusque, he loved the poor above all things, and was never happier
than when, seated by their humble bedsides, he conversed with them
about their difficulties and endeavored to relieve them. Then it
seemed to him that he was king of the earth, and that God had placed
in his hands a treasure of life and health for him to distribute among
them. As often as he added largely to his purse, just so often was it
drained of its contents; but he had for his motto that the Lord fed
the little birds of the field, and therefore he would not forget him;
and, besides, nobody would let John Clement die of hunger. Always
cheerful, always contented with everything, he had gone entirely round
the circle of science, and, as he said, having learned all that a man
could learn, was reduced to the simplicity of a child, but of an
enlightened child, who feels all that he loses in being able to go
only so far.
“But take your breakfast now, instead of laughing at and listening to
me,” he cried.
As he spoke the sound of music was suddenly heard in the distance, and
a redoubled tumult in the streets. A dull murmur, and then a loud
clamor, reached their ears. They immediately hurried to the window,
and left John Clement at the table, who also arose, however, and went
to the window, where he arrived the last.
“It is she! It is Queen Anne!” was heard from all sides; and heads
arose one above the other, while the roofs even of the houses were
covered with people.
There is a kind of electricity which escapes from the crowd and the
eager rush and excitement――something that makes the heart throb, and
that pleases us, we know not why. There were some who wept, some who
shouted; and the sight of the streamers floating from the boats, which
advanced in good order like a flotilla upon the river, was sufficient
to cause this emotion and justify this enthusiasm; for the people love
what is gay, what is brilliant; they admire, they are satisfied. In
such moments they forget themselves; the poet sings without coat or
shoes; his praises are addressed to the glowing red velvet, the
nodding white plume, the gold lace glittering in the sunlight. A king,
a queen――synonyms to him of beauty, of magnificence――he waits on them,
hopes in them, applauds them when they pass, because he loves to see
and admire them.
Six-and-twenty boats, painted and gilded, ornamented with garlands of
flowers and streaming banners, with devices and figures entwined,
filled with richly-dressed ladies, surrounded the bark which conveyed
the new spouse. Anne, arrayed in a robe of white satin heavily
embroidered with golden flowers, was seated on a kind of throne which
had been erected in the centre of the boat. A rich pavilion was raised
above her head, and her long veil of magnificent point lace was thrown
back, permitting a view of her beautiful features and fair hair. She
was glowing with youth and satisfaction; and her heart thrilled with
delight at seeing herself treated as a queen, and making her entry in
so triumphant a manner into the city of London.
Her cheeks were red and delicate as the flower of spring; her eyes
sparkled with life and animation. The old Duchess of Norfolk, her
grandmother, was seated beside her, and at her feet the Duke of
Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, her brother, Viscount Rochford, her
sister-in-law, and other relatives. The king was in another boat, and
followed close. In all the surrounding boats there were musicians. The
weather was superb, and favored by its calmness and serenity the
_fête_ that had been prepared for the new queen. Soon shouts arose of
“Long live the king!” “Long live the queen!” and the populace, trained
and paid by Cromwell, rushed upon the quays, upsetting everything that
came in its way, in order to bring its shouts nearer. They seemed like
demons seized with an excess of fury; but the eye confounded them
among the curious crowd, and the distance harmonized to the royal eyes
their savage expression.
Meanwhile, the boats, having made divers evolutions, drew up before
the Tower, and Anne Boleyn was received at the landing by the
lord-mayor and the sheriffs of the city, who came to congratulate and
escort her to her apartments. It would be difficult to describe the
ostentation displayed by Henry VIII. on this occasion; he doubtless
thought in this way to exalt, in the estimation of the people, the
birth of his new wife, and impose on them by her dignity. The
apartments in the Tower destined to receive them had been entirely
refurnished; the grand stairway was covered from top to bottom with
Flanders tapestry, and loaded with flowers and censers smoking with
perfume, which embalmed the air with a thousand precious odors. A
violet-colored carpet, embroidered with gold and furs, extended along
their line of march and traversed the courtyards. Anne and all her
_cortège_ followed the route so sumptuously marked out. As she rested
her delicate feet on the silken carpet she was transported with joy,
and gazed with delighted eyes on the splendors surrounding her. “I am
queen――Queen of England!” she said to herself every moment. That
thought alone found a place in her heart; she saw nothing but the
throne, the title, this magnificence; she was in a whirl of enjoyment
and reckless delight.
* * * * *
In the meantime Margaret and Sir Thomas were also entering the Tower.
The young girl shuddered at the aspect of the black walls and the long
and gloomy corridors through which she had been made to follow. Her
heart throbbed violently as she gazed at the little iron-grated
windows, closely barred, rising in tiers one above the other. It
seemed to her she could see at each one of those little squares, so
like the openings of a cage, a condemned head sighing at the sight of
heaven or the thought of liberty. She walked behind Sir Thomas, and
her heart was paralyzed by terror and fear as she fixed her eyes on
that cherished father.
They at length reached a large, vaulted hall, damp and gloomy, the
white-washed walls of which were covered with names and various kinds
of drawings; a large wooden table and some worm-eaten stools
constituted the only furniture. A leaden inkstand, some rolls of
parchment, an old register lying open, and a man who was writing,
interrogated Sir Thomas.
“Age?” asked the man; and he fixed his luminous, cat-like eyes on
Thomas More.
“Fifty years,” responded Sir Thomas.
“Your profession?”
“I have none at present,” he answered.
“In that case I shall write you down as the former lord chancellor.”
“As you please,” said More. “But, sir,” continued Sir Thomas, “I have
received an order to present myself before the council, and I should
not be imprisoned before being heard.”
“Pardon me, sir,” replied the clerk quietly, “the order has been
received this morning; and if you had not come to-day, you would have
been arrested this evening.”
As he coolly said these words he passed to him a roll of paper from
which hung suspended the seal of state. Sir Thomas opened it, and
casting his eyes over the pages, the long and useless formula of which
he knew by heart, he came at once to the signature of Cromwell below
that of Audley. He recalled this man, who had coolly dined at his
table yesterday, surrounded by his children. He then took up the great
seal of green wax which hung suspended by a piece of amaranth silk.
The wax represented the portrait of Henry VIII., with a device or
inscription. He held the seal in his hand, looked at it, and turned it
over two or three times.
“This is indeed the royal seal,” said he. “I have been familiar with
it for a long time; and now the king has not hesitated to attach it to
my name. Well, God’s will be done!” And he laid the seal and the roll
of paper on the table.
“You see it,” said the clerk, observing from the corner of his eye
that he had replaced the paper. “Oh! I am perfectly at home with
everything since I came here. It was I who registered Empson and
Dudley, the ministers of Henry VII., and the Duke of Buckingham. A
famous trial that! High treason also――decapitated at Tower Hill. A
noble lord, moreover; he――listen, I am going to tell you; for it is
all written here.” And he began to turn the leaves of the book. “Here,
the 17th of May, 1521, page 86.” And placing the end of his finger on
the page indicated, he looked at Sir Thomas complacently, as if to
say: “Admire my accuracy, now, and my presence of mind.”
On hearing this Margaret arose involuntarily to her feet. “Silence,
miserable wretch!” she cried. “What is it to us that you have kept an
account of all the assassinations which have been committed in this
place? No! no! my father shall not stay here; he shall not stay here.
He is innocent――yes, innocent; it would be impossible for him to be
guilty!”
The clerk inspected her closely, as if to determine who she could be.
“That is the custom; they always say that, damsel. As for me, however,
it concerns me not. They are tried up above; but I――I write here; that
is all. Why do they allow themselves to be taken? People ought not to
be called wretches so readily,” he added, fixing his eyes upon her. “I
am honest, you see, and the worthy father of a family, you understand.
I have two children, and I support them by the fruit of my labor.”
“Margaret,” said Sir Thomas, “my dearest daughter, you must not remain
here!”
“You believe――you think so! Well, perhaps not; and yet I implore you!
Undoubtedly I am only a woman; I can do nothing at all; I am only
Margaret!”
And a gleam shot from her eyes.
Sir Thomas regarded her, overwhelmed with anguish and despair. He took
her by the arm and led her far away from the clerk, toward the large
and only window, looking out on the gloomy and narrow back yard.
“Come,” he said, “let me see you display more courage; do not add to
the anguish that already fills my soul! Margaret, look up to heaven.”
And he raised his right hand toward the firmament, of which they could
see but the smallest space. “Have these men, my daughter, the power to
deprive us of our abode up there? Whatever afflictions may befall us
here on earth, one day we shall be reunited there in eternity. Then,
Margaret, we shall have no more chains, no more prisons, no more
separations. Why, then, should you grieve, since you are immortal?
What signify the years that roll by and are cast behind us, more than
a cloud of dust by which we are for a moment enveloped? If my life was
to be extinguished, if you were to cease to exist, then, yes, my
despair would be unlimited; but we live, and we shall live for ever!
We shall meet again, whatever may be the fate that attends me,
whatever may be the road I am forced to follow. Death――ah! well, what
is death? A change of life. Listen to me, Margaret: the present is
nothing; the future is everything! Yes, I prefer the gloom of the
prison to the brilliancy of the throne; all the miseries of this place
to the delights of the universe, if they must be purchased at the cost
of my soul’s salvation. Cease, then, to weep for me. If I am
imprisoned here, it is only what He who called me out of nothing has
permitted; and were I at liberty to leave, I would not do so unless it
were his will. Know, then, my daughter, that I am calm and perfectly
resigned to be here, since God so wills it. Return home now; see that
nothing goes wrong there. I appoint you in my place, without, at the
same time, elevating you above your mother; and rest assured that your
father will endure everything with joy and submission, not because of
the justice of men, but because of that of God!”
Margaret listened to her father without replying. She knew well that
she would not be permitted to remain in the prison, and yet she so
much wished it.
“No,” she exclaimed at last, “I do not wish to be thus resigned! It is
very easy for you to talk, it is nothing for me to listen; but as for
me, I am on the verge of life. Without you, for me life has no longer
the least attraction! Let them take mine when they take yours! It is
the same thing; they owe it to the king. He so thirsts for blood that
it will not do to rob him of one drop. Have you not betrayed him?
Well! I am a traitor also; let him avenge himself, then; let him take
his revenge; let him pick my bones, since he tears my heart. I am you;
let him devour me also. Write my name on your register,” she
continued, suddenly turning toward the clerk, as if convinced that the
reasons she had given could not be answered. “Come, friend,
good-fortune to you――two prisoners instead of one! Come, write; you
write so well! Margaret More, aged eighteen years, guilty of high
treason!”
The clerk made no reply.
“Is there anything lacking?” said Margaret.
“But, damsel,” he replied, placing his pen behind his ear with an air
of indecision, “I cannot do that; you have not been accused. If you
are an accomplice and have some revelations to make, you must so
declare before the court.”
“You are right; yes, I am an accomplice!” she cried. “Therefore come;
let nothing stop you.”
“My beloved child,” said Sir Thomas painfully, “you would have me,
then, condemn myself by acknowledging you as an accomplice in a crime
which I have not committed?”
“O my father!” cried the young girl, “tell me, have you, then, some
hope? No! no! you are deceiving me. You see it! You have heard it!
They would have come this night to tear you from our arms, from your
desolated home! No; all is over, and I too wish to die!”
As she said these words, Cromwell, who had rapidly and noiselessly
ascended the stairs, pushed open the door and entered. He came to see
if More had arrived. He saluted him without the least embarrassment,
and remarked the tears that wet the beautiful face of Margaret. She
immediately wiped them away, and looked at him scornfully.
“You come to see if the time has arrived!” she said; “if my father has
fallen into your hands. Yes, here he is; look at him closely, and dare
to accuse him!”
“Damsel,” replied Cromwell, bowing awkwardly, “ladies should not
meddle with justice, whose sword falls before them.”
As he said this, Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower, entered,
followed by an escort of armed guards.
The sound of their footsteps, the clanking of their arms, astonished
Margaret. Her bosom heaved. She felt that there was no longer any
resistance to be offered; she understood that it was this power which
threatened to crush and destroy all she loved――she, poor young girl,
facing these armed men, covered with iron, clashing with steel; these
living machines, who understood neither eloquence, reason, truth, sex,
age, nor beauty. She regarded them with a look of silent despair.
She saw Kingston advance toward her father, and say he arrested him in
the name of the king; and then take his hand to express the regret
with which he executed this act of obedience to the king. “The
coward!” she thought; “he sacrifices his friend.”
She saw her father approach her, to clasp her in his arms, to bid her
adieu, to tell her to return home, to watch over her sisters, to
respect her mother, take care of Henry Pattison, for his sake. She
heard all this; she was almost unconscious, for she saw and heard, and
yet remained transfixed and motionless. Then he left her. Kingston
conducted him, the guards surrounded him, he passed through the door
leading into the interior of the Tower; it closed, and Margaret was
alone.
She stood thus for a long time, as if paralyzed by what had just
passed before her. She put her hand upon her forehead; it was burning,
and she could recall nothing more. By degrees animation returned, and
she felt she was cold. She looked around her; she saw the clerk still
seated at his desk, writing. Absolute silence reigned; those great
walls were gloomy, deaf, and mute. Then she arose. She saw the day was
declining; she thought she would try to go. Roper was waiting, and
perhaps uneasy. She cast a lingering look at the door she had seen
close upon her father; she set these places in her memory, saying: “I
will return.” She then went out, and slowly descended to the bank of
the river, where she found Roper, who had charge of the boat, and who
was astonished at her long absence.
“Well, Margaret, and your father?” he said, seeing her alone. She
drooped her head. “Will he not return?”
“No,” she replied, and entered the boat; then she suddenly seized the
hands of Roper. “He is there――do you see?――within those black walls,
in that gloomy prison. The guards have taken him; they seized and
surrounded him; he disappeared, and I am left――left alone! He has sent
me away; he told me to go. Kingston! Cromwell! O Roper! I can stand no
more; let us go.” And Margaret sank, panting and exhausted, upon the
forepart of the boat. Roper listened and looked at her.
“What! he will not return?” he repeated; and his eyes questioned
Margaret.
But the noble and beautiful young girl heard him not; with her eyes
fixed on the walls of the Tower, she seemed absorbed in one thought
alone.
“Farewell, farewell, my father!” she said. “Your ears no more hear me,
but your heart responds to my own. Farewell, farewell!” And she made a
sign with her hand, as though she had him before her eyes.
“Is it true, Margaret, that he will not return?”
“No! I tell you he will not. We are now all alone in the world. You
may go. You may go quickly now, if you wish.”
“Well,” said Roper, “he will be detained to stand his trial; that will
end, perhaps, better than you think.” And he seated himself quietly at
the oars; because Roper, always disposed to hope for the best in the
future, concluded that Margaret, doubtless frightened at the imposing
appearance of justice, believed Sir Thomas to be in far greater danger
than he really was; and, following the thread of his own thoughts, he
added aloud: “Men are men, and Margaret is a woman.”
“What would you say by that?” she asked with energy. “Do you mean to
say that I am your inferior, and that my nature is lower than your
own? What do you mean by saying ‘a woman’? Yes, I am inferior, but
only in the animal strength which enables you to row at this moment
and make me mount the wave that carries me. I am your inferior in
cruelty, indifference, and selfishness. Ah! if I were a man like you,
and could only retain under your form all the vigor of my soul and the
fearlessness with which I feel myself transported, you would see if my
father remained alone, abandoned without resistance in the depths of
the prison where I saw him led; and if the oppressor should not, in
his turn, fear the voice of the oppressed; and if this nation, which
you call a nation of _men_, should be allowed to slaughter its own
children!”
“Margaret,” said Roper, alarmed, “calm yourself.”
“I must sleep, I suppose, in order to please you, when I see my father
delivered into the hands of his enemies! He is lost, I tell you, and
you will not believe it, and I can do nothing for him. Of what good is
courage to one who cannot use it? Of what use is strength, if one can
only wish for it? To fret one’s self in the night of impossibility; to
see, to hear, and have power to do nothing. This is the punishment I
must endure for ever! Nothing to lean upon! Everything will fall
around me. He is condemned, they will say; there will be only one
human creature less! That will be my father!”
And Margaret, standing up in the middle of the boat, her hair
dishevelled, her eyes fixed, seemed to see the wretchedness she was
describing. The wind blew violently, and scattered the curls of her
dark hair around her burning face.
“Margaret,” cried Roper, running to her and taking her in his
arms――“Margaret, are you dreaming? What would your father say if he
knew you had thus abandoned yourself to despair?”
“He would say,” replied Margaret, “that we must despise the world and
place our trust in Heaven; he would recall resignation into my
exasperated soul. But shall I see him henceforth? Who will aid me in
supporting the burdens of this life, against which, in my misery, I
revolt every instant? Oh! if I could only share his chains. Then, near
him, I would brave tyrants, tortures, hell, and the devils combined!
The strength of my will would shake the earth, when I cannot turn over
a single stone!”
At this moment the boat, which Roper, in his trouble, had ceased to
guide, struck violently against some piers the fishermen had sunk
along the river. It was almost capsized, and the water rushed in
through a hole made by the stakes.
“We are going to sink,” cried Roper, leaving Margaret and rushing
toward the oar he had abandoned.
“Well! do what you can to prevent it,” replied the young girl coldly,
as she seated herself in her former position in the stern of the boat.
But the water continued to rush in, and was already as high as their
feet. Roper seized his cloak, and made it serve, though not without
considerable difficulty, to close the vent through which the water
entered. A plank which he found in the bottom of the boat was used to
finish his work, and they were able to resume their course; the boat,
however, made but slow way, and it was constantly necessary to bail
out the water that leaked through the badly-repaired opening. Night
came on, and it was already quite late when they succeeded in reaching
the Chelsea terrace, at the foot of which they landed.
Roper, having attached the boat to the chain used for that purpose,
opened the gate, and they entered together. Margaret’s heart throbbed
violently; this lonely house, deprived of him who had made the
happiness of her life; the gate which they had closed without his
having entered it――everything, even to the sound of her own footsteps,
pierced her soul with anguish. She passed rapidly through the garden
and entered the house, where she found the rest of the family
assembled as usual. All appeared sad, Lady More alone excepted; this
woman, vulgar and coarse, was not in a condition to comprehend the
position in which she found herself; the baseness of her sentiments,
the littleness of her soul, rendered her a burden as annoying as she
was painful to support. Margaret, in particular, could feel no
affection for her. Frank and sincere herself, she abhorred the cunning
and artifice her stepmother believed herself bound to employ to make
up for her deficiency of intellect; and when, in the midst of a most
interesting and elevated conversation, the reasoning of which Margaret
caught with so much avidity, she heard her loudly decide a question
and pronounce a judgment in the vulgar phrases used among the most
obscure class of people, she was not always able to conceal her
impatience. Her father, more cheerful, more master of himself,
recalled by a glance or a smile his dear Margaret to a degree of
patience and respect he was always ready to observe.
On entering, therefore, Margaret’s indignation was excited by hearing
her stepmother abusing unmercifully poor Henry Pattison, who had wept
incessantly ever since the departure of his master.
“Till-Wall! Till-Wall!” she cried. “This fool here will never let us
have any more peace! Sir Thomas had better have taken him with him;
they could have acted the fool together!”
Margaret listened at first to her stepmother, but she could not permit
her to continue. “Weep!” she cried――“yes, weep, poor Pattison! for
your master is now imprisoned in the Tower, and God knows whether you
will ever see him again. Weep, all of you,” she continued, turning to
her sisters, “because you do not see your father in the midst of us.
Believe in my presentiments; they have never deceived me. Those souls,
coarse and devoid of sensibility, over whom life passes and dries like
rain upon a rock, will always reject such beliefs; but if, when one is
united by affection to a cherished being, the slightest movement of
his eyes enables you to read his soul, and you discover the most
secret emotion of his heart, we must believe also that nature, on the
approach of misfortunes which are to befall us, reveals to us the
secrets of the future. That is why I say to you, Weep, all of you; for
you will never see him again. I――no, I will not weep, because to me
this means death! I shall die!”
And crossing the room, she went and threw herself on her knees before
the arm-chair usually occupied by her father. “Yesterday at this hour
he was here; I have seen him here; I have heard him speak to me!” she
cried, and it seemed to her she still heard him; but in place of that
cherished voice which sounded always near her that of Lady More alone
fell on her ear.
“Cecilia,” she said, “go and see if supper is ready; it should have
been served an hour ago. I have waited for you,” she added, looking at
Margaret, “although you may not have expected it, judging from the
time you were absent.”
“I thank you,” replied Margaret. “It was not necessary; I could not
eat.”
“That is something one could not guess,” angrily replied Lady More,
rising from her arm-chair and proceeding to the dining-room.
They all followed her; but, on seeing her stepmother take Sir Thomas’
place, and begin in a loud voice to say grace (as was customary in
those days, when heads of families did not blush to acknowledge
themselves Christians), Margaret was unable to restrain her tears, and
immediately left the dining-room. Roper cast an anxious look after
her, but on account of her stepmother he said nothing.
“It appears,” said Lady More, whilst helping the dish which was placed
before her, “that we are at the end of our trouble. All my life I’ve
been watching Sir Thomas throwing himself into difficulties and
dangers: at one time he would sustain a poor little country squire
against some powerful family; at another he was taking part against
the government; and now, I fear, this last affair will be the worst of
all. But what have you heard, Roper? Why has Sir Thomas not returned?”
Roper then related to her how he had waited in the boat; how he had
seen the new queen pass, followed by the most brilliant assembly; and,
finally, what Margaret had told him concerning her father.
“You see!” she exclaimed at every pause he made in his narration. “I
was right! Say if I was not right?”
Meanwhile, her appetite remained, undisturbed; she continued to eat
very leisurely while questioning Roper.
He was anxious to finish satisfying the curiosity of his stepmother,
who detained him for a long time, giving the details of Lady Boleyn’s
dress, although, in spite of his complacent good-will, Roper was
unable to describe but imperfectly the inventions, the materials,
jewelry, and embroideries which composed her attire.
“How stupid and senseless these scruples of Sir Thomas are!” she cried
on hearing these beautiful things described. “I ask you now if it is
not natural for me to wish to be among those elegant ladies, and to be
adorned like them? But no; he has done everything to deprive himself
of the king’s favor, who has yielded to him to the utmost degree. But
I will go and find him; I will speak to him, and demonstrate to him
that his first duty is to take care of his family, and not drag us all
down with him.” As she said this, she shook her gray head, and assumed
a menacing air as she turned towards Roper. But he was gone. He was
afraid she would make him recommence his narrative; and, contrary to
his usual custom, he was greatly troubled at the condition in which he
saw Margaret.
He softly ascended to the chamber of the young girl, and paused to
listen a moment at the door. The light shone through the windows, and
yet he heard not the slightest sound. He then entered, and found
Margaret asleep, kneeling on the floor like a person at prayer. She
was motionless, but her sleep seemed troubled by painful dreams; and
her eyebrows and all the features of her beautiful face were
successively contracted. Her head rested on her shoulder, and she
appeared to be still gazing at a little portrait of her father, which
she had worn from her childhood, and which she had placed on the chair
before her.
Roper regarded her a moment with a feeling of intense sorrow. He then
knelt by her side and took her hand.
The movement aroused Margaret. “Where are we now, Roper?” she said,
opening her eyes. “Have you finished mending the boat?”
But scarcely had she pronounced the words when, looking around her,
she perceived her error. “Ah!” she continued, “I had forgotten we had
reached home.”
“My dear Margaret,” said Roper, “I have felt the most dreadful anxiety
since you left your stepmother.”
“Oh! my stepmother,” cried Margaret. “How happy she is! How I envy her
the selfishness which makes us feel that in possessing ourselves all
our wishes are accomplished! She is, at least, always sure of
following and carrying herself in every place; they cannot separate
her from the sole object of her love, and nothing can tear her from
it.”
“Is it, then, a happiness to love only one’s self? And can you, dear
Margaret, desire any such fate?”
“Yes!” replied Margaret. “The stupid creature by whom the future is
disregarded, the past forgotten, the present ignored, makes me
envious! Why exhaust ourselves in useless efforts? And why does not
man, like the chrysalis which sleeps forty days, not await more
patiently the moment when he shall be born in eternity――the moment
that will open to him the sources of a new existence, where he shall
love without fearing to lose the object of his devotion; where, happy
in the happiness of the Creator himself, he will praise and bless him
every moment with new transports of joy? William, do you know what
that power is which transforms our entire being into the one whom we
love, in order to make us endure his sufferings a thousand times over?
Do you understand well that love which has neither flesh nor bone;
which loves only the heart and mind; which mounts without fear into
the presence of God himself; which draws from him, from his grandeur,
his perfections, from his infinite majesty, all its strength and all
its endurance; which, fearing not death, extends beyond the grave, and
lives and increases through all eternity? That celestial love――have
you ever felt it? that soul within a soul, which considers virtue
alone, lives only for her, and which is every moment exalted by its
sacrifices and its devotion? that life within another life, which
feels that nothing can extinguish it, and considers the world and
creatures as nothing? Speak, Roper, do you entirely comprehend it? O
my friend! listen attentively to me; when the fruit of experience
shall have ripened for you, when your fellow-creatures shall no more
speak of you but as ‘the old man,’ when you shall have long looked
upon your children’s children, then you will assemble them round you,
and tell them that in other times a tyrant named Henry VIII.
devastated their country, and immolated, in his bloody rage, the
father of Margaret; you will tell them that you loved Margaret, and
that she perished in the flower of her youth; and you will teach them
to execrate the memory of that cruel king, to weep over the oppressed,
and to defend them.”
“Margaret!” cried Roper, “whither have your excited feelings carried
you? Who will be able to take you from me? And the children of whom
you speak――will they not also be yours?”
“No, they will not be mine! Upon the earth there remains for me
neither father nor husband, now that all are reduced to slaves. And
learn this, if you do not already know it: Slaves should have no
hearts! But I――I have one,” she cried, “and I well understand how to
keep it out of their hands!”
“Margaret,” replied Roper, “you are greatly to blame for expressing
yourself in this manner. What! because the king sends for your father
to come and take an oath which he believes he has a right to exact,
you already accuse him of wishing to encompass his death? Your father
is lost, you say. Have you forgotten, then, the numberless assurances
of protection and particular regard which the king has not ceased to
bestow on him in the most conspicuous manner? Has he not raised him to
the highest position in his kingdom? And if your father had not
voluntarily renounced it, the office would have been still in his
possession.”
“Without doubt,” replied Margaret, “if my father had been willing to
barter his conscience, they would have bought it. To-day they will
weigh it in the balance against his life. He is already doomed.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
SANCTA SOPHIA.[14]
The new and improved edition of Father Cressy’s compendium of the
principal treatises of the English Benedictine, Father Baker, entitled
_Sancta Sophia_, or Holy Wisdom, which has now appeared, has been long
looked for, and we give it a cordial welcome. In compliance with an
earnest request of the very reverend and learned prelate under whose
careful supervision this new edition has been prepared, we very gladly
make use of the opportunity which is thus presented of calling
attention to this admirable work, and to some topics of the greatest
interest and importance which are intimately connected with its
peculiar nature and scope as a book of spiritual instruction. It
belongs to a special class of books treating of the higher grades of
the spiritual life, and of the more perfect way in which the soul that
has passed through the inferior exercises of active meditation is led
upward toward the tranquil region of contemplation. It is a remarkable
fact, and an indication of the increasing number of those who feel the
aspiration after this higher life, that such a demand has made itself
felt, within a comparatively recent period, for spiritual treatises of
this sort. The most voluminous and popular modern writer who has
ministered to this appetite of souls thirsting for the fountains of
pure spiritual doctrine, is the late holy Oratorian, Father Faber. The
unparalleled circulation of his works is a matter of common notoriety.
The lives of saints and of holy persons who have been led in the
highways of mystic illumination and union with God, which have poured
forth in such copious abundance from the Catholic press, and have been
so eagerly read, are another symptom as well as a cause of this
increasing taste for the science and wisdom of the saints. The most
choice and elevated spiritual works which have appeared are, however,
with few exceptions, republications of books of an older and bygone
time. Among these we may mention that quaint treatise so often
referred to by Father Baker, called _The Cloud of the Unknowing_,
Walter Hilton’s _Scala Perfectionis_, the _Spiritual Dialogues_ of St.
Catherine of Genoa, St. Teresa’s writings, Dom Castaniza’s _Spiritual
Conflict and Conquest_, and above all others that truly magnificent
edition in an English version of the _Works of St. John of the Cross_,
for which we are indebted to Mr. Lewis and his Eminence the Cardinal
of Westminster. As a manual for common and general use, the _Sancta
Sophia_ of Father Baker has an excellence and value peculiarly its
own. Canon Dalton, a good authority on subjects of this kind, says
that “it is certainly the _best book_ we have in English on prayer.”
Bishop Ullathorne says of it: “Nothing is more clear, simple, solid,
and profound.” Similar testimonies might be multiplied; and if the
suffrages of the thousands of unknown but devout persons in religious
communities and in the secular state, who have made use of this book,
could be collected, the result would prove that the high esteem in
which it has ever been held by the English Benedictines is perfectly
well deserved, according to the sense of the most pious among the
faithful.
The first modern edition of _Sancta Sophia_ was published in New York
in 1857. Before this time it was wholly unknown in this country, so
far as we are informed, excepting in the convent of Carmelite Nuns at
Baltimore. At the ancient convent on Aisquith Street, where a small
community of the daughters of St. Teresa had long been strictly
practising the rule of their holy mother, an old copy of the first
edition of _Sancta Sophia_ was preserved as their greatest treasure.
It was there that Father Walworth became acquainted with the book,
and, charmed with its quaint style and rare, old-fashioned excellence,
resolved to have a new edition of it published for the benefit of the
Catholics of the United States. By permission of the Very Rev. Father
Bernard, of holy memory, who was then provincial of the Redemptorists,
it was published, under Father Hecker’s supervision, by James B.
Kirker (Dunigan & Bro.) of New York. It was reprinted correctly,
though in a plain and unattractive form, without any change excepting
in the spelling of words and the omission of certain forms of short
prayers and aspirations which were added to the treatises in the
original. There is no substantial difference, as to the text of the
work itself, between this edition and the new one edited by Dr.
Sweeney. He has, however, had it published in a much better and more
attractive form, has restored all the parts omitted, and, besides
carefully revising the text, has added prefatory matter, notes, and
appendices, which make his edition more complete. A portrait of the
venerable Father Baker is prefixed. If an index of the contents of the
chapters had been added, it would have made the edition as perfect as
we could desire. That it will now become once more widely known and
appreciated in England we cannot doubt, and we trust that it will also
obtain a much wider circulation in this country than it has hitherto
enjoyed. There is but one serious obstacle in the way of its becoming
a universal favorite with those who have a taste for solid spiritual
food. It is food of the most simple, dry, and hard quality, served
without sauce or condiments of any kind――pure nutriment, like brown
bread, wheaten, grits, farina, or Scotch porridge. It is most
wholesome and conducive to spiritual growth, but altogether destitute
of the eloquence which we find in Tauler, the deep philosophy and
sublime poetry of St. John of the Cross, the ecstatic rapture of St.
Teresa. Whoever studies it will have no stimulus but a pure and simple
desire for instruction, improvement, and edification. The keynote to
the entire mode and measure of the book is given in the chapter,
borrowed from Father Walter Hilton, on the spiritual pilgrimage: “One
way he knew, which, if he would diligently pursue according to the
directions and marks that he would give him――though, said he, I cannot
promise thee a security from many frights, beatings, and other
ill-usage and temptations of all kinds; but if thou canst have courage
and patience enough to suffer them without quarrelling or resisting,
or troubling thyself, and so pass on, having this only in thy mind,
and sometimes on thy tongue, _I have naught, I am naught, I desire
naught but to be at Jerusalem_, my life for thine, thou wilt escape
safe with thy life, and in a competent time arrive thither.” Father
Baker attempts nothing but to furnish a plain guide-book over this
route. For descriptions of the scenery, photographic views of
mountains, valleys, lakes, and prospects, one must go elsewhere. A
clear, methodical, safe guide-book over the route he will find in
_Sancta Sophia_. This is not to say that one should confine himself
exclusively to its perusal, or deny himself the pleasure of reading
other books in which there is more that pleases the imagination and
awakens the affections, or that satisfies the demands of the intellect
seeking for the deepest causes of things and the exposition of sublime
truths. The most important and practical matter, however, is to find
and keep the right road. And certainly many, if not all, of those who
are seeking the straightest and safest way to perfection and
everlasting beatitude, will value the _Sancta Sophia_ all the more for
its very plainness, and the absence of everything except that simple
and solid doctrine which they desire and feel the need of amid the
trials and perplexities of the journey of life.
The doctrine of Father Baker has not, however, lacked opponents from
his own day to the present. Since the publication of _Sancta Sophia_
in this country we have repeatedly heard of its use being
discountenanced in religious communities and in the case of devout
persons in the world. Dr. Sweeney calls attention directly to this
fact of opposition to Father Baker’s doctrine, and devotes a
considerable part of his own annotations to a refutation of the
objections alleged against it. He has pointed out one seemingly
plausible ground of these censures which we were not before aware of,
and which was unknown to the American editors of _Sancta Sophia_ when
they republished it in this country. We cannot pass this matter by
without some examination; for although on such subjects controversy is
disagreeable, and to the unlearned and simple-minded may be vexatious
and perplexing, it cannot be avoided where a question of orthodox
soundness in doctrine is concerned. The gist of the whole matter is
found in chapter the seventh, “On the Prayer of Interior Silence,” to
which Dr. Sweeney has appended a long note of explanation. The matter
of this chapter is professedly derived from an old Spanish work by
Antonio de Rojas, entitled _The Life of the Spirit Approved_, which
was placed on the Index about fifty years after the death of Father
Baker, and two years after the condemnation of Quietism. We have never
seen this book, but we are informed by Dr. Sweeney that its language,
taken in the most natural and obvious sense, leads to the conclusion
that the state of charity which is requisite to perfection excludes
all private interest, not only all fear of punishment, but all hope of
reward――that is, all desire or consideration of the beatitude of
heaven. In order to attain this state of indifference and annihilation
of self-love, all express acts are discountenanced, and that kind of
silence and passivity in prayer recommended which suppresses the
active movements of the soul toward God, such as hope, love toward God
as the chief good, petition and supplication, thanksgiving, etc. Now,
such a doctrine as this is manifestly tinged with some of the errors
of Quietism, and seems to be precisely similar to the semi-Quietism of
Madame Guyon and Fénelon which was condemned by Innocent XII. in 1699.
The second of the propositions from Fénelon’s _Maxims of the Saints_
condemned by this pope is as follows: “In the state of contemplative
or unitive life every interested motive of fear and hope is lost.” The
doctrinal error here is the notion that the soul’s love of itself,
desire and hope for its own beatification in God, and love to God as
its own sovereign good, is incompatible with a pure, disinterested,
perfect love of God, as the sovereign good in himself. The practical
error is the inculcation of direct efforts to suppress every movement
of interested love to God in prayer, in order to make way for passive,
disinterested love. Father Baker lived so long before the errors of
false mysticism had been thoroughly investigated, refuted, and
condemned that it was very easy for him to fail of detecting what was
unguarded, inaccurately expressed, exaggerated, or of erroneous
tendency in a book which was approved by a number of prelates and
theologians. He has certainly not borrowed or adopted what was
erroneous in the book, but that portion of its teaching which was
sound and safe, upon which the error was a mere excrescence. The mere
fact of citing a book which has been placed on the Index is a matter
of small and only incidental moment. Dr. Sweeney seems to us to have
followed too timorous a conscience in his way of treating the chapter
of _Sancta Sophia_ in which the work of De Rojas is quoted. We cannot
agree with him that Father Baker would have suppressed that chapter if
the book had been censured during his lifetime. He would have
suppressed his commendation of the book, and looked carefully to see
what the error was on account of which it had been condemned, as any
good Catholic is bound to do in such a case. But we feel confident
that he would not have felt himself obliged to make any essential
alteration in what he had written on the prayer of silence, though he
would probably have explicitly guarded it against any possible
misapprehension or perversion. Any one who reads the _Sancta Sophia_,
especially with Dr. Sweeney’s annotations, will see at once how absurd
is the charge of a tincture of semi-Quietism against so sober and
practical a writer as Father Baker, and how remote from anything
favoring the illusions of false spirituality are his instructions on
prayer. It would be almost as absurd to impute Quietism to Father
Baker as rigorism to St. Alphonsus. We are afraid that Dr. Sweeney’s
signal-board of “caution” will scare away simple-minded and devout
readers from one of the most useful chapters of _Sancta Sophia_, one
which is really the pivot of the whole book. Father Baker’s special
scope and object was not to give instruction in meditation and active
exercises, but to lead the soul through and beyond these to
contemplation. The instructions on the prayer of interior silence are
precisely those which are fitted to enlighten and direct a person in
the transition state from the spiritual exercises of discursive
meditation to that state of ordinary and acquired contemplation which
Scaramelli and all standard writers recognize as both desirable and
attainable for those who have devoted a considerable time to the
practice of mental prayer. Father Baker’s directions on this head
should be judged by what they are intrinsically in themselves, without
any regard to anything else. Are they singular, imprudent, or in any
respect contrary to the doctrine of the saints and other authors of
recognized soundness in doctrine? We cannot see that they are.
Whatever perversion of the method of prayer in question may have been
contained in the book of De Rojas, sprang from his erroneous doctrine
that explicit acts of the understanding and will in prayer should be
suppressed in order to eradicate the implicit acts, the habits, and
tendencies of the soul, by which its intention and desire are directed
toward its own supreme good and felicity in God. But this is no reason
against the method itself, apart from a perversion no trace of which
is to be found in Father Baker’s own language. The well-known and
justly-revered Father Ramière, S.J., in his introduction to a little
work by another Jesuit, Father De Caussade, entitled _L’Abandon à la
Providence Divine_, remarks in reference to the doctrine of that book,
which is quite similar in its spirit to the _Sancta Sophia_, as
follows: “There is no truth so luminous that it does not change into
error from the moment when it suffers diminution or exaggeration; and
there is no nourishment, however salutary to the soul, which, if
imprudently used, may not produce in it the effect of a noxious
poison.” It would seem that some are so afraid of the perversion of
the luminous truths of mystical theology, and of the abuse of the
salutary nourishment it affords to the soul, that they would desire to
avoid the danger by shutting out the light and locking up the food in
a closet. They would restrict all persons whatever, in every stage and
condition of the spiritual life, to certain methods of prayer and the
use of certain books, excellent for the majority of persons while they
are beginners or proficients, but unsuitable, or even injurious, to
some who are of a peculiar disposition, or who have advanced so far
that they need something of a different order. It is a great mistake
to suppose that such a course is safe or prudent. There are some who
cannot, even in the beginning, make use of discursive meditation. It
is a generally-recognized rule that those who can, and actually do,
practise this kind of mental prayer, ought, as soon as it ceases to be
pleasant and profitable to them, to change it for a simpler method.
Even those set methods which are not discursive, if they consist in
oft-repeated acts of the understanding, the affections, and the will,
become frequently, after the lapse of time, too laborious, wearisome,
and insipid to be continued with any fervor. The soul needs and
instinctively longs for the cessation of this perpetual activity in a
holy repose, in tranquil contemplation, in rest upon the bosom of God.
It is for such souls that the chapter on the prayer of interior
silence was written.
We may now examine a little more closely the passages which Dr.
Sweeney seems to have had in view, as requiring to be read with
caution because similar to statements made by De Rojas and other
writers whose doctrine is tinctured with Quietism. Dr. Sweeney
remarks: “When afterwards (in the book of De Rojas) express acts
toward God are discountenanced, and it is declared that an advantage
of this kind of prayer is _self-annihilation_, and that resignation
then becomes so pure that all private interest is forgotten and
ignored, we see the prudence and watchfulness of the Holy See in
cautioning her children against a book which, if it does not
expressly, distinctly, and advisedly teach it, yet conveys the
impression that a state of charity excludes all private interest, such
as fear of punishment and hope of reward, and that perfection implies
such a state.”[15]
Father Baker says that in the prayer of silence, “with the will she
[the soul] frames no particular request nor any express acts toward
God”; that “by this exercise we come to the most perfect operation of
self-annihilation,” and practise in the most sublime manner
“resignation, since the soul forgets all private interests”; and more
to the same effect. Nevertheless, the dangerous and erroneous sense
which this language might convey, if intended or interpreted to mean
that the soul must suppress all hope or desire for its own private
good as incompatible with the perfect love of God, is plainly excluded
by the immediate context in which it occurs. The soul, says Father
Baker, should “continue in his presence _in the quality of a
petitioner_, but such an one as makes no special, direct requests, but
contents herself to appear before him _with all her wants and
necessities_, best, and indeed only, known to him, who therefore needs
not her information.” Again, he compares the soul to the subject of a
sovereign who abstains from asking any particular favors from his
prince, because he knows that “he is both most wise to judge what
favors may become the one to give and the other to receive, and in
that that he has a love and magnificence to _advance him beyond his
deserts_.”
Once more he says that in this prayer the soul exercises in a sublime
manner “_hope_, because the soul, placing herself before God _in the
posture of a beggar_, confidently expects that he will impart to her
both the knowledge of his will and ability to fulfil it.”
It is equally plain that Father Baker’s method of the prayer of
interior silence is not liable to the censure which Dr. Sweeney
attaches to the one of De Rojas when he remarks that “we can at once
see what danger accompanies such an exercise, if that can be called an
exercise where all activity ceases and prayer is really excluded.”
“_Since an intellectual soul is all activity_,” says Father Baker, “so
that it cannot continue a moment without some desires, the soul then
rejecting all desires toward created objects, she cannot choose but
tend inwardly in her affections to God, for which end only she put
herself in such a posture of prayer; her tendence then being much like
that of the mounting of an eagle after a precedent vigorous springing
motion and extension of her wings, which ceasing, _in virtue thereof
the flight is continued for a good space with a great swiftness_, but
withal with great stillness, quietness, and ease, without any waving
of the wings at all or the least force used in any member, being in as
much ease and stillness as if she were reposing on her nest.” For the
further defence of Father Baker’s doctrine from the other parts of
_Sancta Sophia_, and in general from his known method of personal
conduct and his direction of others, what his learned Benedictine
editor has furnished amply suffices.
We are not content, however, with simply showing that Father Baker’s
method of conducting souls to perfection by means of contemplative
prayer is free from the errors of Quietism and the illusions of false
mysticism. The _Sancta Sophia_ is not merely a good book, one among
the many English books of devotion and spiritual reading which can be
safely and profitably read. We think Canon Dalton’s opinion that it is
the best book on prayer we have in the English language is correct. It
is a guide for those who will scarcely find another book to fill its
place; and we venture to affirm that the very part of it which we have
been specially criticising is not only defensible, but positively in
accordance, even to its phraseology, with the doctrine of the most
approved authors, and of special, practical value and importance.
In an appendix which Father Ramière has added to the little book by
Father Caussade already once cited in this article, there is a chapter
taken from Bossuet, entitled “A Short and Easy Method of making the
Prayer of Faith and of the simple presence of God,” from which we
quote the following passages: “Meditation is very good in its own
time, and very useful at the beginning of the spiritual life; but it
is not proper to make it a final stopping-place, for the soul which is
faithful in mortification and recollection ordinarily receives a gift
of prayer which is purer and more simple, and may be called the prayer
of _simplicity_, consisting in a simple view, or fixed, attentive, and
loving look directed toward some divine object, whether it be God in
himself, or some one of his perfections, or Jesus Christ, or one of
the mysteries relating to him, or some other Christian truths. In this
attitude the soul leaves off reasoning, and makes use of a quiet
contemplation, which keeps it peaceful, attentive, and susceptible to
the divine operations and impressions which the Holy Spirit imparts to
it; it does little and receives a great deal; its labor is easy, and
nevertheless more fruitful than it would otherwise be; and as it
approaches very near to the source of all light――grace and virtue――it
receives on that account the more of all these. The practice of this
prayer ought to begin on first awaking, by an act of faith in the
presence of God, who is everywhere, and in Jesus Christ, whose eyes
are always upon us, if we were even buried in the centre of the earth.
This act is elicited either in the ordinary and sensible manner, as by
saying inwardly, ‘I believe that my God is present’; or it is a simple
calling to memory of the faith of God’s presence in a more purely
spiritual manner. After this, one ought not to produce multifarious
and diverse acts and dispositions, but to remain simply attentive to
this presence of God, and as it were exposed to view before him,
continuing this devout attention and attitude as long as the Lord
grants us the grace for doing so, without striving to make other acts
than those to which we are inspired, since this kind of prayer is one
in which we converse with God alone, and is a union which contains in
an eminent mode all other particular dispositions, and disposes the
soul to passivity; by which is meant, that God becomes sole master of
its interior, and operates in it in a special manner. The less working
done by the creature in this state, the more powerful is the operation
of God in it; and since God’s action is at the same time a repose, the
soul becomes in a certain way like to him in this kind of prayer,
receiving in it wonderful effects; so that as the rays of the sun
cause the growth, blossoming, and fruit-bearing of plants, the soul,
in like manner, which is attentive and tranquilly basking under the
rays of the divine Sun of righteousness, is in the best condition for
receiving divine influences which enrich it with all sorts of
virtues.”[16]
St. John of the Cross declares that “the soul having attained to the
interior union of love, _the spiritual faculties of it are no longer
active_, and still less those of the body; for now that the union of
love is actually brought about, the faculties of the soul _cease from
their exertions_, because, now that the goal is reached, all
employment of means is at an end.”[17]
Again: “He who truly loves makes shipwreck of himself in all else,
that he may gain the more in the object of his love. Thus the soul
says that it has lost itself――that is, deliberately, of set purpose.
This loss occurs in two ways. The soul loses itself, making no account
whatever of itself, but referring all to the Beloved, resigning itself
freely into his hands without any selfish views, losing itself
deliberately, and seeking nothing for itself. Secondly, it loses
itself in all things, making no account of anything save that which
concerns the Beloved. This is to lose one’s self――that is, to be
willing that others should have all things. Such is he that loves God;
he seeks neither gain nor reward, but only to lose all, even himself
according to God’s will. This is what such an one counts gain.… When a
soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all
the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks him no longer
by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways or
representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the
joyful communion with him by faith and love, then it may be said to
have gained God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all
that is not God, and also as to its own self.”[18]
In another place the saint explains quite at length the necessity of
passing from meditation to contemplation, the reasons for doing so,
and the signs which denote that the time for this change has arrived.
The state of beginners, he says, is “one of meditation and of acts of
reflection.” After a certain stage of progress has been reached, “God
begins at once to introduce the soul into the state of contemplation,
and that very quickly, especially in the case of religious, because
these, having renounced the world, quickly fashion their senses and
desires according to God; they have, therefore, to pass at once from
meditation to contemplation. This passage, then, takes place when the
discursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness and the
first fervors cease, when the soul cannot make reflections as before,
nor find any sensible comfort, but is fallen into aridity, because the
spiritual life is changed.… It is evident, therefore, that if the soul
does not now abandon its previous ways of meditation, it will receive
this gift of God in a scanty and imperfect manner.… If the soul will
at this time make efforts of its own, and encourage another
disposition than that of _passive, loving attention_, most submissive
and calm, and if it does not _abstain from its previous discursive
acts_, it will place a complete barrier against those graces which God
is about to communicate to it in this loving knowledge.… The soul must
be attached to nothing, not even to the subject of its meditation, not
to sensible or spiritual sweetness, because God requires a spirit so
free, so _annihilated_, that every act of the soul, even of thought,
of liking or disliking, will impede and disturb it, and break that
_profound silence of sense and spirit_ necessary for hearing the deep
and delicate voice of God, who speaks to the heart in solitude; it is
in profound peace and tranquillity that the soul is to listen to God,
who will speak peace unto his people. When this takes place, when the
soul feels that it is silent and listens, its loving attention must be
most pure, _without a thought of self, in a manner self-forgotten_, so
that it shall be wholly intent upon hearing; for thus it is that the
soul is free and ready for that which our Lord requires at its
hands.”[19]
We have sufficiently proved, we trust, that there is no reason to be
disquieted by a certain verbal and merely apparent likeness between
some parts of Father Baker’s spiritual doctrine and the errors of a
false mysticism. We may, perhaps, return to this subject on a future
occasion, and point out more distinctly and at length the true
philosophical and theological basis of Catholic mystical doctrine, in
contrast with the travesties and perversions of its counterfeits in
the extravagant, absurd, and revolting systems of infidel and
heretical visionaries. At present a few words may suffice to sum up
and succinctly define the difference between the true and the false
doctrine in respect to the case in hand. That doctrine which is false,
dangerous, and condemned by the unerring judgment of the holy church
teaches that the love and pursuit of our own good and happiness, even
in God, is sinful, or at least low and imperfect. It inculcates, as a
means for suppressing and eradicating our natural tendency towards the
attainment of the good as an end, and annihilating our self-activity,
the cessation of all operation of the natural faculties of
understanding and volition, at least in reference to God as our own
supreme and desirable good. It inculcates a fixed, otiose quietude and
indifference toward our own happiness or misery. Its effect is
therefore to quench the life of the soul, to extinguish its light, and
to reduce it to a state of torpor and apathy resembling that of a
stoical Diogenes or an Indian fakir. Its pretence of disinterestedness
and pure love to God for himself alone is wholly illusory and founded
on a false view of God as the intrinsically sovereign good and the
object of supreme love to the intelligent creature. The goodness of
God as the first object of the love of complacency cannot be separated
from the same goodness as the object of desire. The extrinsic glory of
God as the chief end of creatures is identified with the exaltation
and happiness of those intellectual and rational beings whom he has
created and elevated to a supernatural end. Hope, desire, and effort
for the attainment of the good intended for and promised to man is a
duty and obligation imposed by the law of God. It is impossible to
love God and be conformed to his will without loving our neighbors,
and our own soul as our nearest neighbor. Moreover, we are not saved
merely by the action of God upon us passively received, but also by a
concurrence of our understanding and will, a co-operation of our own
active efforts with the working of God in us, or, as it is commonly
expressed, by a diligent and faithful correspondence to grace. Not to
desire our own true happiness is therefore a suicidal, idiotic folly.
Not to work for it is presumption, ingratitude, and the deadly sin of
sloth. Moreover, to attempt to fly with unfledged wings; to soar aloft
in the sky among the saints when we ought to be walking on the earth,
to undertake while yet weak beginners the heroic works of the perfect;
to anticipate by self-will the time and call which God appoints, and
pervert the orderly course of his providence; to strive by our own
natural powers to accomplish what requires the special gifts and
graces of the Holy Spirit, is imprudent, contrary to humility, and
full of peril. The dupe of false spirituality may, therefore, either
take an entirely wrong road or attempt to travel the right road in a
wrong manner; in either case sure to fail of reaching his intended
goal, if he persists in his error.
The sound and orthodox doctrine of Catholic mystical theology presents
God as he is in his own intrinsic essence, as the object of his own
beatific contemplation, and of the contemplation of the blessed who
have received the faculty of intuitive vision by the light of glory.
The nearest approach to this beatific state, as well as the most
perfect and immediate preparation for it, is the state of quiet,
tranquil contemplation of God by the obscure light of faith. The
excellence and blessedness of this state consists in the pure love of
God. It is of the nature of love and the intention of the mind toward
the sovereign good, by which the will is directed in its motion toward
the good which it loves and in the fruition of which it finds its
repose, that the consideration of the object precede the consideration
and desire of the fruition of the object. Liberatore, who is a good
expositor of the doctrine of St. Thomas and all sound Catholic
philosophers on this head, proposes and proves this statement in the
clearest terms. The object is first apprehended and loved for its
intrinsic goodness. Reflection on the enjoyment which is received and
delight in this enjoyment, though a necessary consequence of the
possession of the chief good, is the second but not the first act. St.
John of the Cross teaches the same truth: “As the end of all is love,
which inheres in the will, the characteristic of which is to give and
not to receive, to the soul inebriated with love the first object that
presents itself is not the essential glory which God will bestow upon
it, but the entire surrender of itself to him in true love, without
any regard to its own advantage. The second object is included in the
first.”[20] Father Mazzella, S.J., of Woodstock College, in his
admirable work on the infused virtues, makes a lengthened exposition
of the distinction between that love of benevolence and complacency
toward God which is the principle of perfect contrition, and by itself
takes away sin and unites the soul with God, and the love of desire
which terminates on the good received from God. The first considers
God as the sovereign good in himself; the second considers him
directly and explicitly as the source and giver of good to us. It
manifests itself as an efficacious desire for the rewards of
everlasting life, accompanied by a fear of the punishment of sin in
the future state, and is the principle of imperfect contrition or
attrition, which of itself does not suffice for justification, though
it is a sufficient condition for receiving grace through the appointed
sacraments. The Catholic teachers of mystical theology direct the soul
principally and as their chief purpose toward the higher and more
perfect love. The second object is included in this first object, and
taken for granted. It is not excluded, but comparatively neglected,
because it follows of itself from the first, and is sought for by the
natural, necessary law of our being, without any need of direct,
explicit efforts. The resignation, forgetfulness of private interests,
self-annihilation, so strongly recommended, do not denote any
suppression or destruction of our natural beatific impulses, but only
of our own personal notions, wishes, and interests in respect to such
things as are merely means to the attainment of an end, a conformity
of our will to the will of God, and an abandonment of solicitude
respecting our own future happiness, founded on filial confidence in
the wisdom and goodness of God.
It follows from this doctrine of sound, mystical writers that the
quietude of the state of contemplation and union with God is totally
opposite to a condition of apathy and sloth. It is a state of more
tranquil activity, of more steady and therefore more imperceptible yet
more rapid movement. Previously the soul was like a boat propelled by
oars against wind and tide. Now it is like a yacht sailing with a
press of canvas under a strong and fair breeze.
So far as the imprudent misuse of mystical theology is concerned, we
need not waste words on a truism of spiritual direction, that
beginners and unlearned, inexperienced persons must follow the counsel
of a guide, if they can have it. If not, they must direct themselves
as well as they can by good books, which will instruct them gradually
and soberly in the first principles of solid virtue and piety, and
afterwards lead them on to perfection. They cannot have a better guide
than _Sancta Sophia_. It is a book that will last for years, and even
for a lifetime; for it is a guide along the whole way, from the gate
at the entrance to the river of death, for such as are really and
earnestly seeking to attain perfection by prayer, and desire to lead
an interior life amid the external occupations, duties, and trials of
their state in life, or even in the most strict cloistral seclusion.
The exterior persecutions to which the church is subject, the
disorders of the times, and the multifarious troubles of every kind,
both outward and inward, to which great numbers of the best-disposed
and most virtuous people are subjected, have an effect to throw
thoughtful persons on the interior life as a refuge and solace. Pius
IX., whose long experience and great sanctity, as well as his divine
office, make him as a prophet of God to all devout Catholics, has told
us that the church is now going through the exercises of the purgative
way as a preparation for receiving great gifts from the Holy Spirit,
which will accompany a new and glorious triumph of the kingdom of
Jesus Christ on the earth. Whatever external splendor the reign of
Christ over this world may exhibit, it is in the hearts of men that
his spiritual royalty has its seat. There is nothing on earth for
which, so to speak, he really cares, except the growth of the souls of
men. The world and the church were made for this purpose. The wisdom
of the ancients was an adumbration of the truth, and that doctrine
which teaches the full and complete form of it alone deserves to be
called in the highest sense wisdom, and to win the love and admiration
of all men for its celestial beauty.
[14] _Sancta Sophia; or, Directions for the Prayer of
Contemplation, etc._ Extracted out of more than forty
treatises written by the late Father Augustin Baker, a monk
of the English Congregation of the Holy Order of St.
Benedict; and methodically digested by R. F. Serenus Cressy.
Doway, A.D. 1657. Now edited by the Very Rev. Dom Norbert
Sweeney, D.D., of the same order and congregation. London:
Burns & Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society.
[15] P. 492, note.
[16] _L’Abandon à la Providence Divine_, pp. 164-167.
[17] Complete Works, Lewis’ Trans., vol. ii. p. 75.
[18] _Ib._ pp. 158, 159.
[19] Complete Works, etc., vol. ii. pp. 267-270.
[20] Complete Works, vol. ii pp. 198, 199.
EVENING ON THE SEA-SHORE.
FROM THE FRENCH OF VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND.
The woods, the sand-beach desolate and bare,
Blend dusky with the shadows dim and far,
And, glittering from the depths, the evening star
Gleams solitary through the silent air.
Westward, and sparkling under purest skies,
Foams on the long, low reef the line of white;
And towards the north, o’er seas of crystal light,
The gathering mist of deepening purple flies.
The mountains redden still with sunset fire,
Soft dies the plaintive breeze in murmurs low,
And, each to each linked in their gentle flow,
The waves roll calmly shoreward and expire.
All grandeur, mystery, love! In this, the time
Of dying day, all nature with her state
Of mountain ranges and her forests great,
The eternal order and the plan sublime,
Stands like a temple on whose walls of light
The beauties of creation’s day are shown――
A sanctuary, where is the Godhead’s throne
Veiled by the curtains of the holy night
Whose cupola high to the zenith towers,
A glorious harmony, a work divine,
And painted with the heavenly hues that shine
In dawns, in rainbows, and in summer flowers.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
NOVEMBER 2.
“Voici les feuilles sans sève
Qui tombent sur le gazon.”[21]
What a solemn day to the Christian is All Souls’ day! I prayed much,
very much, for all our dear friends in the other world. Oh! how I pity
the suffering souls consumed by the flames of purgatory. They have
seen God; they have had a glimpse of his glory on the day of their
judgment; they long for the Supreme Good with unutterable ardor. What
torment! And some there are who will be in those lakes of fire even to
the end of the world. We can do nothing but offer our prayers, and
they bring deliverance! Who would not devote themselves to the
suffering souls? What misfortune more worthy of pity than theirs? I
love the “Helpers of the Holy Souls!”[22] It is to me a great
happiness to be united with them in thought, prayer, and action. A
thousand memories have come into my mind; there have passed before me
all my beloved dead, all the dead whom I have known or whom I have
once seen. How numerous they are, and yet I have not been living so
very long. Each day thins our ranks, links drop off from the chain.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord!
Here is winter upon us――melancholy winter, which makes poor mothers
weep.
Meditated yesterday on the joys of the love of Jesus, which in Holy
Communion melts our heart like two pieces of wax into one only――Jesus,
the only true friend, who consoles and sustains, and without whom all
is vanity. The Christian who has prayer and Communion ought to live in
perpetual gladness of heart.
I must confess to you, my Kate, that I envy Johanna, Berthe, and Lucy.
They allow me to share largely in their maternal joys, but these
treasures in which I take such pleasure, why are they not my own? I
felt sad about it yesterday, and murmured to myself these lines of
Brizeux:
“Jours passés, que chacun rappelle avec des larmes,
Jours qu’en vain on regrette, aviez vous tant des charmes?
Ou les vents troublaient-ils aussi votre clarté,
Et l’ennui du présent fait-il votre beauté”[23]
René was behind me. “What, then, do you regret, my Georgina?” I told
him all, and how gently and sweetly he comforted me――as you would, my
Kate! Poor feeble reed that I am, I lean upon you.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary protect us, dear sister!
NOVEMBER 13.
Eleven days between my two letters, my note-book tells me. Happily,
René has taken my place, and you are aware in what occupations I have
been absorbed, dear Kate. The poor are becoming quite a passion with
me. I catechise them, I clothe them; it is so delightful to lavish
one’s superabundance on the disinherited ones of this world! To-morrow
we go to Nantes to take leave of our saintly friend Elizabeth, who
will shortly depart for Louisiana. She has received permission to come
and bid adieu to her mother――perhaps a lifelong adieu; for who can say
whether she will return? I have had a letter from Ellen, giving me
many details of her sojourn in the Highlands. The wound is still
bleeding. The sight of a child makes her weep; and in her dreams she
sees her son. May God support her!
To-day is St. Stanislaus――the gentle young saint whose feast Margaret
pointed out to me with a hope which is not realized. Our dear
_Anglaise_ wanted to have us _all together_ in her princely dwelling.
The absence of the _Adrien family_, Lucy’s journey――all these
dispersions have disarranged the grand project. And yet there are
moments when I experience a kind of home-sickness――a thirst to see our
dear Erin again, a longing to live under my native sky――which tells
upon my health. Do not pity me too much, Kate; I possess all the
elements of happiness which could be brought together in a single
existence. I love the seraphic Stanislaus, holding in his arms the
infant Jesus. O great saint! give me a little of your love of God, a
little of your fervent piety, that I may detach myself from the world!
I am afraid of loving it too much, my sister. The day before yesterday
was the feast of St. Martin――this hero whose history is so poetic. I
like to think of this mantle, cut in two to clothe a poor man, and of
our Lord appearing that night to the warrior, who in the Saviour’s
vestment recognized the half of his mantle. Kind St. Martin! giving us
a second summer, which I find delightful, loving as I do the warm and
perfumed breezes of the months that have long days, and regretting the
return of winter with its ice, when, shivering in well-closed rooms,
one thinks of the poor without fire and shelter. Dear _poor of the
good God_![24] Margaret shares my fondness for them. Never in our
Brittany will the sojourn of this sweet friend be forgotten.
What noise! _Adieu_, my sister; _Erin go bragh!_
NOVEMBER 17.
You have heard the joyful tidings, Kate dearest――the triumph of
Mentana? Gertrude writes to us. _Adrien_ and his two sons fought like
lions, and his courageous wife followed the army, waiting on the
wounded, praying for her dear ones, who had not a scratch! They were
afterwards received in private audience by the Holy Father, who seemed
to them more saintly and sublime than ever. God does indeed do all
things well! All these loving hearts, torn by the departure of Hélène,
have recovered their happiness, are enthusiastic in their heroism and
devotion, have been violently snatched from all selfish regrets, and
have enriched themselves with lifelong memories. Mgr. Dupanloup has
written to the clergy of his diocese, ordering thanksgivings to be
offered in the churches; and the holy and illustrious Pius IX. has
written to the eloquent bishop, to whom he sends his thanks and
benediction.
Truly, joy has succeeded to sorrow. But how guilty is Europe! Can you
conceive such inertia in the face of this struggle between strength
and weakness? Our good _abbé_ is in possession of all the _mandements_
(or charges) of the bishops of France. He is making a collection of
them. Yesterday he quoted to me the following passage from that of
Mgr. de Perpignan: “Princes of the earth, envy not the crown of Rome!
One of the greatest of this world’s potentates was fain to try it on
the brow of his son, and placed it on his cradle; but it weighed too
heavily on that frail existence, and the child, to whom the father’s
genius promised a brilliant future, withered away, and died at the age
of twenty years”; and this other by Mgr. de Périgueux: “When God sends
great trials upon his church, he raises up men capable of sustaining
them. We are in one of these times of trial, and we have Pius IX.”
Dear Isa sends me four pages, all impregnated with sanctity. Her life
is one long holocaust; all her aspirations tend to one end, and one
that I fear she will not attain. God will permit this for his glory.
How much good may one soul do! I see it by Isa. Her life is one of the
fullest and most sanctified that can be; she sacrifices herself hour
by hour, giving herself little by little, as it were, and yet all at a
time. Ellen is starting for Hyères; she is mortally stricken. They
deceived themselves with regard to her. She herself, overwhelmed for a
time by the side of that cradle changed into a death-bed, did her best
to look forward cheerfully to the future. Her last letter, received
only fifteen days afterwards, and which was long and affectionate,
appeared to me mysterious; she spoke so much of _outward_ things.
Dear, dear Ellen! I wish I could see her. Impossible, alas! Isa’s
letter is dated the 10th. The sad, dying one must have crossed the
Channel that same day. There is something peculiarly sorrowful in the
thought of death with regard to this young wife, going away to die far
from her home, her country, and her family, beneath mild and genial
skies, where life appears so delightful. Her state is such as to allow
of no hope, but her husband wishes to try this last remedy. The little
angel in heaven awaits his mother.
A terrible gale――quite a tempest. I am thinking of the poor mariners.
These howlings of the wind, these gusts which rush through the long
corridors, resemble wild complaints; one would think that all the
elements, let loose, weep and implore. O holy Patroness of sailors!
take pity on them.
Visits all the week――pious visits, such as I love. My heart attaches
itself to this country.
Let us praise the Lord, dear Kate! May he preserve to Ireland her
faith and her love! There is no slavery for Christian hearts.
NOVEMBER 19.
A line from Karl――one heart-rending plaint, thrown into the post at
Paris after Ellen had received your last kiss. “Pray,” he says to me,
“not for this soul, of whom I was not worthy, and who is going to
rejoin her son, but for my weakness, which alarms me.” René wept with
me. Oh! how sad is earth to him who remains alone. The same thought of
anguish and apprehension seized us both. Ah! dearest, let your prayers
preserve to me him in whom I live.
_Saint Elizabeth_, “the dear saint,” this fair and lovely flower of
Hungary transplanted into Thuringia, there to shed such sweetness of
perfume! I have been thinking of her, of her poetic history, of all
that M. de Montalembert has written about her――the veritable life of a
saint, traced out with poetry and love. You remember that St.
Elizabeth was one of the chosen heroines of my childhood. I could wish
that I had borne her name. I used to dream of becoming a saint like
her. What an unparalleled life hers was! Dying so young, she appeared
before God rich in merits. Born in the purple, the beloved daughter of
the good King Andrew, and afterwards Duchess of Thuringia; united to
the young Duke Louis, also so good and holy, so well suited to the
pure and radiant star of Hungary seen by the aged poet; then a widow
at nineteen years of age, and driven from her palace with her little
children, drinking to its dregs the cup of bitterness and anguish――my
dear saint knew suffering in its most terrible and poignant form. How
I love her, from the moment when the good King Andrew, taking in his
arms the cradle of solid gold in which his Elizabeth was sleeping,
placed it in those of the Sire de Varila, saying, “I entrust to your
knightly honor my dearest consolation,” until the time when I find
her, clad in the poor habit of the Seraph of Assisi, reading a letter
of St. Clare! What an epoch was that thirteenth century, that age of
faith, when the throne had its saints, when there was in the souls of
men a spring of energy and of religious enthusiasm which peopled the
monasteries and renewed the face of the earth! Who will obtain for me
the grace to love God as did Elizabeth? O dear saint! pray for me, for
René, Karl, Ellen, the church, France, Ireland, the universe.
Here is something, dear sister, which I think would comfort Karl:
“To desire God is the essential condition of the human heart; to go to
God is his life; to contemplate God is his beatitude. To desire God is
the noble appanage of our nature; to go to God is the work which grace
effects within us; to contemplate God is our state of glory. To desire
God is the principle of good; to go to God is the way of good; to
contemplate God is the perfection of good.
“God is everything to the soul. The soul breathes: God is her
atmosphere. The soul needs nourishment and wherewith to quench her
thirst: God is her daily bread and her spring of living water. The
soul moves on: God is her way. The soul thinks and understands: God is
her truth. The soul speaks――God is her word; she loves――God is her
love.”[25]
Exquisite thoughts! Oh! love, the love of God, can replace everything.
May we be kindled with this love, dear sister of my life!
NOVEMBER 22.
My sweet one, I love to keep my festivals with you! Yesterday, the
Presentation of Mary in the Temple, we spent here _in retreat_――a
retreat, according to all rules, preached by a monsignor! René is
writing you the details. I am not clever at long descriptions; with
you especially it is always on confidential matters that I like to
write――the history of my soul, my thoughts, my impressions.
What a heavenly festival! How, on this day of the Presentation, must
the angels have rejoiced at beholding this young child of Judea,
scarcely entered into life, and yet already so far advanced in the
depths of divine science, consecrating herself to God! How must you, O
St. Anne! the happy mother of this immaculate child, have missed her
presence! This sunbeam of your declining years, this flower sprung
from a dried-up stem, this virgin lily whose fragrance filled your
dwelling, all at once became lost to you. Ah! I can understand the
bitterness which then flowed in upon your soul, and it seems to me
that for this sacrifice great must be your glory in heaven!
To-day, St. Cecilia, the sweet martyr saint, patroness of musicians,
the Christian heroine, mounting to heaven by a blood-stained way.
Louis Veuillot, in _Rome and Loretto_, speaking of the “St. Cecilia”
of Raphael, calls it “one of the most thoroughly beautiful pictures in
the world.” “The saint,” he says, “is really a saint; one never
wearies of contemplating the perfect expression with which she listens
to the concert of angels, and breaks, by letting them fall from her
hands, the instruments of earthly music.” Kate, do you remember the
museum at Bologna, and how we used to stand gazing at this page of
Raphael?
I am reading Bossuet with René. What loftiness of views! What
vehemence of thought! Another consolation for Karl: “Death gives us
much more than he takes away: he takes away this passing world, these
vanities which have deceived us, these pleasures which have led us
astray; but we receive in return the wings of the dove, that we may
fly away and find our rest in God.” Hélène had copied these lines into
her journal, and remarked upon them as follows: “Beautiful thought!
which enchants my soul, and makes me more than ever desire that hour
for which, according to Madame Swetchine, we ought to live; that day
when my true life will begin, far from the earth, where nothing can
satisfy the intensity of my desires.” We are going to travel about a
little, and visit the funeral cemetery of Quiberon and various other
points of our Brittany, so rich in memories. I am packing up my things
with the pleasure of a child, assisted by the gentle Picciola and
pretty little Alix, whom I have surnamed Lady-bird.[26] One of my
Bengalese is ill, and all the young ones are interested about it,
wanting to kiss and caress it, and give it dainty morsels, but nothing
revives the poor little thing. Ah! dear Kate, this Indian bird dying
in Brittany makes me think of Ellen, a thousand times more lovable and
precious, and who is also bending her fair head to die.
Sister, friend, mother, all that is best, most tender, and beloved,
God grant to us to die the same day, that together we may see again
the kind and excellent mother who confided me to your love.
DECEMBER 2.
Here we are, home again, in the most _Advent-like_ weather that ever
was. We have seen beautiful things; we have lived in the ideal, in the
true and beautiful, in minds, in scenery, in poetry, and music――in a
feast of the understanding, the eyes, and the heart. But with what
pleasure we have again beheld our _home_, so calm, so pious, and so
grand! It is only two hours since I took possession of my rooms. We
found here piles of letters; René is reading them to me while I am
saying good-morning to you――Kate, dearest, _you_ first of all; this
beautiful long letter which I reverently kiss, which I touch with
delight; it has been with you; it has _seen you_! How I want to see
you again!
A letter from Ireland from Lizzy, who is anxious about Ellen.
Alas! her anxiety is only too well founded. Karl writes to me that
Ellen grows weaker every day; strength is gradually leaving the body,
while the soul is fuller of life and energy than ever before, and
preparing for her last journey with astonishing serenity, and also
preparing for it him who is the witness of her departure. In a firm
hand she has added a few lines to the confidences of Karl: “Dear
Georgina, will you not come and see me at Hyères? Your presence would
help me to quit this poor earth, here so fair, which I would always
inhabit on account of my good Karl. The will of our Father be done!
Tender messages to Kate and to your good husband. Pray for me.”
Poor, sweet Ellen! How can I refuse this last prayer? But there is no
time to be lost; René will consult my mother. Ah! my sister, pray that
this journey may be possible, and that the angel of death may not so
soon pluck this charming flower which we love so much.
_Evening._――How good God is! We are _all_ going; my mother wishes it
to be so. “I do not,” she said to me, “want to have any distance
between you and me.” The winter is so severe that my sisters are glad
to get their children away from the season which is setting in. I am
writing to Lizzy and to Karl. We shall be at Hyères next week. Pray
with us, beloved.
DECEMBER 12.
Arrived, dear Kate, without accident, and all installed in a beautiful
_chalet_ near to that of Ellen, who welcomed us with joy. Karl had
gently prepared her for this meeting. How thin she has become!――still
beautiful, white, transparent; her fine, melancholy eyes so often
raised, by preference, to heaven, her hands of marble whiteness, her
figure bending. She would come as far as to the door of her room to
meet us, and there it was that I embraced her and felt her tears upon
my cheek. “God be praised!” These were her first words. Then she was
placed on her reclining-chair, and by degrees was able to see all the
family. I was trembling for the impression the children might make
upon her; but she insisted. Well, dearest, she caressed, admired,
listened to them, without any painful emotion or thought of herself;
one feels that she is already in heaven. Every day, by a special
permission granted by Pius IX., Mass is said in a room adjoining hers.
The removal of a large panel enables her to be present at the Holy
Sacrifice. This first moment was very sweet. In spite of this fading
away, which is more complete than I could have imagined it, to find
her _living_ when I had so dreaded that it might be otherwise, was in
itself happiness; but when I had become calm, how much I felt
impressed! Karl’s resignation is admirable. René compels me to stop,
finding me pale enough to frighten any one. Love me, my dearest!
DECEMBER 20.
Dearest sister, Ellen remains in the same state――a flickering lamp,
and so weak that René and I are alone admitted into this chamber of
death, which Karl now never leaves. Yesterday Ellen entreated him to
take a little rest, and he went out, suffocated by sobs, followed by
René; then the sufferer tried to raise herself so as to be still
nearer to me. I leaned my head by hers and kissed her. “Dear Georgina,
thanks for coming. You will comfort Karl. Do not weep for me; mine is
a happy lot: I am going to Robert. Ah! look, he comes, smiling and
beautiful as he was before his illness; he stretches out his arms to
me. I come! I come!” And she made a desperate effort, as if to follow
him. I thought the last hour was come, and called. René and Karl
hastened in; but the temporary delirium had passed, and Ellen began
again to speak of her joy at our being together.
The window is open. I am writing near the bed where our saint is
dying. The weather is that of Paradise, as Picciola says――flowers and
birds, songs and verdure. It is spring, and death is here, ready to
strike.
DECEMBER 25.
_Sic nos amantem, quis non redamaret?_ Ellen departed to heaven while
René was singing these words[27] after the Midnight Mass. This death
is life and gladness. I am by _her_, near to that which remains to us
of Ellen. Lucy and I have adorned her for the tomb; we have clothed
her in the white lace robe which was her mother’s present to her, and
arranged for the last time her rich and abundant hair, which Karl
himself has cut. It is, then, true that all is over, and that this
mouth is closed for ever. She died without suffering, after having
received the Beloved of her soul. What a night! I had a presentiment
of this departure. For two days past I have lived in her room, my eyes
always upon her, and listening to her affectionate recommendations. On
the 23d we spoke of St. Chantal――that soul so ardent and so strong in
goodness, so heroic among all others, who had a full portion of
crosses, and who knew so truly how to love and suffer. On the 24th a
swallow came and warbled on the marble chimney-piece. “I shall fly
away like her, but I shall go to God,” murmured Ellen. At two o’clock
the same day her confessor came; we left her for a few minutes, and I
had a sort of fainting fit which frightened René. Karl’s grief quite
overcame me. Towards three o’clock Ellen seemed to be a little
stronger; she took her husband’s hand, and, in a voice of tenderness
which still resounds in my ear, said to him slowly: “Remember that God
remains to you, and that my soul will not leave you. Love God alone;
serve him in the way he wills. Robert and I will watch over your
happiness.” She hesitated a little; all her soul looked from her eyes:
“Tell me that _you will be a priest_; that, instead of folding
yourself up in your regrets, you will spend yourself for the salvation
of souls, you will spread the love of Him who gives me strength to
leave you with joy to go to him!” Karl was on his knees. “I promise it
before God!” he said. The pale face of the dying one became tinged
with color, and she joined her hands in a transport of gratitude; then
she requested me to write at her dictation to Lizzy, Isa, Margaret,
and Kate. Her poor in Ireland were not forgotten. She became animated,
and seemed to revive, breathing with more ease than for some time
past. She received “all the dear neighbors,” said a few heartfelt
words to each, asked for the blessing of our mother, who would not
absent herself any more, and shared our joys and sorrows. The doctor
came; René went back with him. “It will be to-morrow, if she can last
until then.” O my God! And the night began――this solemn night of the
hosanna of the angels, of the Redeemer’s birth. I held one of her
hands, Karl the other; my mother and René were near us, our brothers
and sisters in the room that is converted into a chapel. At eleven
o’clock I raised the pillows, and began reading, at the request of
Ellen, a sermon upon death. After the first few lines she stopped me
with a look; Karl was pale again. The dear, dying one asked us to
sing. Kate, we were so _electrified_ by Ellen’s calmness that we
obeyed! She tried to join her voice to ours. The priest came; the Mass
began. Ellen, radiant, followed every word. We all communicated with
her. After the Mass she kissed us all, keeping Karl’s head long
between her hands――her poor little alabaster hands; then, at her
request, René sang the _Adeste_: “_Sic nos amantem, quis non
redamaret?_” At this last word Ellen kissed the crucifix for the last
time and fled away into the bosom of God. The priest had made the
recommendation of the soul a little before. Oh! those words, “Go
forth, Christian soul!”
_Excelsior!_ Let us love each other, dear Kate.
DECEMBER 29.
“In Rama was a voice heard, weeping and lamentation: Rachel weeping
for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”
Poor mothers of Bethlehem, what must you not have suffered! But you,
ye “flowers of martyrdom,” as the church salutes you――you who follow
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth――how happy were you to die for him who
had come to die for you!
Dear sister, we followed her to the church, and then Karl and René set
out, taking this coffin with them to Ireland. The family have wished
it thus. This sorrowful journey has a double object: Karl is going to
settle his affairs, and in two months at most he will enter the
_Séminaire des Missions Etrangères_, the preparatory college of the
foreign missions. He will see you at that time. He was sublime. God
has been with us, and the soul of Ellen shone upon these recent
scenes. My mother would not consent to my going also. I was weaker
than I thought. On returning to the _chalet_ I was obliged to go to
bed. What an inconvenience I should have been to the dear travellers!
But how sad it is to end a year, a first year of marriage, without
René! This beautiful sky, this luxuriant nature, all the poetry of the
south, which I love so much――all this appears to me still more
beautiful since that holy death. Why were you not with us? There are
inexpressible things. I have understood something of what heaven is.
Sweet Ellen! What peace was in her death, what suavity in her words! I
did not leave her after her death, but remained near her bed, where I
had so much admired her. I tried to warm her hand, to recall her
glance, her smile, until the appearance of the gloomy coffin. O my
God! how must Karl have suffered. Those hammer-strokes resounded in my
heart!
Dear, she is with God; she is happy. Sweet is it thus to die with
Jesus in the soul. It is Paradise begun.
I embrace you a hundred times, my Kate. We had some earth from
Ireland, and some moss from Gartan, to adorn Ellen’s coffin. O death!
where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?
JANUARY 1, 1868.
O my God! pardon me, bless me, and bless all whom I love.
Dear sister of my soul, the anniversary of my marriage has passed
without my having been able to think of it to thank you again for your
share in making my happiness. But you know well how I love you! It is
the 1st of January, and I wish to begin the year with God and with
you. May all your years be blessed, dearest, the angel Raphael of the
great journey of my life! I have wished to say, in union with you, as
I did a year ago, the prayer of Bossuet: “O Jesus! by the ardent
thirst thou didst endure upon the cross, grant me a thirst for the
souls of all, and only to esteem my own on account of the holy
obligation imposed upon me not to neglect a single one. I desire to
love them all, since they are all capable of loving thee; and it is
thou who hast created them with this blessed capacity.” I said on my
knees the last thought copied by Ellen in the beautiful little volume
which she called _Kate’s book_: “Everything must die――sweetness,
consolation, repose, tenderness, friendship, honor, reputation.
Everything will be repaid to us a hundred-fold; but everything must
first die, everything must first be sacrificed. When we shall have
lost all in thee, my God, then shall we again find all in thee.”
Yesterday the _Adrien family_ arrived. What nice long conversations we
shall all have! George and Amaury have been heroic. All are in need of
repose. How delightful it is to meet again _en famille!_ And René is
far away. May God be with him, with you, and with us, dear Kate!
JANUARY 6.
Need I tell you about the first day of this year, beloved? Scarcely
had I finished writing to you than the children made an irruption into
my room. Then oh! what kissing, what outcries of joy, what smiles and
clapping of hands, at the sight of the presents arrived from Paris,
thanks to the good Vincent, who has made himself wonderfully useful.
How much I enjoyed it all! Then, on going to my mother, she blessed me
and gave me a letter from René, together with an elegantly-chased cup
of which I had admired the model. Then in the drawing-room all the
greetings, and our poor (for my passion follows me everywhere), and
your letter, with those from Ireland and Brittany (from the good
_curé_ who has charge of our works)――what delight for the whole day!
Karl thanks me for having copied for him these consoling words: “No;
whatever cross we may have to bear in the Christian life, we never
lose that blessed peace of the heart which makes us willingly accept
all that we suffer, and no longer desire any of the enjoyments of
which we are deprived.” It is Fénelon who says that.
We have been making some acquaintances, amongst others that of a young
widow who is spending the winter here on account of her daughter, a
frail young creature of an ideal beauty――graceful, smiling, and
affectionate; a white rose-bud half open. Her blue, meditative eyes
remind me of Ellen’s. This interesting widow (of an officer of rank)
knows no one, with the exception of the doctor. Her isolation excited
our compassion. Lucy made the first advances, feeling attracted by the
sadness of the unknown lady. Now the two families form but one.
Picciola and _Duchesse_ have invited the sweet little Anna to share
their lessons and their play. Her mother never leaves her for a
moment; this child is her sole joy.
The 3d, Feast of St. Geneviève: read her life with the children. What
a strong and mortified soul! I admire St. Germanus distinguishing, in
the midst of the crowd, this poor little Geneviève who was one day to
be so great. Is not this attraction of holy souls like a beginning of
the eternal union?
Yesterday, St. Simon Stylites, that incomparable penitent separated
from the world, living on a lofty column, between heaven and earth.
Thus ought we also to be, in spirit, on a column――that of love and
sacrifice.
I am sad about my first separation from René, and for so sorrowful a
cause. That which keeps me from weeping is the certainty of Ellen’s
happiness, and also the thought that from heaven she sees René and
Karl together.
To-day is the Epiphany――this great festival of the first centuries,
and that of our call to Christianity. Gold, frankincense, myrrh, the
gifts of the happy Magi, those men of good-will who followed the
star――symbolic and mysterious gifts: the gold of love, the incense of
adoration, the myrrh of sacrifice――why cannot I also offer these to
the divine Infant of the stable of Bethlehem? Would that I had the
ardent faith of those Eastern sages――the faith which stops at nothing,
which sees and comes! And the legendary souvenirs of the bean, an
ephemeral royalty which causes so much joy!
My mother is fond of the old traditions. We have had a kingcake.[28]
_Anna_ had the bean; she offered the royalty to Arthur. Cheerful
evening. Mme. de Clissey was less sad. We accompanied her back to her
house _in choir_.
Good-night, beloved sister; I am going to say my prayers and go to
sleep.
JANUARY 12.
René will be in Paris on the 15th, darling Kate. He will tell you
about Karl, Lizzy, Isa, all our friends, and then I shall have him
again! Adrien is reading Lamartine to us; I always listen with
enchantment. What poetry! It flows in streams; it is sweet, tender,
melancholy, moaning; it sings with nature, with the bird, with the
falling leaf, the murmuring stream, the sounding bell, the sighing
wind; it weeps with the suffering heart, and prays with the pleading
soul. Oh! how is it that this poet could stray aside from his heavenly
road, and burn incense on other altars? How could he leave his
Christian lyre――he who once sang to God of his faith and love in
accents so sublime? Will he not one day recover the sentiments and
emotions of his youth, when he went in the footsteps of his mother to
the house of God
_Offrir deux purs encens, innocence et bonheur._[29]
The _Harmonies_ are rightly named. I never read anything more
harmoniously sweet, more exquisite in cadence. How comes it that he
should have lost his faith where so many others have found it――in that
journey to the East, from which he ought to have returned a firmer
Catholic, a greater poet? Could it be that the death of his daughter,
she who was his future, his joy, his dearest glory, overthrew
everything within him? O my God! this lyre has, almost divinely, sung
of thee; thou wilt not suffer its last notes to be a blasphemy. Draw
all unto thyself, Lord Jesus, and let not the brows marked by the seal
of genius be stamped eternally with that of reprobation!
Mme. de Clissey has told us her history; you must hear it, since your
kind heart is interested in these two new friends of your Georgina.
Madame is Roman, and has been brought up in Tuscany. You know the
proverb: “A Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth.”[30] Her mother made a
misalliance, was cast off by her family after her husband’s death, and
the poor woman hid at Florence her loneliness and tears. Thanks to her
talents as a painter, she was enabled to secure to Marcella a solid
and brilliant education; but her strength becoming rapidly exhausted
by excessive labor, Marcella, when scarcely sixteen years of age, saw
her mother expire in her arms. She remained alone, under the care of a
venerable French priest, who compassionated her great misfortune, and
obtained for his _protégée_ an honorable engagement. She was taken as
governess to her daughter by a rich duchess, who, after being in
ecstasies about her at first, cast her aside as a useless plaything.
Her pupil, however, a very intelligent and affectionate child, became
the sole and absorbing interest of the orphan; but the young girl’s
attachment to her mistress excited the jealousy of the proud duchess,
who contrived to find a pretext for excluding Marcella from the house.
Her kind protector then brought her to France, and, as it was
necessary that she should obtain her living, she entered as teacher in
a boarding-school in the south. A year afterwards a lady of high rank
engaged her to undertake the education of her daughters. She
thankfully accepted this situation, but had scarcely occupied it a
month before she was in a dying state from typhoid fever and
inflammation of the brain. For fifty-two days her life was in danger,
and for forty-eight hours she was in a state of lethargy, from which
she had scarcely returned, almost miraculously, to consciousness,
before she had to witness the death of the kind priest who alone, with
a Sister of Charity, had done all that it was possible to do to save
her life. What was to become of her? The slender means of which the
old man had made her his heir lasted only for the year of her
convalescence; she then unexpectedly made the acquaintance of a rich
widow who was desirous of finding a young girl as her companion,
promising to provide for her future. Marcella was twenty years of age;
the old lady took a great fancy to her, and took her to Paris and to
Germany. Unfortunately, the character of her protectress was not one
to inspire affection. Ill-tempered, fanciful, exacting, life with her
was intolerable. Her servants left her at the end of a month. Marcella
became the submissive slave of her domineering caprice, and was shut
up the whole day, having to replace the waiting-woman, adorn the
antique idol, enliven her, and play to her whatever she liked. In the
drawing-room, of an evening, she had to endure a thousand vexations;
at eleven o’clock the customary visitors took leave, and Marcella
examined the account-books of the house under the eye of the terrible
old dowager, who, moreover, could not sleep unless some one read to
her aloud. “Till five o’clock in the morning I used to read Cooper or
Scott.” What do you think of this anticipated purgatory, dear Kate?
Marcella, timid, and without any experience of life, tried to resign
herself to her lot, until at Paris M. de Clissey asked her to exchange
her dependent condition for a happy and honored life. She accepted his
offer, to the no small despair of the old lady, who loudly charged her
with ingratitude, and thought to revenge herself by not paying her the
promised remuneration. M. de Clissey triumphantly took away his
beautiful young bride to his native town. “It seemed to me as if I had
had a resurrection to another life. For ten years our happiness was
without alloy. But the cross, alas! is everywhere; and I am now, at
thirty-two years of age, a widow, with unspeakable memories and my
pretty little Anna, whose love is my consolation.”
Thank God! Marcella has friends also, and my mother wishes to propose
to her to live with us.
Kate, what a good, sweet, happy destiny God has granted us! How I pity
those orphans who have not, as I have, a sister to love them! Oh! may
God bless you, and render to you all the good that your kind heart has
done to me! Hurrah for Ireland! Erin mavourneen!
JANUARY 20.
I have recovered my happiness: René is here. I never weary of hearing
him, of rejoicing that I have him. Dearest, I am enchanted with what
he tells me about you. Tell me if ever two sisters loved each other as
we do? No; it is not possible.
Lord William, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa, all our friends beyond the sea,
are represented on my writing-table――under envelopes. Karl will come
back to us; he “is burning to belong to God.” You know all the
details: the father blessing the coffin of his daughter, the sister,
abounding in consolation――all these miracles of grace and love. O dear
Kate! how good God is.
What will you think of my boldness? Isa has often expressed regret at
her inability to read _Guérin_, as Gerty used to say; so I thought I
would attempt a translation. I write so rapidly that I shall soon be
at the end of my task. The souls of Eugénie and of Isa are too much
like those of sisters not to understand each other. These few days
spent in the society of the Solitary of Cayla have more than ever
attached me to that soul at the same time so ardent and so calm, a
furnace of Jove, concentrated upon his brother Maurice, who was taken
from him by death――alas! as if to prove once more that earth is the
place of tears, and heaven alone that of happiness.
“Qu’est-ce donc que les jours pour valoir qu’on les pleure?”[31]
Hélène wrote to me on the 10th, Feast of St. Paul the Hermit, full of
admiration for the poetic history of this saint: the raven daily
bringing half a loaf to the solitary; the visit of St. Antony; St.
Paul asking if houses were still built; St. Antony exclaiming when he
returned to the monastery: “I have seen Elias; I have seen John in the
desert; I have seen Paul in Paradise”; the lions digging the grave of
this friend of God――what a poem!
René has brought me back the _Consolations_ of M. de Sainte-Beuve. How
is it that the poets of our time have not remained Christian? In his
_Souvenirs d’Enfance_ (“Memories of Childhood”) the author of the
_Consolations_ says to God:
“Tu m’aimais entre tous, et ces dons qu’on désire,
Ce pouvoir inconnu qu’on accorde à la lyre,
Cet art mystérieux de charmer par la voix,
Si l’on dit que je l’ai, Seigneur, je te le dois.”[32]
Karl tells me that he carefully keeps on his heart the last words
traced by Ellen. It is like the _testament_ of our saintly darling,
whom I seem still to see. I had omitted to mention this. The evening
before her death, after I had written by her side the solemn and
touching effusions for those who had not, like us, been witnesses of
the admirable spectacle of her deliverance, the breaking of the bonds
which held her captive in this world of sorrows, Ellen asked me to let
her write. Ten minutes passed in this effort, this victorious
wrestling of the soul over sickness and weakness. On the sealed
envelope which she then gave me was written one word only――“Karl.”
Would you like to have this last adieu, Kate? How I have kissed these
two almost illegible lines:
“My beloved husband, I leave you this counsel of St. Bernard for your
consolation: ‘Holy soul, remain alone, in order that thou mayest keep
thyself for Him alone whom thou hast chosen above all!’”
What a track of light our sweet Ellen has left behind her! Love me,
dearest Kate!
JANUARY 25.
We leave in a week, my dearest Kate. René made a point of returning to
the south, whose blue sky we shall not quit without regret; and also
he wished to pray once more with us in Ellen’s room. Karl does not
wish the _Chalet of souvenirs_ to pass into strange hands. He had
rented it for a year; René proposed to him to buy it, and the matter
was settled yesterday. I am writing to Mistress Annah, to lay
before her the offer of a good work, capable of tempting her
self-devotion――namely, that she should install herself at the
_chalet_, and there take in a few poor sick people, and we might
perhaps return thither. What do you think of this plan, dearest Kate?
We are all in love with Marcella and her pretty little girl, who are
glad to accompany us to Orleans. Gertrude has offered Hélène’s room to
our new friend, whose melancholy is gradually disappearing. It is
needless to say that she is by no means indifferent to Kate. You would
love her, dear sister, and bless God with me for having placed her on
our path. She has the head of an Italian Madonna, expressive,
sympathetic, sweet; her portrait will be my first work when we return
to Orleans.
On this day, eighteen centuries ago, St. Paul was struck to the earth
on his way to Damascus; he fell a persecutor of Christ, and arose an
apostle of that faith for which he would in due time give his life.
Let us also be apostles, my sister.
A visit from Sarah on her wedding journey. Who would have thought of
my seeing her here?
We prayed much for France on the ill-omened date of the 21st. O
dearest! if you were but to read M. de Beauchêne’s _Louis XVII._ It is
heartrending! Poor kings! It is the nature of mountain-tops to attract
the lightning. René has given to Marcella _Marie Antoinette_, by M. de
Lescure. Adrien has been reading it to us in the evenings. The grand
and mournful epic is related with a magical charm of style which I
find most attractive. Marie Antoinette, the calumniated queen, there
appears in all the purity and splendor of her beauty. This reading
left on my mind a deep impression of sadness. Poor queen! so great, so
sanctified. “The martyrology of the Temple cannot be written.” The
life of Marie Antoinette is full of contrasts; nothing could be fairer
than its dawn, nothing more enchanting than the picture of her
childhood, youth, and marriage――this latter the dream of the courts of
Austria and France, which made her at fifteen years old the triumphant
and almost worshipped Dauphiness. And yet what shadows darkened here
and there the radiant poem of her happy days! She went on increasing
in beauty; she became a mother; and beneath the delightful shades of
Trianon, “the Versailles of flowers which she preferred to the
Versailles of marble,” she came to luxuriate in the newly-found joys
which filled her heart. Then came a terrible grief, the sinister
precursor of the horrible tempests which were to burst upon the head
of this queen, so French, but whom her misguided people persisted in
calling _the foreigner_――the death of Maria Theresa the Great. What a
cruel destiny is that of queens! Marie Antoinette, whose heart was so
nobly formed for holy family joys, quitted her own at the age of
fifteen, going to live far from her mother, whom she was never to see
again, even at the moment when that heroic woman rendered up to God
the soul which had struggled so valiantly. The Revolution was there,
dreadful and menacing. Marie Antoinette began her militant and
glorious life, and the day came when “the monster” said with truth:
“The king has but one man near him, and that man is the queen.” O dear
Kate! the end of this history makes me afraid. What expiation will God
require of France for these martyrdoms?
And we are going away.… Shall we return?
We are to visit Fourvières, Ars, Paray-le-Monial, and first of all the
Grande Chartreuse――what a journey!――and _you_ afterwards. I am fond of
travelling――fond of the unknown, of beautiful views, movement, the
pretty, wondering eyes of the little ones, the halts, for one or two
days, in hotels, all the moving of the household which reminds me of
the pleasant time when I used to travel with my Kate. Dearest sister,
I long, I long to embrace you! Your kind, rare, and delightful
letters, which I learn by heart the first day, the feeling of that
nearness of our hearts to each other which nothing on earth can
separate――this is also you; but to _see_ you is sweeter than all the
rest.
Marcella wishes to be named in this letter. You know whether or not
the whole family loves Mme. Kate.
Send us your good angel during our wanderings, and believe in the
fondest affection of your Georgina.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[21] “Behold the sapless leaves, which fall upon the turf.”
[22] “_Dames Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire._”
[23] Past days, which each of us recalls with tears,
Days we regret in vain, had you so many charms?
Or was your brightness also marred by winds,
And doth our weariness of the present make you seem so fair?
[24] In Brittany the poor are habitually called _les pauvres
du Bon Dieu_.――TRANSL.
[25] Mgr. de la Bouillerie
[26] In French, _L’Oiseau du Bon Dieu_; in Catholic England,
“Our Lady’s bird.”
[27] In the hymn _Adeste fideles_.
[28] _Gâteau des Rois_, “Twelfth-Cake.”
[29] To offer two pure [grains of] incense: innocence and
happiness.
[30] The purest Italian, “_Lingua Toscana in bocca Romana_.”
[31] What, then, are days, that they should deserve our
tears?
[32] “Thou lovedst me amongst all, and the gifts that men
desire――this unknown power accorded to the lyre, this
mysterious art of pleasing by the voice――if I am said to own
it, Lord, I owe it all to thee.”
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI’S POEMS.[33]
Christina Rossetti is, we believe, the queen of the Preraphaelite
school, the literary department of that school at least, in England.
To those interested in Preraphaelites and Preraphaelitism the present
volume, which seems to be the first American edition of this lady’s
poems, will prove a great attraction. The school in art and literature
represented under this name, however, has as yet made small progress
among ourselves. It will doubtless be attributed to our barbarism, but
that is an accusation to which we are growing accustomed, and which we
can very complacently bear. The members of the school we know: Ruskin,
Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, all the other Rossettis,
Swinburne, Morris, and the rest; but we know no school. It has not yet
won enough pupils to establish itself among us, and we at best regard
it as a fashion that will pass away as have so many others: the low
shirt-collar, flowing locks, melancholy visage, and aspect of general
disgust with which, for instance, the imitators of Byron, in all save
his intellect, were wont to afflict us in the earlier portion of the
present century. The fact is, our English friends have a way of
running into these fashions that is perplexing, and that would seem to
indicate an inability on their part to judge for themselves of
literary or artistic merit. To-day Pope and Addison are the fashion;
to-morrow, Byron and Jeffreys; then Wordsworth and Carlyle; then
Tennyson and Macaulay; and now Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, and their
kin, if they are not in the ascendant, gain a school, succeed in
making a great deal of noise about themselves, and in having a great
deal of noise made about them. It is the same with tailoring in days
when your tailor, like your cook, is an “artist.”
Surely the laws and canons of art are constant. The good is good and
the bad bad, by whomsoever written or wrought. Affectation cannot
cover poverty of thought or conception. A return to old ways, old
models, old methods, is good, provided we go deeper than the mere
fringe and trappings of such. How the name Preraphaelite first came we
do not know. It originated, we believe, in an earnest revolt against
certain viciousness in modern art. It was, if we mistake not, a
return, to a great extent, to old-time realism. The question is, How
far back did the originators of the movement go? If we take the strict
meaning of the word, Homer was a Preraphaelite; so was Virgil; so was
Horace; so were the Greek tragedians; so was Aristophanes. Apelles’
brush deceived the birds of heaven; Phidias made the marble live ages
before Raphael. Nay, how long before Raphael did the inspired prophets
catch the very breathings of God to men, and turn them into the music
and the religion of all time? These are surely Preraphaelites; yet we
find few signs of their teachings in this fussy, ardent, and
aggressive little modern English school.
We do not deny many gifts to certain members of the school. Swinburne,
for instance, seems capable of playing with words as he pleases, of
turning and tuning them into any form of melodious rhythm. But he
begins and ends with _words_. Dante Gabriel Rossetti has given us some
massive fragments, but nothing more. We look and say, “How much this
man might have done!” but there our admiration ceases. Morris has
written much and well, but he teases one with the antique. Set Byron
by the side of any or all of them, and at once they dwindle almost
into insignificance. Yet Byron wrote much that was worthless. He
wrote, however, more that was really great. He never played tricks
with words; he never allowed them to master him. He began the _Childe
Harold_ in imitation of Spenser; but he soon struck out so freely and
vigorously that, though it may be half heresy to say it, Spenser
himself was left far in the rear, and we believe that any intelligent
jury in these days would award a far higher prize to the _Childe
Harold_ than to the _Faerie Queen_. Byron was a born poet. Like all
great poets, undoubtedly, he owed much to art; but then art was always
his slave. He rose above it. The fault with our present poets, not
excepting even Tennyson, is that they are better artists than they are
poets. Consequently, they win little cliques and knots of admirers,
where others, as did Byron, win a world in spite of itself. It is all
the difference between genius and the very highest respectability.
Miss Rossetti we take to be a very good example of the faults and
virtues of her school. Here is a volume of three hundred pages, and it
is filled with almost every kind of verse, much of which is of the
most fragmentary nature. Some of it is marvellously beautiful; some
trash; some coarse; some the very breathing and inspiration of the
deep religion of the heart. In her devotional pieces she is
undoubtedly at her best. Surely a strong Catholic tradition must be
kept alive in this family. Her more famous brother sings of the
Blessed Virgin in a spirit that Father Faber might have envied, and in
verse that Father Faber never could have commanded. How she sings of
Christ and holy things will presently appear. But her other pieces are
not so satisfactory. The ultra-melancholy tone, the tiresome
repetitions of words and phrases that mark the school, pervade them.
Of melancholy as of adversity it may be said, “Sweet are its uses,”
provided “its uses” are not too frequent. An ounce of melancholy will
serve at any time to dash a ton of mirth.
But our friends the Preraphaelites positively revel in gloom. They are
for ever “hob and nob with Brother Death.” They seem to study a
skeleton with the keen interest of an anatomist. Wan ghosts are their
favorite companions, and ghosts’ walks their choice resorts. The
scenery described in their poems has generally a sad, sepulchral look.
There is a vast amount of rain with mournful soughing winds, laden
often with the voices of those who are gone. A favorite trick of a
Preraphaelite ghost is to stalk into his old haunts, only to discover
that after all people live in much the same style as when he was in
the flesh, and can manage to muster a laugh and talk about mundane
matters even though he has departed. Miss Rossetti treats us to
several such visits, and in each case the “poor ghost” stalks out
again disconsolate.
There is another Preraphaelite ghost who is fond of visiting, just on
the day of her wedding with somebody else, the lady who has jilted
him. The conversation carried on between the jilt and the ghost of the
jilted is, as may be imagined, hardly of the kind one would expect on
so festive an occasion. For our own part, we should imagine that the
ghost would have grown wiser, if not more charitable, by his visit to
the other world, and would show himself quite willing to throw at
least the ghost of a slipper after the happy pair.
Between the Preraphaelite ghosts and the Preraphaelite lovers there
seems really little difference. The love is of the most tearful
description; the lady, wan at the start, has to wait and wait a woful
time for the gentleman, who is always a dreadfully indefinite distance
away. Strange to say, he generally has to make the journey back to his
lady-love on foot. Of course on so long a journey he meets with all
kinds of adventures and many a lady gay who keep him from his true
love. She, poor thing, meanwhile sits patiently at the same casement
looking out for the coming of her love. The only difference in her is
that she grows wanner and more wan, until at length the tardy lover
arrives, of course, only to find her dead body being carried out, and
the good old fairy-story ending――that they were married and lived
happy ever after――is quite thrown out.
It will be judged from what we have said that, whatever merits the
Preraphaelite school of poetry may possess, cheerfulness is not one of
them. As a proof of this we only cull a few titles from the contents
of the book before us. “A Dirge” is the eighth on the list; then come
in due order, “After Death,” “The Hour and the Ghost,” “Dead before
Death,” “Bitter for Sweet,” “The Poor Ghost,” “The Ghost’s Petition,”
and so on. But Miss Rossetti is happily not all melancholy. The
opening piece, the famous “Goblin Market,” is thoroughly fresh and
charming, and, to our thinking, deserves a place beside “The Pied
Piper of Hamlin.” Is not this a perfect picture of its kind?
“Laughed every goblin
When they spied her peeping;
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes――
Hugged her and kissed her;
Squeezed and caressed her;
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers and plates;
‘Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck them,
Pomegranates, figs.’”
Of course this is not very high poetry, nor as such is it quoted here.
But it is one of many wonderful pieces of minute and life-like
painting that occur in this strange poem. From the same we quote
another passage as exhibiting what we would call a splendid fault in
the poet:
“White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood――
Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously;
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary, roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire;
Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet,
Sore beset by wasp and bee;
Like a royal virgin town,
Topped with gilded dome and spire,
Close beleaguered by a fleet,
Mad to tug her standard down.”
Undoubtedly these are fine and spirited lines, and, some of them at
least, noble similes. What do they call up to the mind of the reader?
One of those heroic maidens who in history have led armies to victory
and relieved nations――a Joan of Arc leading a forlorn hope girt around
by the English. Any picture of this kind it would fit; but what is it
intended to represent? A little girl struggling to prevent the little
goblin-men from pressing their fatal fruits into her mouth! The statue
is far too large for the pedestal. Here is another instance of the
same, the lines of which might be taken from a Greek chorus:
“Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run.”
The locks that are like all these wonderful things are those of
Lizzie’s little sister Laura, who had tasted the fruits of the
goblin-men. How different from this is “The Convent Threshold”! It is
a strong poem, but of the earth earthy. As far as one can judge, it is
the address of a young lady to her lover, who is still in the world
and apparently enjoying a gay life. She has sinned, and remorse or
some other motive seems to have driven her within the convent walls.
She gives her lover admirable advice, but the old leaven is not yet
purged out, as may be seen from the final exhortation:
“Look up, rise up; for far above
Our palms are grown, our place is set;
There we shall meet as once we met,
And love with old familiar love.”――
Which may be a very pleasant prospect for separated lovers, but is
scarcely heaven.
The poem contains a strong contrast――and yet how weak a one to the
truly spiritual soul!――between the higher and the lower life.
“Your eyes look earthward; mine look up.
I see the far-off city grand,
Beyond the hills a watered land,
Beyond the gulf a gleaming strand
Of mansions where the righteous sup
Who sleep at ease among the trees,
Or wake to sing a cadenced hymn
With Cherubim and Seraphim;
They bore the cross, they drained the cup,
Racked, roasted, crushed, rent limb from limb――
They, the off-scouring of the world:
The heaven of starry heavens unfurled,
The sun before their face is dim.
“You, looking earthward, what see you?
Milk-white, wine-flushed among the vines,
Up and down leaping, to and fro,
Most glad, most full, made strong with wines,
Blooming as peaches pearled with dew,
Their golden, windy hair afloat,
Love-music warbling in their throat,
Young men and women come and go.”
Something much more characteristic of the school to which Miss
Rossetti belongs is “The Poor Ghost,” some of which we quote as a
sample:
“Oh! whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snow-drops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?”
“From the other world I come back to you,
My locks are uncurled with dripping, drenching dew.
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But to-morrow you shall know this too.”
* * * * *
“Life is gone, then love too is gone,
It was a reed that I leant upon:
Never doubt I will leave you alone
And not wake you rattling bone with bone.”
But this is too lugubrious. There are many others of a similar tone,
but we prefer laying before the reader what we most admire. We have no
doubt whatever that there are many persons who would consider such
poems as the last quoted from the gems of the volume. To us they read
as though written by persons in the last stage of consumption, who
have no hope in life, and apparently very little beyond. The lines,
too, are as heavy and clumsy as they can be. Perhaps the author has
made them so on purpose to impart an additional ghastliness to the
poem; for, as seen already, she can sing sweetly enough when she
pleases. Another long and very doleful poem is that entitled “Under
the Rose,” which repeats the sad old lesson that the sins of the
parents are visited on the heads of the children. A third, though not
quite so sad, save in the ending, is “The Prince’s Progress,” which is
one of the best and most characteristic in the volume. As exhibiting a
happier style, we quote a few verses:
“In his world-end palace the strong Prince sat,
Taking his ease on cushion and mat;
Close at hand lay his staff and his hat.
‘When wilt thou start? The bride waits, O youth!’
‘Now the moon’s at full; I tarried for that:
Now I start in truth.
‘But tell me first, true voice of my doom,
Of my veiled bride in her maiden bloom;
Keeps she watch through glare and through gloom,
Watch for me asleep and awake?’
‘Spell-bound she watches in one white room,
And is patient for thy sake.
‘By her head lilies and rosebuds grow;
The lilies droop――will the rosebuds blow?
The silver slim lilies hang the head low;
Their stream is scanty, their sunshine rare.
Let the sun blaze out, and let the stream flow:
They will blossom and wax fair.
‘Red and white poppies grow at her feet;
The blood-red wait for sweet summer heat,
Wrapped in bud-coats hairy and neat;
But the white buds swell; one day they will burst,
Will open their death-cups drowsy and sweet;
Which will open the first?’
Then a hundred sad voices lifted a wail;
And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale:
‘Time is short, life is short,’ they took up the tale:
‘Life is sweet, love is sweet; use to-day while you may;
Love is sweet and to-morrow may fail:
Love is sweet, use to-day.’”
The Prince turns out to be a sad laggard; but what else could he be
when he had to traverse such lands as this?
“Off he set. The grass grew rare,
A blight lurked in the darkening air,
The very moss grew hueless and spare,
The last daisy stood all astunt;
Behind his back the soil lay bare,
But barer in front.
“A land of chasm and rent, a land
Of rugged blackness on either hand;
If water trickled, its track was tanned
With an edge of rust to the chink;
If one stamped on stone or on sand,
It returned a clink.
“A lifeless land, a loveless land,
Without lair or nest on either hand
Only scorpions jerked in the sand,
Black as black iron, or dusty pale
From point to point sheer rock was manned
By scorpions in mail.
“A land of neither life nor death,
Where no man buildeth or fashioneth,
Where none draws living or dying breath;
No man cometh or goeth there,
No man doeth, seeketh, saith,
In the stagnant air.”
So far for the general run of Miss Rossetti’s poems. It will be seen
that they are nothing very wonderful, in whatever light we view them.
They are not nearly so great as her brother’s; indeed, they will not
stand comparison with them at all. The style is too varied, the pieces
are too short and fugitive to be stamped with any marked originality
or individuality, with the exception, perhaps, of the “Goblin Market.”
But there is a certain class of her poems examination of which we have
reserved for the last. Miss Rossetti has set up a little devotional
shrine here and there throughout the volume, where we find her on her
knees, with a strong faith, a deep sense of spiritual needs, a feeling
of the real littleness of the life passing around us, of the true
greatness of what is to come after, a sense of the presence of the
living God before whom she bows down her soul into the dust; and here
she is another woman. As she sinks her poetry rises, and gushes up out
of her heart to heaven in strains sad, sweet, tender, and musical that
a saint might envy. What in the wide realm of English poetry is more
beautiful or more Catholic than this?
THE THREE ENEMIES.
_The Flesh._
“Sweet, thou art pale.”
“More pale to see,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bare his Father’s wrath for me.”
“Sweet, thou art sad.”
“Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The wine-press of the wrath of God.”
“Sweet, thou art weary.”
“Not so Christ;
Whose mighty love of me sufficed
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist.”
“Sweet, thou art footsore.”
“If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea, in my need
His Heart once bled for mine indeed.”
_The World._
“Sweet, thou art young.”
“So He was young
Who for my sake in silence hung
Upon the Cross with Passion wrung.”
“Look, thou art fair.”
“He was more fair
Than men, Who deigned for me to wear
A visage marred beyond compare.”
“And thou hast riches.”
“Daily bread:
All else is His; Who living, dead,
For me lacked where to lay His Head.”
“And life is sweet.”
“It was not so
To Him, Whose Cup did overflow
With mine unutterable woe.”
_The Devil._
“Thou drinkest deep.”
“When Christ would sup
He drained the dregs from out my cup.
So how should I be lifted up?”
“Thou shalt win Glory.”
“In the skies,
Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes
Lest they should look on vanities.”
“Thou shalt have Knowledge.”
“Helpless dust,
In thee, O Lord, I put my trust:
Answer Thou for me, Wise and Just.”
“And Might.”
“Get thee behind me. Lord,
Who hast redeemed and not abhorred
My soul, oh! keep it by thy Word.”
And what a cry is this? Who has not felt it in his heart? It is
entitled “Good Friday”:
“Am I a stone and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ! beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
“Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
“Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon,――
I, only I.
“Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.”
It would seem that the heart which can utter feelings like these
should be safely housed in the one true fold. There, and there only,
can such hearts find room for expansion; for there alone can they find
the food to fill them, the wherewith to satisfy their long yearnings,
the light to guide the many wanderings of their spirits, the strength
to lift up and sustain them after many a fall and many a cruel deceit.
Outside that threshold, however near they may be to it, they will in
the long run find their lives empty. With George Eliot, they will find
life only a sad satire and hope a very vague thing. Like her heroine,
Dorothea Brooke, the finer feelings and aspirations of their really
spiritual and intensely religious natures will only end in petty
collisions with the petty people around them, and thankful they may be
if all their life does not turn out to be an exasperating mistake, as
it must be a failure, compared with that larger life that they only
dimly discern. How truly Miss Rossetti discerns it may be seen in her
sonnet on “The World”:
“By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair:
But all night as the moon so changeth she;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy,
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
By day she wooes me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands,
In all the naked horror of the truth,
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.
Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell
My soul to her, give her my life and youth,
_Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?_”
Could there be anything more complete than this whole picture, or
anything more startling yet true in conception than the image in the
last line, which we have italicized? One feels himself, as it were, on
the very verge of the abyss, and the image of God, in which he was
created, suddenly and silently falling from him. But a more beautiful
and daring conception is that in the poem “From House to Home.”
Treading on earth, the poet mounts to heaven, but by the thorny path
that alone leads to it. Her days seemed perfect here below, and all
happiness hers. Her house is fair and all its surroundings beautiful.
She tells us that
“Ofttimes one like an angel walked with me.
With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire,
But deep as the unfathomed, endless sea,
Fulfilling my desire.”
The spirit leaves her after a time, calling her home from banishment
into “the distant land.” All the beauty of her life goes with him, and
hope dies out of her heart, until something whispered that they should
meet again in a distant land.
“I saw a vision of a woman, where
Night and new morning strive for domination;
Incomparably pale, and almost fair,
And sad beyond expression.
* * * * *
“I stood upon the outer barren ground,
She stood on inner ground that budded flowers;
While circling in their never-slackening round
Danced by the mystic hours.
“But every flower was lifted on a thorn,
And every thorn shot upright from its sands
To gall her feet; hoarse laughter pealed in scorn
With cruel clapping hands.
“She bled and wept, yet did not shrink; her strength
Was strung up until daybreak of delight;
She measured measureless sorrow toward its length,
And breadth, and depth, and height.
“Then marked I how a chain sustained her form,
A chain of living links not made nor riven:
It stretched sheer up through lightning, wind, and storm,
And anchored fast in heaven.
“One cried: ‘How long? Yet founded on the Rock
She shall do battle, suffer, and attain.’
One answered: ‘Faith quakes in the tempest shock:
Strengthen her soul again.’
“I saw a cup sent down and come to her
Brimful of loathing and of bitterness:
She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir
The depth, not make it less.
“But as she drank I spied a hand distil
New wine and virgin honey; making it
First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until
She tasted only sweet.
“Her lips and cheeks waxed rosy――fresh and young;
Drinking she sang: ‘My soul shall nothing want’;
And drank anew: while soft a song was sung,
A mystical low chant.
“One cried: ‘The wounds are faithful of a friend:
The wilderness shall blossom as a rose.’
One answered: ‘Rend the veil, declare the end,
Strengthen her ere she goes.’”
Then earth and heaven are rolled up like a scroll, and she gazes into
heaven. Wonderful indeed is the picture drawn of the heavenly court;
but we have already quoted at such length that we fear to tire our
readers. Still, we must find room for the following three verses:
“Tier beyond tier they rose and rose and rose
_So high that it was dreadful_, flames with flames:
No man could number them, no tongue disclose
Their secret sacred names.
“As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood
Fed all, one breath swept through them myriad-voiced,
They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood
And worshipped and rejoiced.
“Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,
Each face looked one way towards its Sun of Love;
Drank love and bathed in love and mirrored it
And knew no end thereof.”
We might go on quoting with pleasure and admiration most of these
devotional pieces, but enough has been given to show how different a
writer is Miss Rossetti in her religious and in her worldly mood. The
beauty, grace, pathos, sublimity often, of the one weary us of the
other. In the one she warbles or sings, with often a flat and
discordant note in her tones that now please and now jar; in the other
she is an inspired prophetess or priestess chanting a sublime chant or
giving voice to a world’s sorrow and lament. In the latter all
affectation of word, or phrase, or rhythm disappears. The subjects
sung are too great for such pettiness, and the song soars with them.
The same thing is true of her brother, the poet. Religion has inspired
his loftiest conceptions, and a religion that is certainly very unlike
any but the truth. We trust that the reverence and devotion to the
truth which must lie deep in the hearts of this gifted brother and
sister may bear their legitimate fruit, and end not in words only, but
blossom into deeds which will indeed lead them “From House to Home.”
[33] Poems by Christina G. Rossetti. Boston: Roberts
Brothers. 1876.
ECHO TO MARY.
Who gently dries grief’s falling tear?
Maria.
Of fairy flowers which fairest blows?
The Rose.
What seekest thou, poor plaining dove?
My Love.
Rejoice, thou morning Dove!
Earth’s peerless Rose, without a thorn,
Unfolds its bloom this natal morn――
Maria, Rose of Love!
What craves the heart of storms the sport?
A Port.
And what the fevered patient’s quest?
Calm Rest.
What ray to cheer when shadows slope?
Hope.
O Mary, Mother blest!
Through nights of gloom, through days of fear,
Thy love the ray by which to steer,
Bright Hope! to Port of Rest.
Desponding heart what gift will please?
Heart of Ease.
What scent reminds of a hidden saint?
Jess’mine Faint.
What caught its hue from the azure sky?
Violet’s Eye.
O Mary, peerless dower!
A balm to soothe, love’s odor sweet,
A glimpse of heaven in thee we greet――
Heartsease, Jess’mine, Violet flower!
Of Mary’s love who most secure?
The Pure.
What lamp diffuses light afar?
A Star.
When is light-wingéd zephyr born?
At Morn.
My eyes, with watching worn,
Will vigil keep till day returns;
To see thy light my spirit yearns,
Mary Pure, Star of Morn!
What name most sweet to dying ear?
Maria.
On heavenly hosts who smiles serene?
Their Queen.
What joy is perfected above?
Love.
Welcome, thou spotless Dove!
Awake, my soul, celestial mirth!
This day brings purest joy to earth!
Maria, Queen of Love.
NATIVITY B. V. MARY, September 8.[34]
[34] The above is a free translation from a beautiful short
Spanish poem which lately appeared in the _Revista Catolica_
of Las Vegas, New Mexico.
THE HIGHLAND EXILE.
A recent number of the London _Tablet_ contains some very interesting
facts concerning the return of the Benedictine Order to Scotland. This
event is expected soon to take place, after a banishment of the Order
for nearly three hundred years from those regions of beauty where for
many previous centuries it had been the source and dispenser of
countless spiritual and temporal blessings to the people.
It is among the most marvellous of the wonderful compensations of
divine Providence in these days of mysterious trial for the church as
to her temporalities, and of her most glorious triumphs in the
spiritual order, that the place for this re-establishment should have
been fixed at Fort Augustus, in Inverness-shire――the very spot which
the “dark and bloody” Duke of Cumberland made his headquarters while
pursuing with merciless and exterminating slaughter the hapless
Catholics of the Highlands after the fatal field of Culloden in 1746.
No less significant is the fact that a descendant of the Lord Lovat
who was beheaded for his participation in that conflict, and the
inheritor of his title, should have purchased Fort Augustus from the
British government with a view to this happy result, though he was not
permitted to live long enough to witness the accomplishment of his
pious purpose.
A more beautiful or appropriate abode for the devoted sons of St.
Benedict could not have been found than this secluded spot, where, far
removed from all the turmoil and distractions of the world, they will
be free to exercise the spirit of their holy rule, and draw down
abundant benedictions upon the surrounding country. The buildings are
situated near the extremity of Loch Ness, commanding toward the east a
view of that picturesque lake, and to the west of the wild range of
Glengarry Mountains.
It is consoling to reflect that the place which, notwithstanding the
fascinations of its extraordinary beauty, has so long been held in
detestation by the faithful Catholic Highlanders, on account of the
fearful atrocities once committed under protection of its strong
towers, is destined thus to become the very treasure-house of Heaven’s
choicest blessings for them in the restoration of their former
benefactors and spiritual directors.
Very pleasant, also, to every child of the faith the world over, is
the thought that these hills and glens, long so “famous in story,”
will once again give echo, morning, noon, and night, to the glad
tidings of salvation proclaimed by the holy Angelus, and to the
ancient chants and songs of praise which resounded through the older
centuries from the cloisters of this holy brotherhood; and that in
these solitudes the clangor of the “church-going bell” will again
summon the faithful to the free and open exercise of the worship so
long proscribed under cruel penalties. The tenacity with which the
Highlanders of Scotland clung to their faith through the most
persistent and appalling persecutions proved that the foundations of
the spiritual edifice in that
“Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,”
were laid broad and deep by saints not unworthy to be classed with the
glorious St. Patrick of the sister shores.
In the course of our studies of history in early youth, before we were
interested in such triumphs of the church, save as curious historical
facts not to be accounted for upon Protestant principles, we were
deeply impressed by proofs of her supernatural and sustaining power
over this noble race which came within our personal notice.
During a winter in the first quarter of this century my father and
mother made the journey from Prescott, Upper Canada, to Montreal, in
their own conveyance, taking me with them.
We stopped over one night at an inn situated on the confines of a
dismal little village, planted in a country as flat and unattractive
in all its features as could well be imagined. The village was settled
entirely by Highlanders exiled on account of their religion and the
troubles which followed the irretrievable disaster of Culloden. Its
inhabitants among themselves spoke only the Gaelic language, which I
then heard for the first time. My father’s notice was attracted by the
aged father of our host, a splendid specimen of the native Highlander,
clad in the full and wonderfully picturesque costume of his race.
Although from his venerable appearance you might have judged that
“A hundred years had flung their snows
On his thin locks and floating beard,”
yet was his form as erect and his mind as clear as when in youth he
trod his native glens.
My father soon drew him into a conversation to which their juvenile
companion was an eager and retentive listener. The chief tenor of it
was concerning the state of Scotland, and the prevailing sentiment of
her people in the north, before the last hapless scion of the Stuarts
made the fatal attempt which resulted in utter defeat and ruin to all
connected with it. In the course of their chat, and as his intellect
was aroused and excited by the subject, a narrative of his own
personal knowledge of those matters and share in the conflict fell
unconsciously, as it were, from his lips.
He was a young lad at the time his father’s clan gathered to the
rallying-cry of the Camerons for the field of Culloden. Young as he
was, he fought by his father’s side, and saw him slain with multitudes
of his kin on that scene of carnage. He was among the few of his clan
who escaped and succeeded by almost superhuman efforts in rescuing
their families from the indiscriminate slaughter which followed. Among
the rocks and caves of the wild hills and glens with which they were
familiar they found hiding-places that were inaccessible to the
destroyers who were sent out by the merciless Cumberland, but their
sufferings from cold and hunger were beyond description. In the haste
of their flight it was impossible to convey the necessary food and
clothing, and the whole country was so closely watched by scattered
bands of soldiers that there was no chance of procuring supplies.
Insufficiently clad and fed, and very imperfectly sheltered from the
wild storms of those bleak northern regions, many of the women, the
children, and the aged people perished before it was possible to
accept offers made by the British government of founding colonies in
Nova Scotia and Upper Canada for those who, persistently refusing to
renounce the Catholic faith, would consent to emigrate. Large rewards
and the most tempting inducements were held out to all who would
surrender their faith, embrace Protestantism, and remain among their
beloved hills.
So intense is the love of country in the hearts of this brave and
generous people that many could not tear themselves away from scenes
inwoven with their tenderest affections, but remained, some to enjoy
in this world the price of that apostasy which imperilled their
eternal interests for the next, while multitudes sought the most
remote and unapproachable nooks of the rugged north, and remained true
to their religion in extreme poverty and distress, with no hope of
alleviation. Our aged narrator joined a band of emigrants from the
neighborhood of Loch Ness, and came to the dreary wilderness where the
present village has grown up. My father expressed his surprise that
they should have chosen a place so entirely different in all its
features from their native scenes, in preference to the hilly parts of
Canada, where it would seem that they would have been more at home.
“Na, na!” exclaimed the venerable old man, his dark eye kindling with
the fire of youth, while he smote the ground with his staff, as if to
emphasize his dissent――“na, na; sin’ we could na tread our native
hills, it iss better far that we had nane! I think the sicht of hills
withoot the heather wad drive me mad! Na, na; it iss far better that
we should see nae hills!”
His touching recital of the wrongs sustained by his people at the
hands of their ruthless conquerors, and the bitter sufferings they
endured for the faith, awakened my deep and enduring sympathy.
My father questioned whether, after all, it would not have been better
for them to have submitted in the matter of religion, accepted the
liberal terms offered under that condition, and remained contented in
their beloved homes, rather than make such cruel sacrifices, for
themselves and the helpless ones dependent upon them, in support of a
mere idea, as the difference between one religion and another seemed
to him. The old man rose in his excitement to his feet, and, standing
erect and dignified, with flashing eyes exclaimed: “Renounce the
faith! Sooner far might we consent that we be sold into slavery! Oh!
yes; we could do _that_――we could bow our necks to the yoke in _this_
world that our souls might be free for the _next_――but to renounce the
faith! It iss that we could na do whatever; no! not the least one
among us, though it wass to gain ten kingdoms for us in this warld!”
My father apologized for a suggestion which had such power to move
him, remarking that he was himself quite ignorant concerning the
Catholic religion, and, indeed, not too well informed as to any other;
upon which the hoary patriarch approached him, laid his hand upon his
head, and said with deep solemnity: “That the great God, who is ever
merciful to the true of heart, might pour the light of his truth into
yours, and show you how different is it from the false religions, and
how worthy that one should die for it rather than yield the point that
should seem the most trifling; for there iss nothing connected with
the truth that will be trifling.”
The grand old man! He little suspected that his words struck a
responsive chord in the hearts of his listeners that never ceased to
vibrate to their memory!
A few years after this incident I was passing the months of May and
June with a relative in Montreal. Several British regiments were then
quartered in that city. One of them, I was told, was the famous
“Thirty-ninth” which had won, by its dauntless valor on many
hard-fought battle-fields in India, the distinction of bearing upon
its colors the proud legend, “_Primus in Indis_.”
It was ordered to Canada for the invigorating effect of the climate
upon the health of soldiers exhausted by long exposure, in fatiguing
campaigns, to the sultry sun of India. It was composed chiefly, if not
wholly, of Scotch Highlanders, well matched in size and height, and,
taken all together, quite the finest body of men in form and feature,
and in chivalrous bearing, that I have ever seen. Their uniform was
the full Highland dress, than which a more martial or graceful
equipment has never been devised. Over the Scotch bonnet of each
soldier drooped and nodded a superb ostrich plume.
Under escort of the kind friend to whose care I had been committed,
and who was delighted with the fresh enthusiasm of his small rustic
cousin, just transported from a home in the woods to the novel scenes
of that fair city, I witnessed repeatedly the parade of the troops on
the _Champ de Mars_. The magnificent Highlanders took precedence and
entirely eclipsed them all, while the bitterness of feeling with which
the other regiments submitted to the ceremony of “presenting arms”
whenever the gallant “Thirty-ninth” passed and repassed was apparent
even to me, a stranger and a mere child.
Impressive as these scenes on the _Champ de Mars_ were, however, to
the eager fancy of a juvenile observer, they fell far short of the
thrilling effect produced by a pageant of a widely different nature
which I was soon to witness.
While I was expressing my glowing admiration for those “superb
Highlanders,” my kinsman, himself a Presbyterian elder, would exclaim:
“Oh! this is nothing at all. Wait until you have seen them march to
church and assist at a grand High Mass!”
Accordingly, on one fine Sunday morning in June he conducted me to an
elevated position whence the muster of the regiment with its splendid
banners, and the full line of march――to the music of the finest band
in the army, composed entirely of Highland instruments――could be
distinctly observed. Then, taking a shorter turn, we entered the
church, and secured a seat which overlooked the entrance of the troops
within the sacred precincts. The full band was playing, and the music
breathed the very spirit of their native hills. It was a spectacle
never to be forgotten. The measured tramp of that multitude as the
footfall of one man; their plumed bonnets lifted reverently before the
sacred Presence by one simultaneous motion of the moving mass; their
genuflections, performed with the same military and, as it seemed to a
spectator, automatic precision and unity; the flash and clash of their
arms, as they knelt in the wide space allotted to them under the
central dome of the immense edifice; the rapt expression of devotion
which lighted up each face; the music of the band, bursting forth at
intervals during the most solemn parts of the first High Mass I had
ever attended, now exquisitely plaintive and soul-subduing, and again
swelling into a volume of glorious harmony which filled the whole
church and electrified the hearts of the listeners――all this combined
to produce emotions not to be expressed in words. Strangers visiting
the city, and multitudes of its non-Catholic inhabitants, were drawn
week by week to witness the solemn and soul-awakening ceremonial;
first from curiosity, and afterwards, in many instances, from the
conviction that a religion whence flowed a worship so sublime and
irresistible in its power over the souls of men must be the creation
of the great Author of souls.
It seemed a fitting compensation to this noble race, after the
degradation and oppression to which they had been subjected by their
ruthless conquerors, that this valiant band of their sons should have
been enabled to achieve such renown as gave them the most
distinguished position in the British army, and placed them before the
world with a prestige and a glory not surpassed by the bravest of
their ancestors at the period of their greatest prosperity. But
infinitely more precious than all earthly fame was the right, won
back, as it were, by their arms, to practise fully and freely the
religion of those ancestors, so long proscribed and forbidden to their
people. Nor was it a slight satisfaction to their national pride and
patriotism to be permitted to resume the costume which had also been
proscribed and included in the suppression of the clans.
Since those days of long ago we have not seen a Scottish Highlander;
but the notice in the London _Tablet_ of which we have spoken awakened
the recollections we have thus imperfectly embodied as our slight
tribute to the cairn that perpetuates, in this world, the memory of
all this people have done and suffered for that faith which shall be
their eternal joy and crowning glory in the next.
THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF HALIFAX, N. S.
The Catholic Church in America has recently lost, in the person of the
Most Reverend Dr. Connolly, one of her most distinguished prelates.
Thomas Louis Connolly was born about sixty-two years ago in the city
of Cork, Ireland. In his person were found all the virtues and noble
qualities of head and heart that have made his countrymen loved and
honored. Like many other distinguished churchmen, he was of humble
parentage; and there are many townsmen of his in America to-day who
remember the late archbishop as a boy running about the streets of
Cork. He lost his father when he was three years old; nevertheless,
his widowed mother managed to bring up her little son and a still
younger daughter in comfort. She kept a small but decent house of
entertainment, and the place is remembered by a mammoth pig that stood
for years in the window, and which bore the quaint inscription:
“This world is a city with many a crooked street,
And death the market-place where all men meet.
If life were merchandise that men could buy,
The rich would live and the poor would die.”
Father Mathew, the celebrated Apostle of Temperance, whose church was
but a few doors from young Connolly’s home, noticed the quiet,
good-natured boy who was so attentive to his church and catechism,
and, perhaps discerning in him some of the rare qualities which
afterwards distinguished him as a man, became his friend, confidant,
and adviser. The widow was able to give her only son a good education,
and we learn that at sixteen young Connolly was well advanced in
history and mathematics and in the French, Latin, and Greek languages.
The youth, desiring to devote his life to the church, became a novice
in the Capuchin Order, in which order Father Mathew held high office.
In his eighteenth year he went to Rome to complete his studies for the
priesthood. He spent six years in the Eternal City, and they were
years of hard study, devoted to rhetoric, philosophy, and theology.
Even then he was noted for his application, and was reserved and
retiring in his disposition, except to the few with whom he was
intimately acquainted. He left Rome for the south of France, where he
completed his studies, and in 1838, at the cathedral at Lyons, he was
ordained priest by the venerable archbishop of that city, Cardinal
Bolæ. The following year he returned to Ireland, and for three years
he labored hard and fervently in the Capuchin Mission House, Dublin,
and at the Grange Gorman Lane Penitentiary, to which latter
institution he was attached as chaplain. In 1842, when Dr. Walsh was
appointed Bishop of Halifax, the young Capuchin priest, then in his
twenty-eighth year, volunteered his services, and came out as
secretary to the studious and scholarly prelate whom he was afterwards
to succeed.
Until 1851, a period of nine years, Father Connolly labored
incessantly, faithfully, and cheerfully as parish priest, and after a
while as Vicar-General of Halifax. In the prime of his manhood,
possessed of a massive frame and a vigorous constitution, with the
ruddy glow of health always on his face, the young Irish priest went
about late and early, in pestilence and disease, among the poor and
sick, hearing confessions, organizing societies in connection with the
church, preaching in public, exhorting in private, doing the work that
only one of his zeal and constitution could do, and through it all
carrying a smiling face and cheering word for every one. It is this
period of his life that the members of his flock love to dwell upon,
and to which he himself, no doubt, looked back with pleasure as a time
when, possessed of never-failing health, he had only the subordinate’s
work to do, without the cares, crosses, and momentous questions to
decide which the mitre he afterwards wore brought with it. Indeed, at
that time Father Connolly was everywhere and did everything. All the
old couples in Halifax to-day were married by him; and all the young
men and women growing up were baptized by him.
The worth, labors, and abilities of the ardent missionary could not
fail to be recognized, and when Dr. Dollard died, in 1851, on the
recommendation of the American bishops Father Connolly was appointed
to succeed him as Bishop of St. John, New Brunswick. He threw all his
heart and soul into his work, and before the seven years he resided in
St. John had passed away he had brought the diocese, which he found in
a chaotic, poverty-stricken, and ill-provided state, into order,
efficiency, and comparative financial prosperity. Without a dollar,
but with a true reliance on Providence and his people, he set to work
to build a cathedral, and by his energy and the liberality of his
flock soon had it in a tolerable state of completion. He seems to have
taken a special delight in building, and no sooner was one edifice
fairly habitable than he was at work on another. Whatever little
difficulties or differences he may have had with the Catholics under
his jurisdiction can be all traced to this; they were money questions,
questions of expense. He always kept a warm corner in his heart for
the orphans of his diocese, whom he looked upon as especially under
his care, and who were to be provided for at all costs; and soon the
present efficient Orphan Asylum of St. John sprang up, nuns were
brought from abroad to conduct it, and, through the exertions of their
warm-hearted bishop, the little wanderers and foundlings of New
Brunswick were provided with a home.
On the death of Archbishop Walsh, in 1859, Bishop Connolly was
appointed by the present Pontiff to succeed him. In his forty-fifth
year, with all his faculties sharpened, his views and mind widened,
and his political opinions changed for the better by his trying
experience, Bishop Connolly came back to Halifax a different man, in
all but outward appearance, from the Father Connolly who had left that
city eight years before.
Halifax is noted as being one of the most liberal and tolerant cities
on the continent. Nowhere do the different bodies of Christians mingle
and work so well together; and although it is not free from individual
bigotry, the great mass of its citizens work and live together in
harmony and cordial good-will. It is too much to credit the late
archbishop with this happy state of affairs, for it existed before his
time, and owes its existence to the good sense and liberality of the
Protestant party as well as the Catholic; but it is only common
justice to say that the archbishop did all in his power to maintain
it. Hospitable and genial by nature, it was a pleasure to him to have
at his table the most distinguished citizens of all creeds, to
entertain the officers of the army and navy, and to extend his
hospitality to the guests of the city. Without lessening his dignity,
and without conceding a point of what might be considered due to the
rights of his church, he worked and lived on the most friendly and
intimate footing with those who differed from him in religion. A hard
worker, an inveterate builder, and a great accumulator of church
property, he was hardly settled in his archdiocese before he set to
work to convert the church of St. Mary’s into the present beautiful
cathedral. The work has been going on for years under his personal
supervision, and he resolutely refused to let any part out to
contract; and although his congregation has grumbled at the money sunk
in massive foundations, unnecessary finish, and the extras for
alterations, yet time, by the strength, durability, and thoroughness
of the work, will justify the archbishop in the course he adopted.
School-houses were built, homes for the Sisters of Charity,
orphanages, an academy, and a summer residence for himself and clergy
at the Northwest Arm, a few miles from the city. All of these
buildings have some pretensions to architecture, and are substantial
and well built. Excepting the cathedral, the archbishop was generally
his own architect; and as he was a little dogmatic in his manner, and
not too ready to listen to suggestions from the tradesmen under him,
he on more than one occasion made blunders, more amusing than serious,
in his building operations. A man’s religion never stood in his way in
working for Archbishop Connolly.
His duties as the father of his flock were not neglected on account of
his outside work. No amount of physical or mental labor seemed too
much for him. After the worry, work, and travelling of the week, it
was no uncommon thing for him to preach in the three Catholic churches
in the city on the one Sunday. His knowledge of the Scriptures was
astonishing, even for a churchman, and was an inexhaustible mine on
which he could draw at pleasure. His reading was wide and extensive.
It was hard to name a subject on which he had not read and studied; on
the affairs and politics of the day he was ready, when at leisure, to
talk; and on his table might be found the periodical light literature
as well as heavier reading. In 1867, when the confederation of the
different British provinces into the present Dominion of Canada was
brought about, he took an active part in politics. Believing that Nova
Scotia would be rendered more prosperous, and that the Catholics would
become more powerful by being united to their Canadian brethren, he
warmly advocated the union. But despite his position and influence,
and the exertions of those on his side, the union party was defeated
at the polls all over the province as well as in the city of Halifax.
Since that he ceased to take an active part in politics, and refrained
from expressing his political opinions in public.
As a speaker he was noted for his sound common sense and the absence
of anything like tricks of rhetoric or of manner. His lectures and
addresses from the pulpit of his own church to his own people were
generally extempore. He was powerful in appealing to a mixed audience,
and spoke more especially to the humbler classes. He had a fund of
quaint proverbs and old sayings, and, by an odd conceit or happy
allusion, would drive his argument home in the minds of those of his
own country. He could, at times, be eloquent in the true sense of the
word; and when he prepared himself, girded on his armor for the
conflict, he was truly powerful. On the melancholy death of D’Arcy
McGee the archbishop had service in St. Mary’s, and delivered a
panegyric on the life and labors of that gifted Irishman, who was a
personal friend of his own, which is looked upon as one of his ablest
efforts.
If he was quickly excited, he was just as quick to forgive; and when
he thought he had bruised the feelings of the meanest, he was ever
ready to atone, and never happy till he did so. Like many great
republicans, while claiming the greatest freedom of thought, word, and
action for himself, he was, though he knew it not, arbitrary in his
dictates to others. Whatever he took in hand he went at heart and
soul. The smallest detail of work he could not leave to another, but
would himself see it attended to――from a board in a fence to the
building of a cathedral. Travelling over a scattered diocese with poor
roads and poor entertainment, preaching, hearing confessions, and
administering the sacraments of the church, can it be wondered at that
his health broke down? that a constitution, vigorous at first, wore
out before its time? With everything to do and everything a trouble to
him, can we wonder that some mistakes were made, that some things were
ill-done?
Though hospitable, witty, and a lover of company, he was very
abstemious and temperate in his habits; and, although never attacked
by long disease, his health was continually bad. Last fall he visited
Bermuda, which was under his jurisdiction, partly for his health, and
also to see to the wants of the few Catholics there. In the spring he
returned to Halifax, but little benefited by the change.
If there was one subject of public importance more than another in
which the archbishop was interested, it was the public-school
question. No question requires more careful handling; none involves
vaster public interests. His school-houses had been leased to the
school authorities; he had brought the Christian Brothers to Halifax,
and these schools were under their charge; and the Catholics in
Halifax had, thanks to their archbishop and the tolerance of their
fellow-citizens, separate schools in all but the name. For a long time
past there had been personal and private differences and grievances
between the archbishop and the brothers. What they were, and what the
rights and the wrongs of the matter are, was never fully made public,
nor is it essential that it should be. On the Sunday after his arrival
from Bermuda the archbishop was visited by the director-general of the
brothers, a Frenchman, who gave him twenty-four hours to accede to the
demands of the brothers, or threatened in default that they would
leave the province. Both were hot-tempered, both believed they had
right on their side, and it is more than probable that neither thought
the other would proceed to extremities. The archbishop did not take an
hour to decide; he flatly refused. Next day saw the work of years
undone; the brothers departed; their places were temporarily filled by
substitutes; the School Board took the matter in hand; and the
sympathies of the Catholics of Halifax were divided between their
archbishop and the teachers of their children.
Many think the excitement and worry that he underwent on this occasion
had much to do with his death. A gentleman who had some private
business with the archbishop called at the glebe-house on the Tuesday
following the Sunday on which the rupture with the brothers had taken
place. Although it was ten o’clock in the morning, and the sun was
shining brightly outside, he found the curtains undrawn, the gas
burning, and the archbishop hard at work writing at a table littered
with paper. In the course of their conversation he mentioned
incidentally to his visitor that he had not been to bed for two
nights, nor changed his clothes for three days. Even after the
difficulty had been smoothed over, and matters seemed to be going on
as of old, it was noticed that the archbishop had lost his
cheerfulness and looked wearied and haggard. His duties were not
neglected, though sickness and sadness may have weighed him down. He
began a series of lectures on the doctrines of the church which
unhappily were never to be completed. On the third Sunday before his
death, in making an appeal to his parishioners for funds to finish the
cathedral, he enumerated the many other works he wished to undertake,
and stated that he trusted he had ten or fifteen years of life before
him wherein to accomplish these works. The meeting which he had called
for that afternoon was poorly attended, and the amount subscribed not
nearly what he expected. It was noticed that this troubled him; for he
loved to stand well with his people always, and he took this as a sign
that his popularity was on the wane.
On Saturday, the 22d of July, he complained of being unwell, but it
did not prevent him from speaking as usual at the three churches on
the morrow. He never allowed his own sufferings to interfere with what
he considered his duty. None of the many who heard him that day
surmised that the shadow of death was then on him, and that on the
following Sunday they would see the corpse of the speaker laid out on
the same altar. On Monday, still feeling unwell, he drove to his
residence at the Northwest Arm, thinking that a little rest and quiet
would restore him to his usual health. The next day, growing worse,
and no doubt feeling his end approaching, he told his attendants to
drive him to the glebe-house and to write to Rome. Next day the whole
community was startled to hear that the archbishop was stricken down
by congestion of the brain; that he was delirious; that he had been
given up by the doctors; and that his death was hourly expected.
A gloom seemed to have fallen over the city. The streets leading to
the glebe-house were filled all the next day and late into the night
with a noiseless throng; and hour after hour the whisper went from one
to another, “He still lives, but there’s no hope.” All this time the
dying prelate remained unconscious. The heavy breathing and the dull
pulse were all that told the watchful and sorrowing attendants that he
yet lived. From his bedroom to the drawing-room, in which he had at
times received such a brilliant company, they carried the dying man
for air. Those who wished were allowed in to see him; but he saw not
the anxious faces that gazed sorrowfully for a moment and then passed
away; he heard not the low chant of the Litany for the Dying that was
borne out through the open windows on the still night-air; he knew not
of the tears that were shed by those who loved and honored him, and
who could not, in the presence of death, repress or hide their sorrow.
At midnight on Thursday, the 27th of July, the bell of the cathedral
tolled out to tell the quiet city that the good archbishop lived no
more.
The next day, in the same apartment, the corpse was laid in state, and
was visited by hundreds of all creeds and classes, who came to take
their last look at all that remained on earth of the wearied worker
who had at last found rest. What were the thoughts of many who looked
upon that face, now fixed in death? Among the throng were those who
had come to him weighed down by sorrow and sin, and had left him
lightened of their loads and strengthened in their resolutions of
atonement and amendment by his eloquent words of advice. Some had felt
his wide-spreading charity; for his ear and heart were ever open to a
tale of distress, and he gave with a free and open hand, and his
tongue never told of what his hand let fall. The general feeling was
one of bereavement; for the great multitude of his people knew not his
worth till they had lost him. Who would take his place? They might
find his equal in learning, in eloquence, even in work; but could they
find one in whom were united all the qualities that had so eminently
fitted him for the position he so ably filled? Perhaps there were
others present who had to regret that they had misjudged him, that
they had been uncharitable in their thoughts toward him, that they had
not assisted as they should have done the great, good, and unselfish
man who had worked not to enrich or exalt himself, but who had worn
out his life in the struggle for the welfare of his people and the
glory of his church.
In his loved cathedral, the unfinished monument of his life, now
draped in mourning, the last sad and solemn rites of the Catholic
Church were performed by the bishops and clergy who had been ordained
by him, who knew him so well and loved him so deeply. He was followed
to his last resting-place by the civil and military authorities, by
the clergymen of other denominations, and by hundreds of all creeds,
classes, and colors, who could not be deterred by the rain, which fell
in torrents, from testifying their respect for him who was honored and
esteemed by all.
We may add that the late and much-lamented archbishop was ever the
sincere and faithful friend of the Superior of the Paulist community.
Among the first of their missions was one at St. John; and the
archbishop afterwards called them also to his cathedral at Halifax.
Both superior and congregation, no less than his own people, owe Dr.
Connolly a debt of gratitude which it would indeed be difficult to
pay.
The character of Archbishop Connolly was marked by an ardent zeal for
the faith; a magnanimity which, whenever the occasion called for its
exercise, rose above all human considerations whatever, even of his
own life; and a charity that was not limited either by nationality,
race, or religious creed.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
MEMOIRS OF THE RIGHT REVEREND SIMON WM. GABRIEL BRUTE, D.D., FIRST
BISHOP OF VINCENNES. With sketches describing his recollections of
scenes connected with the French Revolution, and extracts from his
Journal. By the Rt. Rev. James Roosevelt Bayley, D.D., Bishop of
Newark. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.
The Catholic Church in America has reason to be thankful that the
seeds of faith were sown on her shores by some of the most eminent and
holy men that ever lived. The names of Cheverus, Flaget, Carroll,
Dubois, and Gallitzin might be fittingly blazoned on the same scroll
with those of an Augustine, a Gregory, or an Ambrose. To the untiring
labors, profound piety, and extensive learning of these men Catholic
faith and sentiment in our land owe their freshness and vitality. To
their devotion to the Holy See, and strictest adherence to all that is
orthodox and canonical, American Catholics owe their unity and their
ardent attachment to the fortunes of the Sovereign Pontiff. And if the
distinguished ecclesiastics just mentioned contributed much to secure
those glorious results, more still even did that prince of
missionaries and model of bishops, Simon William Gabriel Bruté. The
growing interest manifested in this admirable character is full,
timely, and calculated to do much good. As a man he was eminently
human, feeling for his fellows with a keenness of sensibility which
could alone grow out of a heart that throbbed with every human
emotion. This feature of high humanity also it was which gave that
many-sidedness to his character, making it full-orbed and polished _ad
unguem_. Thus viewed, he was in truth _totus teres atque rotundus_.
His constantly-outgoing sympathies brought him into the closest
relations with his people, and magnate or peasant believed that in him
they had found one who could peculiarly understand themselves. Nature
endowed him with just those gifts which pre-eminently fitted him for
missionary life. Lithe, agile, and compactly built, he could endure
exposure and privation beyond most men. Constantly cheerful, and with
a mind which was a storehouse of the most varied and interesting
knowledge, he could illumine darkness itself and convert despondency
into joy. Travelling at all seasons and at all hours, his presence was
everywhere hailed with delight, and many a cot and mansion among the
regions of the Blue Ridge Mountains watched and welcomed his presence.
So inured was he to hard labor that he deemed a journey of fifty-two
miles in twelve hours a mere bagatelle. And the quaintness with which
he relates those wonderful pedestrian achievements, interspersing his
recital with humorous and sensible allusions to wayside scenes, is not
only interesting, but serves often to reveal the simple and honest
character of the man. His English to the end retained a slightly
Gallic flavor, which, so far from impairing interest in what he has
written, has lent it a really pleasing piquancy. He thus records one
of his trips: “The next morning after I had celebrated Mass at the St.
Joseph’s, I started on foot for Baltimore, without saying a word to
anybody, to speak to the Archbishop.… Stopped at Tancytown at Father
Lochi’s, and got something to eat. At Winchester found out that I had
not a penny in my pocket, and was obliged to get my dinner on credit.…
In going I read three hundred and eighty-eight pages in Anquetil’s
history of France; … fourteen pages of Cicero _De Officiis_; three
chapters in the New Testament; my Office; recited the chapelet three
times.” As a worker he was indefatigable; nay, he courted toil, and
the prospect of a long and arduous missionary service filled him with
delight. Not content with preaching, administering the sacraments, and
visiting the sick and poor, he was constantly drawing on his unbounded
mental resources for magazine articles, controversial, philosophic,
and historical. He longed to spread the light of truth everywhere, and
to refute error and recall the erring was the chief charm of his life.
He had early formed the habit of committing to paper whatever
particularly impressed him, and recommended this practice to all
students as the most effectual mnemonic help, and as accustoming them
to precision and exactness. His admirable notes on the French
Revolution were the normal outcome of the habit of close observation
which this practice engendered. Nothing escaped his notice, and the
slightest meritorious act on the part of a friend or acquaintance drew
from him the most gracious encomiums, whilst the reproval of faults
was always governed by extreme consideration and charity. Consecrated
first Bishop of Vincennes, much against his will, he entered on his
new field of labor with the same zeal and love of duty which had
characterized him as missionary and teacher at Mt. St. Mary’s. The
limitless distances he had to travel over in his infant diocese never
daunted him. Four or five hundred miles on horseback, over prairie and
woodland, had no terrors for him, who bore a light heart and an ever
cheerful soul within him, praising and blessing God at every step for
thus allowing him to do what was pleasing to the divine will. What he
most regretted was his separation from the friends he left behind at
Mt. St. Mary’s. He had a Frenchman’s love of places as well as of
persons, and he accordingly suffered much from the French complaint of
nostalgia, or home-sickness. But nothing with him stood in the way of
duty; and when the _fiat_ was pronounced, he went on his new way
rejoicing. His memory will grow among us “as a fair olive-tree in
plains, and as a plane-tree by the waters”; “like a palm-tree in
Cades, and as a rose-plant in Jericho.” When such another comes among
us, our prayer should be, _Serus in cælum redeas_.
The Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore has honored himself by thus
honoring the memory of a saintly bishop; and whoever knows the graces
of style which the fluent pen of Archbishop Bayley distils will not
delay a moment in obtaining this delightful volume.
THE VOICE OF CREATION AS A WITNESS TO THE MIND OF ITS DIVINE AUTHOR.
Five Lectures. By Frederick Canon Oakeley, M.A. London: Burns &
Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This little volume bears the undoubted impress of a high reverence for
the Creator. It is not a mere refutation of atheistical opinions, as
is the celebrated work of Paley, but an eloquent tribute to the divine
beneficence as made manifest in the works of nature. Everywhere and in
all things the author, looking through the eyes of faith, beholds the
finger of God――not alone in those marvels of skill and design in which
the animal and vegetable worlds abound, but in those apparent
anomalies which the unseeing and unreflecting multitude often
pronounce to be the dismal proofs of purposelessness. Canon Oakeley,
however, is not a mere pietist, but a highly cultured, scientific man
withal, and so grapples with the latest objections of godless
philosophers, and disposes of them in a satisfactory manner. In his
letter of approbation his Eminence Cardinal Manning thus expresses
himself: “The argument of the third lecture on the ‘Vestiges of the
Fall’ seems to me especially valuable. I confess the prevalence of
evil, physical and moral, has never seemed to me any real argument
against the goodness of the Creator, except on the hypothesis that
mankind has no will, or that the will of man is not free.… If the
freedom of the will has made the world actually unhappy, the original
creation of God made it both actually and potentially happy.… What God
made man marred.” His Eminence pronounces the book to be both
“convincing and persuasive,” with which high approval we commend it to
the attention of our readers.
UNION WITH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN HIS PRINCIPAL MYSTERIES. For all
seasons of the year. By the Rev. F. John Baptist Saint Jure, S.J.
New York: Sadlier & Co. 1876.
Father Saint Jure flourished in the seventeenth century and is known
as the author of several spiritual works. The present volume, which is
a good translation of one of these works, published in a neat and
convenient form, is intended as a help to meditation during the
various seasons of the ecclesiastical year. It is very well adapted
for that purpose――simple, brief, easy of use, and in every way
practical.
REAL LIFE. By Madame Mathilde Froment. Translated from the French by
Miss Newlin. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.
Real life is, generally speaking, a dull enough thing to depict. The
living of a good Christian family life has nothing outwardly heroic in
it, however much heroism there may be, and indeed must be, concealed
under the constant calm of its exterior. For Christianity, in its
smallest phase, is eminently heroic. It is just such a life that
Madame Froment has taken up in the present volume, and out of it she
has constructed a useful and, on the whole, an interesting narrative.
The narrator is the heroine, who begins jotting down her experiences,
hopes, thoughts, aspirations, while still a girl within the convent
walls. On the twenty third page she is married, and thenceforth she
gives us the story of her married life, its crosses and trials as well
as its pleasures. The whole story is told in the first person, and in
the form of a diary. This is rather a trying method, especially as in
the earlier portions of the narrative Madame Froment scarcely catches
the free, thoughtless spirit, the freshness and _naïveté_ of a young
girl just out of a convent and entering the world. Then, too, many of
the entries in the diary are remarkable for nothing but their brevity.
Of course this may be a very good imitation of a diary, but too
frequent indulgence in such practice is likely to make a very poor
book. As the narrative advances, however, the interest deepens, and
the whole will be found worthy of perusal. The translation, with the
exception of an occasional localism, is free, vigorous, and happy.
SILVER PITCHERS AND INDEPENDENCE. A Centennial Love-Story. By Louisa
M. Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
Of course our Centennial would not be complete without its Centennial
literature. We have had odes, poems, and all manner of bursts of song
which might have been better, judged from a literary point of view,
but which all possess the one undeniable character of genuine and
unbounded enthusiasm. It was but proper, therefore, that we should
have some Centennial story telling, and we are glad that the task has
fallen into no worse hands then those of Miss Alcott. This lady has
already recommended herself to the reading public by a series of
fresh, sprightly, and very readable little volumes. She tells a story
well. She is not pretentious, yet never low, and the English has not
suffered at her hands. Of late it has somehow become the vogue among
so-called popular writers to supply true tact and the power to enlist
interest by a sort of _double-entendre_ style which, if it does not
run into downright indecency, is at least prurient; and, alas! that we
should have to say that our lady writers especially lay themselves
open to this charge.
To our own credit be it said that this reprehensible manner of writing
is more common in England than among ourselves. Miss Alcott has
avoided these faults; and in saying this we consider we have said much
in her praise. Her _Silver Pitchers_ is a charming little temperance
story told in her best vein. It is somewhat New-Englandish, but that
has its charms for some――ourselves, we must confess, among the number.
Pity Miss Alcott could not understand that there are higher and nobler
motives for temperance than the mere impulse it gives to worldly
success and the desire to possess a good name. The siren cup will
never be effectually dashed aside by the tempted ones till prayer and
supernatural considerations come to their assistance.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 140.――NOVEMBER, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
THOUGHTS ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY.
St. John of the Cross, in commenting on these two lines of the
thirty-ninth stanza of his _Spiritual Canticle_:
“The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,”
gives us a definition of mystical theology. “‘In the serene
night’――that is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold
the grove (God as the Creator and Giver of life to all creatures). It
is called night because contemplation is obscure, and that is the
reason why it is also called mystical theology――that is, the secret or
hidden wisdom of God, wherein God, without the sound of words _or the
intervention of any bodily or spiritual sense_, as it were in silence
and repose, in the darkness of sense and nature, teaches the soul――and
the soul knows not how――in a most secret and hidden way. Some
spiritual writers call this ‘understanding without understanding,’
because it does not take place in what philosophers call the active
intellect (_intellectus agens_), which is conversant with the forms,
fancies, and apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the
intellect as it is passive (_intellectus possibilis_), which, without
receiving such forms, receives passively only the substantial
intelligence of them, free from all imagery.”[35]
Father Baker explains mystic contemplation as follows: “In the second
place, there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly and
properly such, by which a soul, without discoursings and curious
speculations, without any _perceptible use_ of the internal senses or
sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the
mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and
incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in
him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good.… This is
properly the exercise of angels, for their knowledge is not by
discourse (discursive), but by one simple intuition all objects are
represented to their view at once with all their natures, qualities,
relations, dependencies, and effects; but man, that receives all his
knowledge first from his senses, can only by effects and outward
appearances with the labor of reasoning collect the nature of objects,
and this but imperfectly; but his reasoning being ended, then he can
at once contemplate all that is known unto him in the object.… This
mystic contemplation or union is of two sorts: 1. Active and
ordinary.… 2. Passive and extraordinary; the which is not a state, but
an actual grace and favor from God.… And it is called passive, not but
that therein the soul doth actively contemplate God, but she can
neither, when she pleases, dispose herself thereto, nor yet refuse it
when that God thinks good to operate after such a manner in the soul,
and to represent himself unto her _by a divine particular image, not
at all framed by the soul, but supernaturally infused into her_.… As
for the former sort, which is active contemplation, we read in mystic
authors――Thaulerus, Harphius, etc.――that he that would become
spiritual ought to practise the drawing of his external senses
inwardly into his internal, there losing and, as it were, annihilating
them. Having done this, he must then draw his internal senses into the
superior powers of the soul, and there annihilate them likewise; and
those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is
called their unity, which is the principle and fountain from whence
those powers do flow, and in which they are united. And, lastly, that
unity (which alone is capable of perfect union with God) must be
applied and firmly fixed on God; and herein, say they, consist the
perfect divine contemplation and union of an intellectual soul with
God. Now, whether such expressions as these will abide the strict
examination of philosophy or no I will not take on me to determine;
certain it is that, by a frequent and constant exercise of internal
prayer of the will, joined with mortification, the soul comes to
operate more and more abstracted from sense, and more elevated above
the corporal organs and faculties, so drawing nearer to the
resemblance of the operations of an angel or separated spirit. Yet
this abstraction and elevation (perhaps) are not to be understood as
if the soul in these pure operations had no use at all of the internal
senses or sensible images (for the schools resolve that cannot consist
with the state of a soul joined to a mortal body); but surely her
operations in this pure degree of prayer are so subtile and intime,
and the images that she makes use of so exquisitely pure and
immaterial, that she cannot perceive at all that she works by images,
so that spiritual writers are not much to be condemned by persons
utterly inexperienced in these mystic affairs, if, delivering things
as they perceived by their own experience, they have expressed them
otherwise than will be admitted in the schools.”[36]
That kind of contemplation which is treated of in mystical theology
is, therefore, a state or an act of the mind in which the intellectual
operation approaches to that of separate spirits――that is, of human
souls separated from their bodies, and of pure spirits or angels who
are, by their essence unembodied, simply intellectual beings. Its
direct and chief object is God, other objects being viewed in their
relation to him. The end of it is the elevation of the soul above the
sphere of the senses and the sensible world into a more spiritual
condition approaching the angelic, in which it is closely united with
God, and prepared for the beatific and deific state of the future and
eternal life. The longing after such a liberation from the natural and
imperfect mode of knowing and enjoying the sovereign good, the
sovereign truth, the sovereign beauty, through the senses and the
discursive operations of reason, is as ancient and as universal among
men as religion and philosophy. It is an aspiration after the
invisible and the infinite. When it is not enlightened, directed, and
controlled by a divine authority, it drives men into a kind of
intellectual and spiritual madness, produces the most extravagant
absurdities in thought and criminal excesses in conduct, stimulates
and employs as its servants all the most cruel and base impulses of
the disordered passions, and disturbs the whole course of nature.
Demons are fallen angels who aspired to obtain their deification
through pride, and the fall of man was brought about through an
inordinate and disobedient effort of Eve to become like the gods,
knowing good and evil. An inordinate striving to become like the
angels assimilates man to the demons, and an inordinate striving after
a similitude to God causes a relapse into a lower state of sin than
that in which we are born. The history of false religions and
philosophies furnishes a series of illustrations of this statement. In
the circle of nominal Christianity, and even within the external
communion of the Catholic Church, heretical and false systems of a
similar kind have sprung up, and the opinions and writings of some who
were orthodox and well-intentioned in their principles have been
tinctured with such errors, or at least distorted in their verbal
expression of the cognate truths. This remark applies not only to
those who are devotees of a mystical theology more or less erroneous,
but also to certain philosophical writers with their disciples.
Ontologism is a kind of mystical philosophy; for its fundamental
doctrine ascribes to man a mode of knowledge which is proper only to
the purely intellectual being, and even a direct, immediate intuition
of God which is above the natural power not only of men but of angels.
There are two fundamental errors underlying all these false systems of
mystical theology――or more properly theosophy――and philosophy. One is
distinctively anti-theistic, the other distinctively anti-Christian;
but we may class both under one logical species with the common
_differentia_ of denial of the real essence and personality, and the
real operation _ad extra_, of the Incarnate Word. The first error
denies his divine nature and creative act, the second his human nature
and theandric operation. By the first error identity of substance in
respect to the divine nature and all nature is asserted; by the
second, identity of the human nature and its operation with that
nature which is purely spiritual. The first error manifests itself as
a perversion of the revealed and Catholic doctrine of the deification
of the creature in and through the Word, by teaching that it becomes
one with God in its mode of being by absorption into the essence whose
emanation it is, in substantial unity. The second manifests itself by
teaching that the instrumentality and the process of this unification
are purely spiritual. The first denies the substantiality of the soul
and the proper activity which proceeds from it and constitutes its
life. The second denies the difference of the human essence as a
composite of spirit and body, which separates it from purely spiritual
essences and marks it as a distinct species. The first error is
pantheism; for the second we cannot think of any designating term more
specific than idealism. Both these errors, however disguised or
modified may be the forms they assume, conduct logically to the
explicit denial of the Catholic faith, and even of any form of
positive doctrinal Christianity. Their extreme developments are to be
found outside of the boundaries of all that is denominated Christian
theology. Within these boundaries they have developed themselves more
or less imperfectly into gross heresies, and into shapes of erroneous
doctrine which approach to or recede from direct and palpable heresy
in proportion to the degree of their evolution. Our purpose is not
directly concerned with any of the openly anti-Christian forms of
these errors, but only with such as have really infected or have been
imputed to the doctrines and writings of mystical authors who were
Catholics by profession, and have flourished within the last four
centuries. There is a certain more or less general and sweeping charge
made by some Catholic authors of reputation, and a prejudice or
suspicion to some extent among educated Catholics, against the German
school of mystics of the epoch preceding the Reformation, that they
prepared the way by their teaching for Martin Luther and his
associates. This notion of an affinity between the doctrine of some
mystical writers and Protestantism breeds a more general suspicion
against mystical theology itself, as if it undermined or weakened the
fabric of the external, visible order and authority of the church
through some latent, unorthodox, and un-Catholic element of
spiritualism. We are inclined to think, moreover, that some very
zealous advocates of the scholastic philosophy apprehend a danger to
sound psychological science from the doctrine of mystic contemplation
as presented by the aforesaid school of writers. Those who are
canonized saints, indeed, as St. Bonaventure and St. John of the
Cross, cannot be censured, and their writings must be treated with
respect. Nevertheless, they may be neglected, their doctrine ignored,
and, through misapprehension or inadvertence, their teachings may be
criticised and assailed when presented by other authors not canonized
and approved by the solemn judgment of the church; and thus mystical
theology itself may suffer discredit and be undervalued. It is
desirable to prove that genuine mystical theology has no affinity with
the Protestant heresies which subvert the visible church with its
authority, or those of idealistic philosophy, but is, on the contrary,
in perfect harmony with the dogmatic and philosophical doctrine of the
most approved Catholic schools. It is only a modest effort in that
direction which we can pretend to make, with respect chiefly to the
second or philosophical aspect of the question. We must devote,
however, a few paragraphs to its first or theological aspect.
From the mystery of the Incarnation necessarily follows the
substantial reality of human nature as a composite of spirit and body,
the excellence and endless existence, in its own distinct entity, not
only of the spiritual but also of the corporeal part of man and of the
visible universe to which he belongs as being an embodied spirit. The
theology which springs out of this fundamental doctrine teaches a
visible church, existing as an organic body with visible priesthood,
sacrifice, sacraments, ceremonies, and order, as mediums subordinate
to the theandric, mediatorial operation of the divine Word acting
through his human nature. Sound philosophy, which is in accordance
with theology, teaches also that the corporeal life and sensitive
operation of man is for the benefit of his mind and his intellectual
operation. He is not a purely intellectual being, but a rational
animal. He must therefore derive his intelligible species or ideas by
abstraction from sensible species furnished by the corporeal world to
the senses, and then proceed by a discursive process of reasoning from
these general ideas to investigate the particular objects apprehended
by his faculties. False theology denies or undervalues the being of
the created universe or the corporeal part of it. Under the pretence
of making way for God it would destroy the creature, and, to exalt the
spiritual part of the universe, reduce to nothing that part which is
corporeal. Hence the denial of the visible church, the sacraments, the
Real Presence, the external sacrifice and worship, the value of
reason, the merit of good works, the essential goodness of nature, and
the necessity of active voluntary co-operation by the senses and the
mind with the Spirit of God in attaining perfection. The corporeal
part of man, and the visible world to which it belongs, are regarded
as unreal appearances, or as an encumbrance and impediment, at the
best but temporary provisions for the earliest, most imperfect stage
of development.
Some of the German mystics, especially Eckhardt and the author of the
_Theologia Germanica_, undoubtedly prepared the way for the errors of
Luther and the pantheists who followed him. But the doctors of mystic
theology, the canonized saints of the church and their disciples, have
invariably taught that as the human nature of Christ is for ever
essentially and substantially distinct from the divine nature in the
personal union, so much more the beatified, in their separate
personalities, remain for ever distinct in essence and substance from
God. So, also, as they teach that the body of Christ is immortal and
to be adored for ever with the worship of _latria_, they maintain that
the union of the soul with the body and the existence of corporeal
things is for the advantage of the soul, and perpetual. It is only by
comparison with supernatural life in God that natural life is
depreciated by the Catholic mystics, and by comparison with the
spiritual world that the corporeal world is undervalued. In a word,
all things which are created and visible, even the humanity of the
Word, are only mediums and instruments of the Holy Spirit; all nature
is only a pedestal for grace; and the gifts and operations of grace
are only for the sake of the beatific union with Christ in the Holy
Spirit, in whom he is one with the Father. All things, therefore, are
to be valued and employed for their utility as means to the final end,
but not as ends in themselves; and, consequently, the lower are to
give place to the higher, the more remote to the proximate, and that
which is inferior in nature is to be wholly subordinated to that which
is highest. Mystical theology is in doctrine what the lives of the
great saints have been in practice. Neither can be blamed without
impiety; and when the actions or doctrines of those whose lives or
writings have not received solemn sanction from the church are
criticised, it must be done by comparing them with the speculative and
practical science of the saints as a standard.
The psychological doctrine of the doctors and other canonized authors
who have treated scientifically of the nature of mystic contemplation,
is not, however, placed above all critical discussion. A few important
questions excepted, upon which the supreme authority of the Holy See
has pronounced a judgment, the theory of cognition is an open area of
discussion, and therefore explanations of the phenomena of the
spiritual life, given by any author in accordance with his own
philosophical system, may be criticised by those who differ from him
in opinion. Those who follow strictly the psychology of St. Thomas, as
contained in modern writers of the later Thomistic school, may easily
be led by their philosophical opinions to suspect and qualify as
scientifically untenable the common language of mystical writers. The
passage quoted from Father Baker at the head of this article will
furnish an illustration of our meaning. Those who are familiar with
metaphysics will understand at once where the apparent opposition
between scholastic psychology and mystical theology is found. For
others it may suffice to explain that, in the metaphysics of the
Thomists, no origin of ideas is recognized except that which is called
abstraction from the sensible object, and that the precise difference
of the human mind in respect to the angelic intellect is that the
former is naturally turned to the intelligible in a sensible phantasm
or image, whereas the latter is turned to the purely intelligible
itself. Now, as soon as one begins to speak of a mode of contemplation
similar to that of the angels――a contemplation of God and divine
things without the intervention of images――he passes beyond the known
domain of metaphysics, and appears to be waving his wings for a flight
in the air, instead of quietly pacing the ground with the
peripatetics.
Now, assuming the Thomistic doctrine of the origin of ideas and the
specific nature of human cognition to be true, it is worthy of careful
inquiry how the statements of mystical authors respecting infused
contemplation are to be explained in accordance with this system. We
cannot prudently assume that there is a repugnance between them.
Practically, St. Thomas was one of those saints who have made the
highest attainments in mystic contemplation. He is the “Angelical,”
and the history of his life shows that he was frequently, and towards
the close of his life almost habitually, rapt out of the common sphere
of the senses, so as to take no notice of what went on before his eyes
or was uttered in his hearing. His last act as an instructor in divine
wisdom was an exposition of the Canticle of Solomon to the monks of
Fossa Nuova, and he could no doubt have explained according to his own
philosophical doctrine all the facts and phenomena of mystic
contemplation, so far as these can be represented in human language.
There cannot be any sufficient reason, therefore, to regard the two as
dissonant or as demanding either one any sacrifice of the other.
In respect to the purely passive and supernatural contemplation, there
seems, indeed, to be no difficulty whatsoever in the way. There is no
question of an immediate intuition of the divine essence in this
ecstatic state, so that, even if the soul is supposed to be raised for
a time to an equality with angels in its intellectual acts, the errors
of false mysticism and ontologism are excluded from the hypothesis.
For even the angels have no such natural intuition. That the human
intellect should receive immediately from angels or from God infused
species or ideas by which it becomes cognizant of realities behind the
veil of the sensible, and contemplates God through a more perfect
glass than that of discursive reason, does not in any way interfere
with the psychology of scholastic metaphysics. For the cause and mode
are professedly supernatural. In the human intellect of our Lord, the
perfection of infused and acquired knowledge, the beatific vision and
the natural sensitive life common to all men co-existed in perfect
harmony. It is even probable that Moses, the Blessed Virgin, and St.
Paul enjoyed temporary glimpses of the beatific vision. Therefore,
although it is true that, without a miracle, no mere man “can see God
and live,” and that the ecstasies of the saints, in which there is no
intuitive vision of the divine essence, but only a manifestation of
divine things, naturally tend to extinguish bodily life, yet, by the
power of God, the operations of the natural life can be sustained in
conjunction with those which are supernatural, because they are not
essentially incongruous. The only question is one of fact and
evidence. Whatever may be proved to take place in souls so highly
elevated, philosophy has no objection to offer; for these things are
above the sphere of merely human and rational science.
The real matter of difficult and perplexing investigation relates to
certain abnormal or preternatural phenomena, which seem to indicate a
partial liberation of the soul from the conditions of organic life and
union with the body, and to that state of mystic contemplation which
is called active or acquired. In these cases there is no liberty
allowed us by sound theology or philosophy of resorting to the
supernatural in its strict and proper sense. We are restricted to the
sphere of the nature of man and the operations which can proceed from
it or be terminated to it according to the natural laws of its being.
There is one hypothesis, very intelligible and perfectly in accordance
with psychology, which will remove all difficulty out of the way, if
only it is found adequate to explain all the certain and probable
facts and phenomena which have to be considered. Father Baker
furnishes this explanation as a probable one, and it no doubt amply
suffices for the greatest number of instances. That is to say, we may
suppose that whenever the mind seems to act without any species,
image, or idea, originally presented through the medium of the senses,
and by a pure, spiritual intuition, it is really by a subtile and
imperceptible image which it has elaborated by an abstractive and
discursive process, and which exists in the imagination, that the
intellect receives the object which it contemplates.
But let us suppose that this hypothesis is found insufficient to
explain all the facts to which it must be applied. Can it be admitted,
without prejudice to rational psychology, that the soul may, by an
abnormal condition of its relations to the body, or as the result of
its efforts and habits, whether for evil or good, lawfully or
unlawfully, escape from its ordinary limits in knowing and acting, and
thus draw nearer to the state of separate spirits?
We must briefly consider what is the mode of knowing proper to
separate spirits before we can find any data for answering this
question. Here we avail ourselves of the explication of the doctrine
of St. Thomas given by Liberatore in his interesting treatise on the
nature of man entitled _Dell’Uomo_.[37]
St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, teaches that in the creation, the
divine idea in the Word was communicated in a twofold way, spiritual
and corporeal. In the latter mode this light was made to reverberate
from the visible universe. In the former it was made to shine in the
superior and intellectual beings――that is, the angels――producing in
them ideally all that which exists in the universe really. As they
approximate in intelligence to God, these ideas or intelligible
species by which they know all things have a nearer resemblance to the
Idea in the Divine Word――that is, approach to its unity and simplicity
of intuition――are fewer and more general. As their grade of
intelligence is more remote from its source, they depart to a greater
and greater distance from this unity by the increasing multiplicity of
their intelligible species. Moreover, the inferior orders are
illuminated by those which are superior; that is, these higher beings
present to them a higher ideal universe than their own, and are as if
reflectors or mirrors of the divine ideas, by which they see God
mediately in his works. The human soul, being the lowest in the order
of intelligent spirits, is not capable of seeing objects distinctly,
even in the light of the lowest order of angels. It is made with a
view to its informing an organized body, and it is aided by the bodily
senses and organic operations to come out of the state of a mere
capacity of intelligence, in which it has no innate or infused ideas,
into actual intelligence. It is naturally turned, as an embodied
spirit, to inferior objects, to single, visible things, for the
material term of its operation, and from these abstracts the universal
ideas which are the principles of knowledge. The necessity of turning
to these sensible phantasms is therefore partly the inchoate state of
the intelligence of man at the beginning of his existence, partly its
essential inferiority, and, in addition, the actual union of the soul
with the body. There is, however, in the soul, a power, albeit
inferior to that of angels, of direct, intellectual vision and
cognition, without the instrumentality of sensation. When the soul
leaves the body and goes into the state of a separate spirit, it has
the intuition of its own essence, it retains all its acquired ideas,
and it has a certain dim and confused perception of higher spiritual
beings and the ideas which are in them. It is therefore, in a certain
sense, more free and more perfect in its intellectual operation in the
separate state than it was while united with the body. All this
proceeds without taking into account in the least that supernatural
light of glory which enables a beatified spirit to see the essence of
God, and in him to see the whole universe.
We see from the foregoing that the necessity for using sensible images
in operations of the intellect does not arise from an intrinsic,
essential incapacity of the human mind to act without them. As Father
Baker says, and as Liberatore distinctly asserts after St. Thomas, it
is “the state of a soul joined to a mortal body” which impedes the
exercise of a power inherent and latent in the very nature of the
soul, as a form which is in and by itself substantial and capable of
self-subsistence and action in a separate state. Remove the impediment
of the body, and the spirit starts, like a spring that has been
weighted down, into a new and immortal life and activity. The curtain
has dropped, and it is at once in the world of spirits. The earth,
carrying with it the earthly body, drops down from the ascending soul,
as it does from an aeronaut going up in a balloon. “Animæ, secundum
illum modum essendi, quo corpori est unita, competit modus
intelligendi per conversionem ad phantasmata corporum, quæ in
corporeis organis sunt. Cum autem fuerit a corpore separata, competit
ei modus intelligendi per conversionem ad ea, quæ sunt intelligibilia
simpliciter, sicut et aliis substantiis separatis”――“To the soul, in
respect to the mode of being by union with a body, belongs a mode of
understanding by turning toward the phantasms of bodies which are in
the bodily organs. But when it is separated from the body, a mode of
understanding belongs to it in common with other separate substances,
by turning toward things simply intelligible.”[38] “Hujusmodi
perfectionem recipiunt animæ separatæ a Deo, mediantibus
angelis”――“This kind of perfection the separate souls receive from God
through the mediation of angels.”[39] “Quando anima erit a corpore
separata plenius percipere poterit influentiam a superioribus
substantiis, quantum ad hoc quod per hujusmodi influxum intelligere
poterit absque phantasmate _quod modo non potest_”――“When the soul
shall be separated from the body, it will be capable of receiving
influence from superior substances more fully, inasmuch as by an
influx of this kind it can exercise intellectual perception without a
phantasm, _which in its present state it cannot do_.” This language of
St. Thomas and other schoolmen explains the hesitation of Father Baker
in respect to certain statements of mystical authors, especially
Harphius. He says, as quoted above: “This abstraction and elevation
(perhaps) are not to be understood as if the soul in these pure
operations had no use at all of _the internal senses or sensible
images_ (for the schools resolve that cannot consist with the state of
a soul joined to a mortal body).” He says “perhaps,” which shows that
he was in doubt on the point. The precise question we have raised is
whether there is reason for this doubt in the shape of probable
arguments, or conjectures not absolutely excluded by sound philosophy.
The point to be considered, namely, is whether the reception of this
influx and the action of the intellect without the medium of sensible
images is made absolutely impossible, unless by a miracle, by the
union of the soul and body. It is a hindrance, and ordinarily a
complete preventive of this kind of influx from the spiritual world
into the soul, and this kind of activity properly belonging to a
separate spirit. But we propose the conjectural hypothesis that there
may be, in the first place, some kind of extraordinary and abnormal
condition of the soul, in which the natural effect of the union with a
body is diminished, or at times partially suspended. In this condition
the soul would come in a partial and imperfect manner, and quite
involuntarily, into immediate contact with the world of spirits,
receive influences from it, and perceive things imperceptible to the
senses and the intellect acting by their aid as its instruments. In
the second place, that it is possible to bring about this condition
unlawfully, to the great damage and danger of the soul by voluntarily
yielding to or courting preternatural influences, and thus coming into
immediate commerce with demons. In the third place, that it is
possible, lawfully, for a good end and to the soul’s great benefit, to
approximate to the angelical state by abstractive contemplation,
according to the description given by Harphius and quoted by Father
Baker. As for passive, supernatural contemplation, it is not possible
for the soul to do more than prepare itself for the visitation of the
divine Spirit with his lights and graces. In this supernatural
condition it is more consonant to the doctrine of St. John of the
Cross, who was well versed in scholastic metaphysics and theology; of
St. Teresa, whose wisdom is called by the church in her solemn office
“celestial”; and to what we know of the exalted experience of the most
extraordinary saints, to suppose that God acts on the soul through the
intermediate agency of angels, and also immediately by himself,
without any concurrence of the imagination or the active intellect and
its naturally-acquired forms. The quotation from St. John of the Cross
at the head of this article, if carefully reperused and reflected on,
will make this statement plain, and intelligible at least to all those
who have some tincture of scholastic metaphysics.
There are many facts reported on more or less probable evidence, and
extraordinary phenomena, belonging to diabolical and natural
mysticism, which receive at least a plausible explanation on the same
hypothesis. To refer all these to subjective affections of the
external or internal senses and the imagination does not seem to be
quite sufficient for their full explanation. It appears like bending
and straining the facts of experience too violently, for the sake of a
theory which, perhaps, is conceived in too exclusive and literal a
sense. At all events it is worth investigation and discussion whether
the _dictum_ of St. Thomas, _intelligere absque phantasmate modo non
potest_, does not admit of and require some modification, by which it
is restricted to those intellectual perceptions which belong to the
normal, ordinary condition of man within the limits of the purely
natural order.
[35] Complete works, vol. iii. p. 208.
[36] _Sancta Sophia_, treatise iii. sec. iv. chap. i. par.
5-12.
[37] _Dell’Uomo._ Trattato del P. Matteo Liberatore,
D.C.D.G. Vol. ii. Dell’Anima Humana, seconda ed. corretta ed
accresciuta. Roma. Befani: Via delle Stimate 23, 1875. Capo
x. Dell’Anima separata dal Corpo.
[38] _Summ. Theol._, i. p. qu. 89, art i.
[39] Qq. disp. ii. _de Anima_, art. 19 ad 13.
AVILA.
Mira tu muro dichoso
Que te rodea y corona,
Pues de tantos victorioso!
Mverece (en triumpho glorioso),
Cada almena su corona.
――_Ariz grandezas de Avila._
It was on the 31st of January, 1876, we left the Escorial to visit the
_muy leal, muy magnifica, y muy noble_ city of Avila――_Avila de los
Caballeros_, once famed for its valiant knights, and their daring
exploits against the Moors, but whose chief glory now is that it is
the birthplace of St. Teresa, whom all Christendom admires for her
genius and venerates for her sanctity.
Keeping along the southern base of the Guadarrama Mountains, whose
snowy summits and gray, rock-strewn sides wore a wild, lonely aspect
that was inexpressibly melancholy, we came at length to a lower
plateau that advances like a promontory between two broad valleys
opening to the north and south. On this eminence stands the
picturesque city of Avila, the Pearl of Old Castile, very much as it
was in the twelfth century. It is full of historic mansions and
interesting old churches that have a solemn architectural grandeur.
One is astonished to find so small a place inland, inactive, and with
no apparent source of wealth, with so many imposing and interesting
monuments. They are all massive and severe, because built in an heroic
age that disdained all that was light and unsubstantial. It is a city
of granite――not of the softer hues that take a polish like marble, but
of cold blue granite, severe and invincible as the steel-clad knights
who built it. The granite houses are built with a solidity that would
withstand many a hard assault; the granite churches, with their
frowning battlements, have the aspect of fortresses; and the granite
convents with their high granite walls look indeed like “citadels of
prayer.” Everything speaks of a bygone age, an age of conflict and
chivalrous deeds, when the city must have been far more wealthy and
powerful than now, to have erected such solid edifices. We are not in
the least surprised to hear it was originally founded by Hercules
himself, or one of the forty of that name to whom so many of the
cities of Spain are attributed. Avila is worthy of being counted among
his labors.
But whoever founded Avila, it afterwards became the seat of a Roman
colony which is mentioned by Ptolemy. It has always been of strategic
importance, being at the entrance to the Guadarrama Mountains and the
Castiles. When Roderick, the last of the Goths, brought destruction on
the land by his folly, Avila was one of the first places seized by the
Moors. This was in 714. After being repeatedly taken and lost, Don
Sancho of Castile finally took it in 992, and the Moors never regained
possession of it. But there were not Christians enough to repeople it,
and it remained desolate eighty-nine years. St. Ferdinand found it
uninhabited when he came from the conquest of Seville. Alonso VI.
finally commissioned his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, to
rebuild and fortify it.
Alonso VI. had already taken the city of Toledo and made peace with
the Moors, but the latter, intent on ruling over the whole of the
Peninsula, soon became unmindful of the treaty. In this new crisis
many foreign knights hastened to acquire fresh renown in this land of
a perpetual crusade. Among the most renowned were Henry of Lorraine;
Raymond de St. Gilles, Count of Toulouse; and Raymond, son of
Guillaume Tête-Hardie of Burgundy, and brother of Pope Calixtus II.
They contributed so much to the triumph of the cross that Alonso gave
them his three daughters in marriage. Urraca (the name of a delicious
pear in Spain) fell to the lot of Raymond of Burgundy, with Galicia
for her portion, and to him was entrusted the task of rebuilding
Avila, the more formidable because it required numerous outposts and a
continual struggle with the Moors. The flower of Spanish knighthood
came to his aid, and the king granted great privileges to all who
would establish themselves in the city. Hewers of wood, stone-cutters,
masons, and artificers of all kinds came from Biscay, Galicia, and
Leon. The king sent the Moors taken in battle to aid in the work. The
bishop in pontificals, accompanied by a long train of clergy, blessed
the outlines traced for the walls, stopping to make special exorcisms
at the spaces for the ten gates, that the great enemy of the human
race might never obtain entrance into the city. The walls were built
out of the ruins left successively behind by the Moors, the Goths, and
the Romans, to say nothing of Hercules. As an old chronicler remarks,
had they been obliged to hew out and bring hither all the materials,
no king would have been able to build such walls. They are forty-two
feet high and twelve feet thick. The so-called towers are rather solid
circular buttresses that add to their strength. These walls were begun
May 3, 1090. Eight hundred men were employed in the work, which was
completed in nine years. They proved an effectual barrier against the
Saracen; the crescent never floated from those towers. How proud the
people are of them is shown by the lines at the head of this sketch:
“Behold the superb walls that surround and crown thee, victorious in
so many assaults! Each battlement deserves a crown in reward for thy
glorious triumphs!”
It was thus this daughter of Hercules rose from the grave where she
had lain seemingly dead so many years. Houses sprang up as by
enchantment, and were peopled so rapidly that in 1093 there were about
thirty thousand inhabitants. The city thus rebuilt and defended by its
incomparable knights merited the name often given it from that time by
the old chroniclers, _Avila de los Caballeros_.
One of these cavaliers, Zurraquin Sancho, the honor and glory of
knighthood, was captain of the country forces around Avila. One day,
while riding over his estate with a single attendant to examine his
herds, he spied a band of Moors returning from a foray into Christian
lands, dragging several Spanish peasants after them in chains. As soon
as Zurraquin was perceived, the captives cried to him for deliverance.
Whereupon, mindful of his knightly vows to relieve the distressed, he
rode boldly up, though but slightly armed, and offered to ransom his
countrymen. The Moors would not consent, and the knight prudently
withdrew. But, as soon as he was out of sight, he alighted to tighten
the girths of his steed, which he then remounted and spurred on by a
different path. In a short time he came again upon the Moors, and
crying “Santiago!” as with the voice of twenty men, he suddenly dashed
into their midst, laying about him right and left so lustily that,
taken unawares, they were thrown into confusion, and, supposing
themselves attacked by a considerable force, fled for their lives,
leaving two of their number wounded, and one dead on the field.
Zurraquin unbound the captives, who had also been left behind, and
sent them away with the injunction to be silent concerning his
exploit.
A few days after, these peasants came to Avila in search of their
benefactor, bringing with them twelve fat swine and a large flock of
hens. Regardless of his parting admonition, they stopped on the Square
of San Pedro, and related how he had delivered them single-handed
against threescore infidels. The whole city soon resounded with so
brave a deed, and Zurraquin was declared a peerless knight. The women
also took up his praises and sang songs in his honor to the sound of
the tambourine:
“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,
E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]
A second band would take up the strain:
“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,
E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]
After rebuilding Avila Count Raymond of Burgundy retired to his
province of Galicia, and, dying March 26, 1107, he was buried in the
celebrated church of Santiago at Compostella. It was his son who
became King of Castile under the name of Alonso VIII., and Avila,
because of its loyalty to him and his successors, acquired a new
name――_Avila del Rey_――among the chroniclers of the time.
But the city bears a title still more glorious than those already
mentioned――that of _Avila de los Santos_. It was in the sixteenth
century especially that it became worthy of this name, when there
gathered about St. Teresa a constellation of holy souls, making the
place a very Carmel, filled with the “sons of the prophets.” _Avila
cantos y santos_――Avila has as many saints as stones――says an old
Spanish proverb, and that is saying not a little. The city has always
been noted for dignity of character and its attachment to the church.
The piety of its ancient inhabitants is attested by the number and
grave beauty of the churches, with their lamp-lit shrines of the
saints and their dusky aisles filled with tombs of the old knights who
fought under the banner of the cross. In St. Teresa’s time it was
honored with the presence of several saints who have been canonized:
St. Thomas of Villanueva, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John of the
Cross, and that holy Spanish grandee, St. Francis Borgia, besides many
other individuals noted for their sanctity. But St. Teresa is the best
type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetly austere as the place, as broad
and enlightened as the vast horizon that bounds it, and fervid as its
glowing sun.
“You mustn’t say anything against St. Teresa at Avila,” said the
inevitable Englishmen we met an hour after our arrival.
“We are by no means disposed to, here or anywhere else,” was our
reply. On the contrary, we regarded her, with Mrs. Jameson, as “the
most extraordinary woman of her age and country”; nay, “who would have
been a remarkable woman in _any_ age or country.” We had seen her
statue among the fathers of the church in the first Christian temple
in the world, with the inscription: _Sancta Teresa, Mater
spiritualis_. We had read her works, written in the pure Castilian for
which Avila is noted, breathing the imagination of a poet and the
austerity of a saint, till we were ready to exclaim with Crashawe:
“Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!”
and we had come to Avila expressly to offer her the tribute of our
admiration. Here she reigns, to quote Miss Martineau’s words, “as true
a queen on this mountain throne as any empress who ever wore a crown!”
At this very moment we were on our way to visit the places associated
with her memory. A few turns more through the narrow, tortuous
streets, and we came to the ponderous gateway of San Vicente on the
north side of the city, so named from the venerable church just
without the walls, beloved of archæologists. But for the moment it had
no attraction for us; for below, in the broad, sunny valley, we could
see the monastery of the Incarnation, a place of great interest to the
Catholic heart. There it was that St. Teresa, young and beautiful,
took the veil and spent more than thirty years of her life. The first
glimpse of it one can never forget; and, apart from the associations,
the ancient towers of San Vicente on the edge of the hill, the fair
valley below with its winding stream and the convent embosomed among
trees, and the mountains that girt the horizon, made up a picture none
the less lovely for being framed in that antique gateway. We went
winding down to the convent, perhaps half a mile distant, by the
_Calle de la Encarnacion_. No sweeter, quieter spot could be desired
in which to end one’s days. It is charmingly situated on the farther
side of the Adaja, and commands a fine view of Avila, which, indeed,
is picturesque in every direction. We could count thirty towers in the
city walls as we turned at the convent gate to look back. St. Teresa
stopped in this same archway, Nov. 2, 1533, to bid farewell to her
brother Antonio, who, on leaving her, went to the Dominican convent,
where he took the monastic habit. She was then only eighteen and a
half years old. The inward agony she experienced on entering the
convent she relates with great sincerity, but there was no faltering
in her determination to embrace the higher life. The house had been
founded only about twenty years before, and the first Mass was said in
it the very day she was baptized. That was more than three centuries
ago. Its stout walls may be somewhat grayer, and the alleys of its
large garden more umbrageous, but its general aspect must be very much
the same; for in that dry climate nature does not take so kindly to
man’s handiwork as in the misty north, where the old convents are all
draped with moss and the ivy green. It is less peopled also. In 1550
there were ninety nuns, but now there are not more than half that
number.
There is a series of little parlors, low and dim, with unpainted
beams, and queer old chairs, and two black grates with nearly a yard
between, through which you can converse, as through a tunnel, with the
nuns. They have not been changed since St. Teresa’s time. In one of
these our Lord reproved her for her conversations, which still savored
too much of the world. Here, later in life, St. Francis Borgia came to
see her on his way from the convent of Yuste, where he had been to
visit his kinsman, Charles V. Here she saw St. Peter of Alcantara in
ecstasy. In one of these parlors, now regarded as a sacred spot, she
held her interviews with St. John of the Cross when he was director of
the house. It is related that one day, while he was discoursing here
on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, she was so impressed by his words
that she fell on her knees to listen. In a short time he entered the
ecstatic state, leaving St. Teresa lost in divine contemplation; and
when one of the nuns came with a message, she found them both
suspended in the air! For a moment they ceased to belong to earth, and
its laws did not control them. A picture of this scene hangs on the
wall. In a larger and more cheerful parlor some nuns of very pleasing
manners of the true Spanish type showed us several objects that
belonged to St. Teresa, and some of her embroidery of curious Spanish
work, very nicely done, as we were glad to see; likewise, a Christ
covered with bleeding wounds as he appeared to St. John of the Cross,
and many other touching memorials of the past.
We next visited the church, which is large, with buttressed walls,
low, square towers, and a gabled belfry. The interior is spacious and
lofty, but severe in style. There is a nave, and two short transepts
with a dome rising between them. It is paved with flag-stones, and
plain wooden benches stand against the stone walls. The high altar, at
which St. John of the Cross used to say Mass, has its gilt retable,
with colonnettes and niches filled with the saints of the order, among
whom we remember the prophets who dwelt on Mt. Carmel, and St. Albert,
patriarch of Jerusalem. The nuns’ choir is at the opposite end of the
church. We should say _choirs_; for they have two, one above the
other, with double black grates, which are generally curtained. It was
at the grate of the lower choir, dim and mystic as his _Obscure Night
of the Soul_, that St. John of the Cross used to preach to the nuns.
What sermons there must have been from him who wrote, as never man
wrote, on the upward way from night to light!
The grating of this lower choir has two divisions, between which is a
small square shutter, like the door of a tabernacle, on which is
represented a chalice and Host. It was here St. Teresa received the
Holy Communion for more than thirty years. Here one morning, after
receiving it from the hand of St. John of the Cross, she was
mysteriously affianced to the heavenly Bridegroom, who called her, in
the language of the Canticles, by the sweet name of Spouse, and placed
on her finger the nuptial ring. She was then fifty-seven years of age.
A painting over the communion table represents this supernatural
event.
This choir is also associated with the memory of Eleonora de Cepeda, a
niece of St. Teresa’s, who became a nun at the convent of the
Incarnation. She was remarkable for her detachment from earth, and
died young, an angel of purity and devotion. St. Teresa saw her body
borne to the choir by angels. No Mass of requiem was sung over her. It
was during the Octave of Corpus Christi. The church was adorned as for
a festival. The Mass of the Blessed Sacrament was chanted to the sound
of the organ, and the Alleluia repeatedly sung, as if to celebrate the
entrance of her soul into glory. The dead nun, in the holy habit of
Mt. Carmel, lay on her bier covered with lilies and roses, with a
celestial smile on her pale face that seemed to reflect the beatitude
of her soul. The procession of the Host was made around her, and all
the nuns took a last look at their beautiful sister before she was
lowered into the gloomy vault below.[42]
In the upper choir there is a statue of St. Teresa, dressed as a
Carmelite, in the stall she occupied when prioress of the house. The
nuns often go to kiss the hand as a mark of homage to her memory. The
actual prioress occupies the next stall below.
It will be remembered that St. Teresa passed twenty-nine years in this
convent before she left to found that of San José. She afterwards
returned three years as prioress, when, at her request, St. John of
the Cross (who was born in a small town near Avila) was appointed
spiritual director. Under the direction of these two saints the house
became a paradise filled with souls of such fervor that the heavenly
spirits themselves came down to join in their holy psalmody, according
to the testimony of St. Teresa herself, who saw the stalls occupied by
them.
“The air of Paradise did fan the house,
And angels office all.”
One of St. Teresa’s first acts, on taking charge of the house, was to
place a large statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in the upper choir, and
present her with the keys of the monastery, to indicate that this
womanly type of all that is sweet and heavenly was to be the true
ruler of the house. This statue still retains its place in the choir,
and in its hand are the keys presented by the saint.
The convent garden is surrounded by high walls. It wears the same
smiling aspect as in the saint’s time, but it is larger. The
neighboring house occupied by St. John of the Cross, with the land
around it, has been bought and added to the enclosure. The house has
been converted into an octagon chapel, called the _Ermita de San Juan
de la Cruz_. The unpainted wooden altar was made from a part of St.
Teresa’s cell. In this garden are the flowers and shrubbery she loved,
the almond-trees she planted, the paths she trod. Here are the
oratories where she prayed, the dark cypresses that witnessed her
penitential tears, the limpid water she was never weary of
contemplating――symbol of divine grace and regeneration. St. Teresa’s
love of nature is evident on every page of her writings. She said the
sight of the fields and flowers raised her soul towards God, and was
like a book in which she read his grandeur and benefits. And she often
compared her soul to a garden which she prayed the divine Husbandman
to fill with the sweet perfume of the lowly virtues.
In the right wing of the convent is a little oratory, quiet and
solitary, beloved of the saint, where an angel, all flame, appeared to
the eyes of her soul with a golden arrow in his hand, which he thrust
deep into her heart, leaving it for ever inflamed with seraphic love.
This mystery is honored in the Carmelite Order by the annual festival
of the Transverberation. Art like-wise has immortalized it. We
remember the group by Bernini in the church of Santa Maria della
Vittoria at Rome, in which the divine transport of her soul is so
clearly visible through the pale beauty of her rapt form, which
trembles beneath the fire-tipped dart of the angel. What significance
in this sacred seal set upon her virginal heart, from this time rent
in twain by love and penitence! _Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus,
non despicies!_ was the exclamation of St. Teresa when dying.
The sun was descending behind the proud walls of Avila when we
regained the steep hillside, lighting up the grim towers and crowning
them with splendor. We stopped on the brow, before the lofty portal of
San Vicente, to look at its wreaths of stone and mutilated saints, and
read the story of the rich man and Lazarus so beautifully told in the
arch. Angels are bearing away the soul of the latter on a mantle to
Abraham’s bosom. On the south side of the church is a sunny portico
with light, clustered pillars, filled with tombs, some in niches
covered with emblazonry, others like plain chests of stone set against
the wall. We went down the steps into the church, cold, and dim, and
gray, all of granite and cave-like. The pavement is composed of
granite tombstones covered with inscriptions and coats of arms. There
are granite fonts for the holy water. Old statues, old paintings, and
old inscriptions in Gothic text line the narrow aisles. The windows
are high up in the arches, which were still light, though shadows were
gathering around the tombs below. There was not a soul in the church.
We looked through the _reja_ that divides the nave at the beautiful
Gothic shrine of San Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and
Chrysteta, standing on pillars under a richly-painted canopy, with
curious old lamps burning within, and then went down a long, narrow,
stone staircase into the crypt――of the third century――and kept along
beneath the low, round arches till we came to a chapel where, by the
light of a torch, we saw the bare rock on which the above-mentioned
saints were martyred, and the _Bujo_ out of which the legendary
serpent came to defend their remains when thrown out for the beasts to
devour. This _Bujo_ was long used as a place of solemn adjuration, a
kind of _Bocca de la Verità_, into which the perjurer shrank from
thrusting his hand, but the custom has been discontinued.
The following morning we went to visit the place where St. Teresa was
born. On the way we passed through the Plaza de San Juan, like an
immense cloister with its arcades, which takes its name from the
church on one side, where St. Teresa was baptized. The very font is at
the left on entering――a granite basin fluted diagonally, surrounded by
an iron railing. Over it is her portrait and the following inscription:
Vigesimo octavo Martii
Teresia oborta,
Aprilis ante nona est
sacro hoc fonte
renata
MDXV.
A grim old church for so sweet a flower to first open to the dews of
divine grace in; the baptismal font at one end, and the grave at the
other, with cold, gray arches encircling both like the all-embracing
arms of that great nursing-mother――Death. At each side of the high
altar are low, sepulchral recesses, into which you look down through a
grating at the coroneted tombs, before which lamps hang dimly burning.
Over the altar the Good Shepherd is going in search of his lost lambs,
and at the left is a great, pale Christ on the Cross, ghastly and
terrible in the shadowy, torch-lit arch. The whole church is paved
with tomb-stones, like most of the churches of Avila, as if the idea
of death could never be separated from life. But then, which is death
and which life? Is it not in the womb of the grave we awaken to the
real life?
One of the most popular traditions of Avila is connected with the
Square of San Juan: the defence of the city in 1109 by the heroic
Ximena Blasquez, whose husband, father, and brothers were all valiant
knights. The old governor of the city, Ximenes Blasquez, was dead, and
Ximena’s husband and sons were away fighting on the frontier. The
people, left without rulers and means of defence, came together on the
public square and proclaimed her governor of the place. She accepted
the charge, and proved herself equal to the emergency. Spain at this
time was overrun by the Moors who had come from Africa to the aid of
their brethren. They pillaged and ravaged the country as they went.
Learning the defenceless state of Avila, and supposing it to contain
great riches and many Moorish captives, they resolved to lay siege to
it. Ximena was warned of the danger, and, instantly mounting her
horse, she took two squires and rode forth to the country place of
Sancho de Estrada to summon him to her aid. Sancho, though enfeebled
by illness, was too gallant a knight to turn a deaf ear to the behest
of ladye fair. He did not make his entrance into the city in a very
knightly fashion, however. Instead of coming on his war-horse, all
booted and spurred, and clad in bright armor, he was brought in a cart
on two feather-beds, on the principle of Butler’s couplet, which we
vary to suit the occasion:
“And feather-bed ’twixt knight urbane
And heavy brunt of springless wain.”
In descending at the door of his palace at Avila he unfortunately fell
and was mortally injured, and the vassals he had brought with him
basely fled when they found they had no chastisement to fear.
But the dauntless Ximena was not discouraged. Determined to save the
city, she went from house to house, and street to street, to
distribute provisions, count the men, furnish them with darts and
arrows, and assign their posts. It is mentioned that she took all the
flour she could find at the bishop’s; and Tamara, the Jewess, made her
a present of all the salt meat she had on hand.[43]
On the 3d of July Ximena, hearing the Moors were within two miles of
the city, sent a knight with twenty squires to reconnoitre their camp
and cut off some of the outposts, promising to keep open a postern
gate to admit them at their return. Then she despatched several
trumpeters in different directions to sound their trumpets, that the
Moors might suppose armed forces were at hand for the defence of the
city. This produced the effect she desired. The knight penetrated to
the camp, killed several sentinels, and re-entered Avila by the
postern. Ximena passed the whole night on her palfrey, making the
round of the city, keeping watch on the guards, and encouraging the
men. At dawn she returned to her palace, and, summoning her three
daughters and two daughters-in-law to her presence, she put on a suit
of armor, and, taking a lance in her hand, called upon them to imitate
her, which they did, as well as all the women in the house. Thus
accoutred, they proceeded to the Square of San Juan, where they found
a great number of women weeping and lamenting. “My good friends,” said
Ximena, “follow my example, and God will give you the victory.”
Whereupon they all hastened to their houses, put on all the armor they
could find, and covered their long hair with sombreros. Ximena
provided them with javelins, caltrops, and gabions full of stones, and
with these troops she mounted the walls in order to attack the Moors
when they should arrive beneath.
The Moorish captain, approaching the city, saw it apparently defended
by armed men, and, deceived by the trumpets in the night, supposed the
place had been reinforced. He therefore decided to retreat.
As soon as Ximena found the enemy really gone she descended from the
walls with her daughters and daughters-in-law, distributed provisions
to her troops on the Square of St. John, and, after the necessary
repose, they all went in procession to the church of the glorious
martyrs San Vicente and his sisters, and, returning by the churches of
St. Jago and San Salvador, led Ximena in triumph to the Alcazar. The
fame of her bravery and presence of mind extended all over the land,
and has become the subject of legend and song. A street near the
church of San Juan still bears the name of Ximena Blasquez.
A convent for Carmelite friars was built in the seventeenth century on
the site of St. Teresa’s family mansion, in the western part of Avila.
The church, in the style of the Renaissance, faces a large, sunny
square, on one side of which is a fine old palace with sculptured
doors and windows and emblazoned shields. Near by is the _Posada de
Santa Teresa_. The whole convent is embalmed with her memory. Her
statue is over the door of the church. All through the corridors you
meet her image. The cloisters are covered with frescoes of her life
and that of St. John of the Cross. Over the main altar of the church,
framed in the columns of the gilt retable, is an alto-relievo of St.
Teresa, supported by Joseph and Mary, gazing up with suppliant hands
at our Saviour, who appears with his cross amid a multitude of angels.
The church is not sumptuous, but there is an atmosphere of piety about
it that is very touching. The eight side-chapels are like deep
alcoves, each with some scene of the Passion or the life of the
Virgin. The transept, on the gospel side, constitutes the chapel of
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, from which you enter a little oratory hung
with lamps and entirely covered with paintings, reliquaries, and
gilding, as if art and piety had vied in adorning it. It was on this
spot St. Teresa first saw the light in the year 1515, during the
pontificate of Leo X. A quieter, more secluded spot in which to pray
could not be desired. But Avila is full of such dim, shadowy
oratories, consecrated by some holy memory. Over the altar where Mass
is daily offered is a statue of St. Teresa, sad as the Virgin of Many
Sorrows, representing her as when she beheld the bleeding form of
Christ, her face and one hand raised towards the divine Sufferer, the
other hand on her arrow-pierced breast. She wears a broidered cope and
golden rosary. Among the paintings on the wall are her Espousals, and
Joseph and Mary bringing her the jewelled collar. Two little windows
admit a feeble light into this cell-like solitude. The ceiling is
panelled. Benches covered with blue cloth stand against the wall. And
there are little mirrors under the paintings, in true modern Spanish
taste, to increase the glitter and effect. The De Cepeda coat of arms
and the family tree hang at one end, appropriate enough here. But in
the church family distinctions are laid aside. There only the arms of
the order of Mt. Carmel, St. Teresa’s true family, are emblazoned.
In a little closet of the oratory we were shown some relics of the
saint, among which were her sandals and a staff――the latter too long
to walk with, and with a small crook at the end. It might have been
the emblem of her monastic authority.
Beneath the church are brick vaults full of the bones of the old
friars, into which we could have thrust our hands. Their cells above
are less fortunate. They are tenantless, or without their rightful
inmates; for since the suppression of the monasteries in Spain only
the nuns in Avila have been left unmolested. Here, at St. Teresa’s, a
part of the convent has been appropriated for a normal school. We went
through one of the corridors still in possession of the church. _Ave
Maria, sin peccado concebida_ was on the door of every cell. We
entered one to obtain some souvenir of the place, and found a studious
young priest surrounded by his books and pictures, in a narrow room,
quiet and monastic, with one small window to admit the light.
Then there is the garden full of roses and vines, also sequestered,
where St. Teresa and her brother Rodriguez, in their childhood, built
hermitages, and talked of heaven, and encouraged each other for
martyrdom.
“Scarce has she learned to lisp the name
Of martyr, yet she thinks it shame
Life should so long play with the breath
Which, spent, could buy so brave a death.”
Avila was full of the traditions of the incomparable old knights who
had delivered Spain from the Moor. The chains of the Christian
captives they had freed were suspended on the walls of one of the most
beautiful churches in the land, and those who had fallen victims to
the hate of the infidel were regarded as martyrs. The precocious
imagination of the young Teresa was fired with these tales of chivalry
and Christian endurance. She was barely seven years of age when she
and her brother escaped from home, and took the road to Salamanca to
seek martyrdom among the Moors. We took the same path when we left the
convent. Leaving the city walls, and descending into the valley, we
came to the Adaja, which flows along a narrow defile at the foot of
Avila, over a rocky bed bordered by old mills that have been here from
time immemorial, this faubourg in the middle ages having been
inhabited by dyers, millers, tanners, etc. We crossed the river by the
same massive stone bridge with five arches, and went on and up a sunny
slope, along the same road the would-be martyrs took, through open
fields strewn with huge boulders, till we came to a tall, round
granite cross between four round pillars connected by stone
cross-beams that once evidently supported a dome. This marks the spot
where the children were overtaken by their uncle. The cross bends
over, as if from the northern blasts, and is covered with great
patches of bright green and yellow moss. The best view of Avila is to
be had from this point, and we sat down at the foot of the cross,
among the wild thyme, to look at the picturesque old town of the
middle ages clearly traced out against the clear blue sky――its gray
feudal turrets; its _palacios_, once filled with Spanish valor and
beauty, but now lonely; the strong Alcazar, with its historic
memories; and the numerous towers and belfries crowned by the
embattled walls of the cathedral, that seems at once to protect and
bless the city. St. Teresa’s home is distinctly visible. The Adaja
below goes winding leisurely through the broad, almost woodless
landscape. Across the pale fields, in yonder peaceful valley, is the
convent of the Incarnation, where Teresa’s aspirations for martyrdom
were realized in a mystical sense. Her brother Rodriguez was
afterwards killed in battle in South America, and St. Teresa always
regarded him as a martyr, because he fell in defending the cause of
religion.
The next morning we were awakened at an early hour by the sound of
drum and bugle, and the measured tramp of soldiers over the pebbled
streets. We hurried to the window. It was not a company of phantom
knights fleeing away at the dawn, but the flesh-and-blood soldiers of
Alfonso XII. going to early Mass at the cathedral of San Salvador on
the opposite side of the small square. We hastened to follow their
example.
San Salvador, half church, half fortress, seems expressly built to
honor the God of Battles. Chained granite lions guard the entrance.
Stone knights keep watch and ward at the sculptured doorway. Happily,
on looking up we see the blessed saints in long lines above the
yawning arch, and we enter. The church is of the early pointed style,
though nearly every age has left its impress. All is gray, severe, and
majestic. Its cold aisles are sombre and mysterious, with tombs of
bishops and knights in niches along the wall, where they lie with
folded hands and something of everlasting peace on their still faces.
The heart that shuts its secrets from the glare of sunlight, in these
shadowy aisles unfolds them one by one, as in some mystic Presence,
with vague, dreamy thoughts of something higher, more satisfying, than
the outer world has yet given, or can give. The distant murmur of the
priests at the altars, the twinkling lights, the tinkling bells, the
bowed forms grouped here and there, the holy sculptures on the walls,
all speak to the heart. The painted windows of the nave are high up in
the arches, which are now empurpled with the morning sun. Below, all
dimness and groping for light; above, all clearness and the radiance
of heaven! _Sursum corda!_
The _coro_, as in most Spanish cathedrals, is in the body of the
church, and connected with the _Capilla Mayor_ by a railed passage.
The stalls are beautifully carved. Old choral books stand on the
lecterns ready for service. The outer wall of the choir is covered
with sculptures of the Renaissance representing the great mysteries of
religion, of which we never tire. Though told in every church in
Christendom, they always seem told in a new light, and strike us with
new force, as something too deep for mortal ever to fathom fully. They
are the alphabet of the faith, which we repeat and combine in a
thousand different ways in order to obtain some faint idea of God’s
manifestations to us who see here but darkly.
These mysteries are continued in the magnificent retable of the time
of Ferdinand and Isabella in the _Capilla Mayor_, where they are
richly painted on a gold ground by Berruguete and other famous artists
of the day, and now glorious under the descending morning light. It is
the same sweet Rosary of Love that seems to have caught new lights,
more heavenly hues.
The interesting chapels around the apsis are lighted by small windows
like mere loop-holes cut through walls of enormous thickness. In the
ambulatory we come to the beautiful alabaster tomb of Alfonso de
Madrigal, surnamed _El Tostado_, the tawny, from his complexion, and
_El Abulense_, Abula being the Latin for Avila. He was a writer of
such astonishing productiveness that he left behind him forty-eight
volumes in folio, amounting to sixty thousand pages. It is to be
feared we shall never get time to read them, at least in _this_ world.
He became so proverbial that Don Quixote mentions some book as large
as all the works of _El Tostado_ combined, as if human imagination
could go no farther. Leigh Hunt speaks of some Spanish bishop as
probably writing his homilies in a room ninety feet long! He must have
referred to _El Tostado_. He is represented on his tomb sitting in a
chair, pen in hand, and eyes half closed, as if collecting his
thoughts or listening to the divine inspiration. His jewelled cope,
embroidered with scenes of the Passion, is beautifully carved. Below
him are the Virtues in attendance, as in life, and above are scenes of
Our Lord’s infancy, which he loved. This tomb is one of the finest
works of Berruguete.
Further along we opened a door at a venture, and found ourselves in
the chapel of San Segundo, the first apostle of Avila, covered with
frescoes of his life. His crystal-covered shrine is in the centre,
with an altar on each of the four sides, behind open-work doors of
wrought brass. The chapel was quiet and dim and solemn, with burning
lamps and people at prayer. Then, by another happy turn, we came into
a large cloister with chapels and tombs, where the altar-boys were at
play in their red cassocks and short white tunics. The church bells
now began to ring, and they hurried away, leaving us alone to enjoy
the cloistral shades.
When we went into the church again the service had been commenced, the
_Capilla Mayor_ was hung with crimson and gold, candles were
distributed to the canons, who, in their purple robes, made the round
of the church, the wax dripping on the tombstones that paved the
aisles, and the arches resonant with the dying strains of the aged
Simeon: _Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!_ For it was Candlemas-day.
The cathedral of San Salvador was begun in 1091, on the site of a
former church. The pope, at the request of Alonso VI., granted
indulgences to all who would contribute to its erection. Contributions
were sent, not only from the different provinces of Spain, but from
France and Italy. More than a thousand stone-cutters and carpenters
were employed under the architect Garcia de Estella, of Navarre, and
the building was completed in less than sixteen years.
After breakfast we left the city walls and came out on the Square of
San Pedro, where women were filling their jars at the well in true
Oriental fashion, the air vocal with their gossip and laughter. Groups
of peasant women had come up from the plains for a holiday, and were
sauntering around the square or along the arcades in their gay stuff
dresses, the skirts of which were generally drawn over their heads, as
if to show the bright facings of another color. Yellow skirts were
faced with red peaked with green; red ones faced with green and
trimmed with yellow. When let down, they stood out, in their fulness,
like a farthingale, short enough to show their blue stockings. Their
hair, in flat basket-braids, was looped up behind with gay pins. We
saw several just such glossy black plaits among the votive offerings
in the oratory of St. Teresa’s Nativity.
We stopped awhile in the church of San Pedro, of the thirteenth
century――like all of the churches of Avila, well worth visiting――and
then kept on to the Dominican convent of St. Thomas, a mile distant,
and quite in the country. This vast convent is still one of the finest
monuments about Avila, though deserted, half ruined, and covered with
the garment of sadness. It was here St. Teresa’s brother Antonio
retired from the world and died while in the novitiate. We visited
several grass-grown cloisters with fine, broad arches; the lonely
cells once inhabited by the friars, commanding a fine view over the
rock-strewn moor and the Guadarrama Mountains beyond; the infirmary,
with a sunny gallery for invalids to walk in, and windows in the cells
so arranged opposite each other that all the sick could from their
beds attend Mass said in the oratory at the end; the refectory, with
stone tables and seats, and defaced paintings on the walls; the royal
apartments, looking into a cloister with sculptured arches, and
everywhere the arrows and yoke, emblems of Ferdinand and Isabella; and
the broad stone staircase leading to the church where lies their only
son Juan in his beautifully-sculptured Florentine tomb of alabaster,
now sadly mutilated. On one side of this fine church is a chapel with
the confessional once used by St. Teresa. It was here, on Assumption
day, 1561, while attending Mass, and secretly deploring the offences
she had confessed here, she was ravished in spirit and received a
supernatural assurance that her sins were forgiven her. She was
herself clothed in a garment of dazzling whiteness, and, as a pledge
of the divine favor, a necklace of gold, to which was attached a
jewelled cross of unearthly brilliancy, was placed on her neck. There
is a painting of this vision on one side of the chapel, as well as in
several of the churches of Avila. Mary Most Pure, in all the freshness
of youth, appears with St. Joseph, bearing the garment of purity and
the collar of wrought gold――a sweet yoke of love she received just
before she founded the convent of San José.
Pedro Ybañez, a distinguished Dominican, who combined sanctity with
great acquirements, and has left several valuable religious works, was
a member of this house. He was one of St. Teresa’s spiritual advisers,
and the first to order her to write her life.
We were glad to learn that this convent has been purchased by the
bishop of Avila, and is about to be restored to the Dominican Order.
The Jesuit college of San Ginès, likewise among the things of the
past, has some interesting associations. It was founded by St. Francis
Borgia, and in it lived for a time the saintly Balthazar Alvarez, the
confessor _par excellence_ of St. Teresa, who said her soul owed more
to him than to any one else in the world. She saw him one day at the
altar crowned with light, symbolic of the fervor of his devotion. He
was a consummate master of the spiritual life, and the guide of
several persons at Avila noted for their sanctity.
One day we walked entirely around the walls of Avila, and came about
sunset to a terrace at the west, overlooking a vast plain towards
Estramadura. The fertile Vega below, with the stream winding in long,
silvery links; the purple mist on the mountains that stood against the
golden sky; the snowy range farther to the left, rose-flushed in the
sunset light, made the view truly enchanting. We could picture to
ourselves this plain when it was filled with contending hosts――the
Moslem with the floating crescent, the glittering ranks of Christian
knights with the proudly streaming cross and the ensigns of Castile,
the peal of bugle and clash of arms, and perchance the bishop
descending with the clergy from his _palacio_ just above us to
encourage and bless the defenders of the land.
Now only a few mules were slowly moving across the plain with the
produce of peaceful labor, and the soft tinkle of the convent bells,
calling one to another at the hour of prayer, the only sounds to break
the melancholy silence.
Near by is the church of Santiago, where the _caballeros_ of Avila
used to make their _veillée des armes_ before they were armed knights,
and with what Christian sentiments may be seen from an address, as
related by an old chronicle, made by Don Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo, to
two young candidates in this very church, after administering the Holy
Eucharist. It must be remembered this was at the end of the eleventh
or beginning of the twelfth century, being in the reign of Alonso VI.,
to whom the rebuilding of Avila was due:
“My young lords, who are this day to be armed knights, do
you comprehend thoroughly what knighthood is? Knighthood
means nobility, and he who is truly noble will not for
anything in the world do the least thing that is low or
vile. Wherefore you are about to promise, in order to fulfil
your obligations unfalteringly, to love God above all
things; for he has created you and redeemed you at the price
of his Blood and Passion. In the second place, you promise
to live and die subject to his holy law, without denying it,
either now or in time to come; and, moreover, to serve in
all loyalty Don Alonso, your liege lord, and all other kings
who may legitimately succeed him; to receive no reward from
rich or noble, Moor or Christian, without the license of Don
Alonso, your rightful sovereign. You promise, likewise, in
whatever battles or engagements you take part, to suffer
death rather than flee; that on your tongue truth shall
always be found, for the lying man is an abomination to the
Lord; that you will always be ready to fly to the assistance
of the poor man who implores your aid and seeks protection,
even to encounter those who may have done him injustice or
outrage; that you be ready to protect all matrons or maidens
who claim your succor, even to do battle for them, should
the cause be just, no matter against what power, till you
obtain complete redress for the wrong they may have endured.
You promise, moreover, not to show yourselves lofty in your
conversation, but, on the contrary, humble and considerate
with all; to show reverence and honor to the aged; to offer
no defiance, without cause, to any one in the world;
finally, that you receive the Body of the Lord, having
confessed your faults and transgressions, not only on the
three Paschs of the year, but on the festivals of the
glorious St. John the Baptist, St. James, St. Martin, and
St. George.”
Which the two young lords, who were the bishop’s nephews, solemnly
swore to perform. Whereupon they were dubbed knights by Count Raymond
of Burgundy, after which they departed for Toledo to kiss the king’s
hand.
Not far from the church of Santiago is the convent of Nuestra Señora
de la Gracia on the very edge of the hill, inhabited by Augustinian
nuns. The church stands on the site of an ancient mosque. The entrance
is shaded by a portico with granite pillars. Our guide rang the bell
at the convent door, saying: “_Ave Maria Purissima!_” “_Sin peccado
concebida_,” responded a mysterious voice within, as from an oracle.
St. Teresa attended school here, and several memorials of her are
shown by the nuns. St. Thomas of Villanueva, the Almsgiver, who is
said to have made his vows as an Augustinian friar the very day Luther
publicly threw off the habit of the order, was for a time the director
of the house, and often preached in the church, which we visited. It
consists of a single aisle, narrow and lofty, with the gilt retable
over the altar, as in all the Spanish churches, and a tomb or two of
some Castilian noblemen at the side. The pulpit, in which saints have
preached, is a mere circular rail against the wall, ascended by steps.
When used it is hung with drapery. On the same side of the church is a
picture of the young Teresa beside her teacher, Maria Briceño, a nun
of fervent piety, to whom the saint said she was indebted for her
first spiritual light. This nun, who, it appears, conversed admirably
on religious subjects, told her pupil one day how in her youth she was
so struck on reading the words of the Gospel, “Many are called, but
few are chosen,” that she resolved to embrace the monastic life; and
she dwelt on the rewards reserved for those who abandon all things for
the love of Christ――a lesson not lost on the eager listener.
At the end of the church is a large grating, through which we looked
into the choir of the nuns, quiet and prayerful, with its books and
pictures and stalls. Two nuns, with sweet, contemplative faces, were
at prayer, dressed in queer pointed hoods and white mantles over black
habits. At the sides of the communion wicket stood the angel of the
Annunciation and Raphael with his fish――gilded statues of symbolic
import.
One of the most interesting places in Avila is the convent of San
José, on the little Plaza de las Madres, the first house of the reform
established by St. Teresa. The convent and high walls are all of
granite and prison-like in their severity of aspect, but we were
received with a kindness by the inmates that convinced us there was
nothing severe in the spirit within. It is true we found the doors
most inhospitably closed and locked, even those of the outer courts
generally left open, and we were obliged to hunt up the chaplain, who
lived in the vicinity, to come to our aid. We thought he would prove
equally unsuccessful in obtaining entrance, for he rang repeatedly
(giving three strokes each time to the bell, we noticed), and it was a
full quarter of an hour before any one concluded to answer so
unwelcome a summons from the outer world. We began to suppose them all
in the state of ecstasy, and the nun who at length made――her
appearance, we were going to say――herself audible spoke to us from
some inaccessible depth in a voice absolutely beatific, as if she had
just descended from the clouds. We never heard anything so calm and
sweet and well modulated. Thanks to her, we saw several relics of St.
Teresa, whom she invariably spoke of as “Our holy Mother.” She also
gave us bags of almonds and filberts, and branches of laurel, from the
trees planted in the garden by the holy hands of their seraphic
foundress.
The church of this convent is said to be the first church ever erected
in honor of St. Joseph. There were several chapels before, which bore
his name, in different parts of Europe――for example, one at Santa
Maria ad Martyres at Rome――but no distinct church. St. Teresa was the
great propagator of the devotion to St. Joseph, now so popular
throughout the world. Of the first eighteen monasteries of her reform,
thirteen were placed under his invocation; and in all she inculcated
this devotion, and had his statue placed over one of the doors. She
left the devotion as a legacy to the order, which has never ceased to
extend it. At the end of the eighteenth century there were one hundred
and fifty churches of St. Joseph in the Carmelite Order alone. His
statue is over the door of the church at Avila, and beside him stands
the Child Jesus with a saw in his hand. “For is not this the
carpenter’s son?”
The church consists of a nave with round arches and six side chapels,
the severity of which is relieved by the paintings and inevitable gilt
retables. A statue of St. Joseph stands over the altar. The grating of
the nuns’ choir is on the gospel side, opposite which is a painting of
St. Teresa with pen in hand and the symbolic white dove at her ear.
_Jesus_, _Maria_, _José_ are successively carved on the key-stones of
the arches of the nave.
The first chapel next the epistle side of the altar contains the tomb
of Lorenzo de Cepeda, St. Teresa’s brother, who entered the army and
went to South America about the year 1540, where he became chief
treasurer of the province of Quito. Having lost his wife, a woman of
rare merit (it is related she died in the habit of Nuestra Señora de
la Merced), he returned to Spain with his children, after an absence
of thirty four years, and established himself at a country-seat near
Avila. He had a great veneration for his sister, and placed himself
under her spiritual direction. Not to be separated from her, even in
death, he founded this chapel at San José’s, which he dedicated to his
patron, San Lorenzo, as his burial-place. His tomb is at the left as
you enter, with the following inscription: “On the 26th of June, in
the year 1580, fell asleep in the Lord Lorenzo de Cepeda, brother of
the holy foundress of this house and all the barefooted Carmelites. He
reposes in this chapel, which he erected.”
In the same tomb lies his daughter Teresita, who entered a novice at
St. Joseph’s at the age of thirteen and died young, an angel of
innocence and piety.
Another chapel was founded by Gaspar Daza, a holy priest of Avila, who
gathered about him a circle of zealous clergymen devoted to works of
charity and the salvation of souls. His reverence for St. Teresa
induced him to build this chapel, which he dedicated to the Nativity
of the Virgin, with a tomb in which he lies buried with his mother and
sister. It was he who said the first Mass in the church, Aug. 24,
1562, and placed the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, after which
he gave the veil to four novices, among whom was Antonia de Hanao, a
relative of St. Teresa’s, who attained to eminent piety under the
guidance of St. Peter of Alcantara, and died prioress of the
Carmelites of Malaga, where her memory is still held in great
veneration. At the close of this ceremony St. Peter of Alcantara, of
the Order of St. Francis; Pedro Ybañez, the holy Dominican, and the
celebrated Balthazar Alvarez, of the Society of Jesus, offered Masses
of thanksgiving. What a reunion of saints! On that day――the birthday
of the discalced Carmelites――St. Teresa laid aside her family name,
and took that of Teresa de Jésus, by which she is now known throughout
the Christian world.
Among the early novices at San José was a niece of St. Teresa’s, Maria
de Ocampo, beautiful in person and gifted in mind, who, from the age
of seventeen, resolved to be the bride of none but Christ. She became
one of the pillars of the order, and died prioress of the convent at
Valladolid, so venerated for her sanctity that Philip III. went to see
her on her death-bed, and recommended himself and the kingdom of Spain
to her prayers. Her remains are in a tomb over the grating of the
choir in the Carmelite convent at Valladolid, suspended, as it were,
in the air, among other holy virgins who sleep in the Lord.
Another niece of St. Teresa’s,[44] who belonged to one of the noblest
families of Avila, also entered the convent of San José. Her father,
Alonso Alvarez, was himself regarded as a saint. Maria was of rare
beauty, but, though left an orphan at an early age with a large
fortune, she rejected all offers of marriage as beneath her, and
finally chose the higher life. All the nobility of Avila came to see
her take the veil. Here her noble soul found its true sphere. She rose
to a high degree of piety, and succeeded St. Teresa as prioress of the
house.
Another chapel at San José, that of St. Paul, at the right as you go
in, was founded by Don Francisco de Salcedo, a gentleman of Avila, who
was a great friend of St. Teresa’s, as well as his wife, a devout
servant of God and given to good works. St. Teresa says he lived a
life of prayer, and in all the perfection of which his state admitted,
for forty years. For twenty years he regularly attended the
theological course at the convent of St. Thomas, then in great repute,
and after his wife’s death took holy orders. He greatly aided St.
Teresa in her foundations, and accompanied her in her journeys. He
lies buried in his chapel of St. Paul.
Not far from St. Joseph’s is the church of St. Emilian, in the tribune
of which Maria Diaz, also a friend of St. Teresa’s, spent the last
forty years of her life in perpetual adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament, which she called her dear neighbor, never leaving her cell,
excepting to go to confession and communion at St. Ginès; for she was
under the direction of Balthazar Alvarez. She had distributed all her
goods to the poor, and now lived on alms. The veil that covers the
divine Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar was rent asunder for
her, and, when she communed, her happiness was so great that she
wondered if heaven itself had anything more to offer. St. Teresa
saying one day how she longed to behold God, Maria, though eighty
years of age, and bowed down by grievous infirmities, replied that she
preferred to prolong her exile on earth, that she might continue to
suffer. “As long as we remain in the world,” she said, “we can give
something to God by supporting our pains for his love; whereas in
heaven nothing remains but to receive the reward for our sufferings.”
Dying in the odor of sanctity, she was so venerated by the people that
she was buried in the choir of the church, at the foot of the very
tabernacle to which her adoring eyes had been unceasingly turned for
forty years.
We have mentioned, too briefly for our satisfaction, some of the
persons, noted for their eminent piety, who made Avila, at least in
the sixteenth century, a city _de los Santos_. It is a disappointment
not to find here the tomb of her who is the crowning glory of the
place. The expectations of Lorenzo de Cepeda were not realized. He
does not sleep in death beside his sainted sister. The remains of St.
Teresa are at Alba de Tormes, where she died, in a shrine of jasper
and silver given by Ferdinand VII. It stands over the high altar of
the Carmelite church, thirty feet above the pavement, where it can be
seen from the choir of the nuns, and approached by means of an oratory
behind, where they go to pray. Her heart, pierced by the angel, is in
a reliquary below.
We left Avila with regret. Few places take such hold on the heart. For
those to whom life has nothing left to offer but long sufferance it
seems the very place to live in. The last thing we did was to go to
the brow of the hill by San Vicente, and take a farewell look at the
convent of the Incarnation, where still so many
“Willing hearts wear quite away their earthly stains”
in one of the fairest, happiest of valleys. How long we might have
lingered there we cannot say, had not the carriage come to hurry us to
the station. And so, taking up life’s burden once more, which we
seemed to have laid down in this City of the Saints, we went on our
pilgrim way, repeating the lines St. Teresa wrote in her breviary:
“Nada te turbe, Let nothing disturb thee,
Nada te espante, Let nothing affright thee;
Todo se pasa. All passeth away.
Dios no se muda. God alone changeth not.
La pacienza Patience to all things
Todo se alcanza, Reacheth, and he who
Quien a Dios tiene, Fast by God holdeth,
Nada le falta; To him naught is wanting;
Solo Dios basta.” Alone God sufficeth.
[40] “Some sing of Oliver, and some of Roldan:
We sing of Zurraquin, the brave partisan.”
[41] “Some sing of Roland, and others Oliver:
We sing of Zurraquin, the brave cavalier.”
[42] See _Life of St. Teresa_.
[43] The butchery, at the repeopling of Avila, was given to
Benjamin, the Jew, and his sister. There seem to have been a
good many Jews in the streets now called St. Dominic and St.
Scholastica.
[44] See _Life of St. Teresa_.
ST. TERESA.
“To suffer or to die.”
The air came laden with the balmy scent
Of citron grove and orange; far beyond
The cloister wall, like towering battlement,
Sierra’s frowning range rich colors donned
From ling’ring Day-Star’s robe; and brilliant hues
Floated like banners on palatial clouds.
Light floods the river, parts its mist-like shrouds;
Each ripple soft, prismatic gleams transfuse.
Below Avila lay; its cross-lit spires
Blended their even-chime with seraph lyres;
O’er mount and vale pealed out their call to prayer,
And stole with joy upon the list’ning air.
Within the cloister’s fragrant, bowery shade,
Gemmed with España’s blooms ’mid velvet lawns,
Soft carols stirring leafy bough and glade,
Teresa muses; on her chaste brow dawns
A light celestial――peace and hope and love.
The wasted form, than bending flower more frail,
Is draped in Carmel’s saintly robe and veil.
The pale, ethereal face is bowed; those eyes
Whose gaze has revelled in the courts above,
Now pearled with tears, are bent in mournful guise
On image of the Crucified within
Her fingers’ slender clasp; in sacred trance
Now rapt, its mysteries are revealed; dark sin
In ghastly horror rises; now her glance
On bleeding form, pierced brow, is fixed; once more
Upon those wounded shoulders, drenched in gore,
The cross hangs trembling; o’er her soul,
Transpierced with love, deep floods of anguish roll;
And burning words her holy passion tell,
Like fountain gushing from her heart’s deep cell:
“O earth! break forth in groans; ease thou my pain!
Ye rivers, ocean, weep! My Love is slain!
My Jesus dies, and I――
I cannot die, but through this exile moan
A stranger, midst of multitudes alone,
And vainly seek to fly
Where harps ten thousand wake the echoing sky;
My solace here, to suffer or to die!
“O Jesus! long and wildly have I striven,
By fast and penance this vile body driven
To thy sweet yoke to yield;
And agonies of death have seized this frame,
Dark devils made of me their mock and shame,
Thou, thou alone my shield.
A bower of roses!――looms so steep and high
The path I strain, to suffer or to die!
“Thou walk’st before! O thorn-lined path and cross!
A sceptred queen I walk, on beds of moss,
Nor fear the dark, dark night.
Love strains my sorrows to my heart with grasp
Stronger than aught on earth, save God’s dear clasp
Of soul beloved. The height
Will soon appear; the glory I descry:
Strength, Lord, with thee I suffer or I die!
“Augment my woes! Let flesh and spirit share
Each separate pang thou, Crucified, didst bear,
Nor drop of comfort blend.
Let death’s stern anguish be my daily bread,
Thy lance transfix my heart, thorns crown my head――
Pain, torture to the end;
And while death’s angel seals my glazing eye,
Heart, soul shall yearn to suffer or to die!”
Great soul! be comforted: thy prayer is heard
More huge and terrible than human word
May utter, mortal heart conceive, the throng
Of woes that haste from Calvary to greet
Thy every step. Like Jesus, hate and wrong
Shall make of thee their jest; as purest wheat
Thou shalt be crushed, yet newer life shalt claim;
Slander, the hydra-tongued, shall cloud thy name;
Treason with thee break bread; toil, hunger, cold,
Thy daily ’tendants far from these sweet bowers.
A score of years thy sorrows still enfold,
But myriad souls shall feast on thy dark hours
Through centuries to come, and learn of thee
The path to peace, and prayer’s sweet mystery.
The seraph waits with flaming lance to dart
The fires of heaven within thy yearning heart,
And up, far up the Mount of God will lead
Thee face to face, as patriarch of old,
With God; unveiled the Trinity shalt read,
And its resplendent mysteries unfold
To future doctors of the sacred lore.
Then mount thy blood-stained path, heroic saint!
While brave men stand aghast, strong hearts grow faint,
Teresa’s seraph-soul its plaint shall pour
Unsated yet: “More suffering, Lord, yet more!”
M. S. P.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER VI.
BIANCA’S FESTA.
Bianca’s birthday coming, they celebrated it by a little trip into the
country. It was getting late for excursions, the weather being hot
even for the last of May. But on the day before the proposed journey a
few ragged clouds, scudding now and then across the sky, promised
refreshment. Clouds never come to Rome for nothing; even the smallest
fugitive mist is a herald; and the family, therefore, looked anxiously
to see if they were to be kept at home the next day――if the herald
announced a royal progress, short and splendid, or a long siege of
rainy days.
They were sauntering, late in the afternoon, through a street of the
Suburra, on one of those aimless walks that hit the mark of pleasure
far oftener than planned pleasure-seeking does, and, seeing at their
left a steep grade that ended in a stair climbing through light and
shadow up the hillside, and going out under a dark arch into the light
again, they followed it without asking questions, and presently found
themselves in a quiet _piazza_ surrounded by churches and convents as
silent and, apparently, uninhabited as a desert. The most living thing
was a single lofty palm-tree that leaned out against the sky. A wall
hid the base of it, where one would not have been surprised to have
found a lion sleeping.
Entering the portico of the nearest church, they saw what might have
been taken for two ancient, mossy statues, seated one at either side
of the door, one representing a man as ragged and gray as Rip Van
Winkle after his nap, the other a woman well fitted to be his
companion. The statues stirred, however, at the sound of steps,
extended their withered hands, and commenced a sort of gabbling
appeal, in which nothing was distinguishable but the inevitable
_qualche cosa_.
Inside the church, beside the beautiful Presence indicated by the
ever-burning lamp, there was but one person, a gigantic man, all
white, who sat leaning forward a little, with the fingers of his right
hand tangled in his beard. They saw him gazing, almost glaring, at
them across the church as they seated themselves near the door after a
short adoration. The painted roof invited their eyes to glimpses of
heaven, the tribune walls shone with the story of St. Peter liberated
by an angel, and the antique columns told of pagan emperors whom they
had served before they were raised to hold a canopy over the head of
the King of kings; but through them all, becoming every moment more
importunate and terrible, the stare of those motionless, stony eyes
drew theirs with an uncomfortable fascination, and the figure seemed
to lean more forward, as if about to stride toward them, and the
fingers to move in the beard, as if longing to catch and toss them out
of the church.
“He appears to resent our not saluting him,” Mr. Vane said. “I do not
need an introduction. Suppose we go to him before he comes clattering
down the nave to us!”
They rose, and, with a diffidence amounting almost to fear, went up
the aisle to pay their respects to Michael Angelo’s _Moses_.
“O Mr. Vane!” the Signora whispered, suddenly touching his arm, “does
he look as if he went up the mountain to bring down Protestantism?”
She said it impulsively, and was ashamed of herself the next moment.
He was not offended, however, but smiled slightly, and, feeling the
touch, drew her hand into his arm. “He doesn’t look like a man who
would carry any sort of _ism_ about long.”
He was looking at the _Moses_ as he spoke; but he felt the
dissatisfaction which the lady at his side did not indicate by word or
motion, and added after a moment: “It must be owned that Protestantism
has reduced the stone tables to dust, and that your church is the only
one that has graven laws.”
She did not venture to press him any farther. The question with him,
then, was evidently whether graven laws were necessary. He was not at
all likely to write his faith in the dust of the sects.
“It is the most uncomfortable marble person in Rome,” she said of the
_Moses_. “I always have a feeling that it is never quite still; that
he has turned his face on being interrupted in something, as if he had
been talking with God here alone, and were waiting for people to go
and leave him to continue the conversation. He will watch us out the
door, though. I wonder if he can see through the leathern curtain?
Come, little girls, we are going.”
Bianca had a rose in her belt, and, as the others walked slowly away,
she slipped across the church and threw it inside the railing before
the Blessed Sacrament, repeating from the Canticle of St. Francis of
Assisi, which they had been reading with their Italian teacher the
evening before:
“Laudate sia il mio Signor per la nostra
Madre terra, la quale
Ci sostenta, e nudrisce col produrre
Tanta diversità
D’erba, di fiori e frutti.”
“They speak of the Blessed Sacrament here as _Il Santissimo_,” she
heard the Signora say when she joined them at the door. “It is
beautiful; but I prefer the Spanish title of ‘His Majesty.’ One would
like to be able to ask, on entering a church, ‘At which altar is His
Majesty?’ It sounds like a live faith. Isn’t that palm beautiful? And
do you see the ghost of Lucretia Borgia up in her balcony there? That
is, or was, her balcony. Dear me! what an uncanny afternoon it is. I
quite long to get among common people.”
In fact, a solid post of snow-white cloud showed like a motionless
figure over the balcony, changing neither shape nor position while
they looked at it. There was, evidently, something behind worth
seeing, and they took a carriage to the Janiculum for a better view.
When they reached the parapet of San Pietro in Montorio, they saw the
horizon beyond the city bound by a wonderful mountain-range――not the
accustomed Sabine Apennines and Monte Cimino; these had disappeared,
and over their places rose a solid magnificence of cloud that made the
earth and sky look unstable. Ruby peaks splintered here and there
against the blue in sharp pinnacles, their sides cleft into gorges of
fine gold, their bases wrapped about with the motionless smoke and
flame of a petrified conflagration. Beneath all were rough masses of
uneasy darkness, in which could be seen faintly the throb of a pulse
of fire. The royal progress had begun, and promised to be a costly one
to some. The poor farmers would have to pay, at least.
They leaned on the parapet, and took a new lesson in shape and color
from the inexhaustible skies, and the Signora told them one of the
many legends of the Janiculum.
“It is said that after the Flood Noe came here to live, held in high
honor, as we may well imagine, by his descendants. As time passed,
after his death, the truth became mixed with error, and the patriarch
Noe became the god Janus, with two faces, because he had seen the old
world and the new. So all antique truth, left to human care, became
corrupted little by little. It was only when the Holy Spirit came down
to stay on earth that truth could be preserved unadulterated.
‘Teaching you all truth.’ Am I preaching? Excuse me!”
Turning her face, as she spoke slowly and dreamily, she had found Mr.
Vane looking at her with a steady and grave regard which did not
evade, but lingered an instant, when it met hers. She recollected that
he had not her faith, and thought he might be displeased a little at
having alien doctrines so constantly held up before him.
On the contrary, he was admiring her fair, pale face, which the
glowing west and a glowing thought were tinting with soft rose, and
was thinking he had never known a woman who so habitually lived in a
high atmosphere, who so easily gathered about her the beauties of the
past and the present, and who had so little gossip to talk. When she
descended to trifling things, it was to invest them with a charm that
made them worthy of notice as pretty and interesting trifles, but
never to elevate them to places they were not made for. Besides, he
liked her way of talking――a certain cool sweetness of manner, like the
sweetness of a rose, that touched those who came near, but was not
awakened by their presence, and would be as sweet were no one by to
know. He glanced at her again when she was again looking off
thoughtfully into the west, and marked the light touch with gold the
strands of a braid that crowned her head under the violet wreath. She
was certainly a very lovely woman, he thought. Why had she never
married?
For, though we call her Signora, the Vanes’ _padrona_ was, in fact, a
_signorina_.
“Well, what is it?” she asked smilingly, turning again, aware of his
eyes. She was one of those persons who always feel the stress of
another mind brought to bear on them. “You should tell me what it is.”
The two girls had gone to a little distance, and he ventured to put
the question.
“It is an impertinence,” he said hastily, “but I was wondering why you
never married. You are thirty-five years old, and have had time and
opportunities. If you command me to ask no more, I shall not blame
you.”
“It is not an impertinence,” she replied quite easily. “There is no
tragedy hidden behind my ‘maiden meditation.’ The simple truth is that
I have never had an offer from any one whom I could willingly or
possibly promise to love, honor, and obey for my whole life, though I
have refused some with regret; and if I have known any person to whom
I could have so devoted myself, no approach on his part and no
consciousness on mine have ever revealed the fact to me. My mind and
life were always full. My mother taught me to love books and nature,
and said nothing about marriage. There is nothing like having plenty
to think of. Are you satisfied?”
“Perfectly,” he replied, but seemed not altogether pleased. Perhaps he
would have found a less self-sufficing woman more interesting and
amiable. “Still, I beg your pardon for a question which, after all, no
one should ask. One never knows what may have happened in a life.”
“That is true,” she replied. “And it is true that the question might
be to some an embarrassing one to answer. It does not hurt me,
however.”
“Papa does not allow us to ask questions,” Isabel said a little
complainingly, having caught a few words of their talk. “You have no
idea how sharply he will speak to us, or, at least, look at us, if he
hears us asking the simplest question that can be at all personal. And
yet people question us unmercifully. I think one might retort in
self-defence.”
“How I wish you could have a larger number of pupils than these two,
Mr. Vane!” the Signora sighed. “I would like to send some of my lady
friends to school to you. The questions that some ladies, who consider
themselves well bred, will ask, are astonishing. Indeed, there is, I
think, more vulgarity in fine society than among any other class of
people in the world. Delicacy and refinement are flowers that need a
little shade to keep their freshness. I have more than once been
shocked to see, in a momentary revelation, how slight was the
difference of character between a bold, unscrupulous virago of the
streets, and some fine lady when an unpleasant excitement had
disturbed the thin polish of manner with which she was coated. Madame
de Montespan――not a model by any means, though――relates that, when she
came to Paris to be trained for polite life, among the admonitions and
prohibitions, one of the strongest was that she must not ask
questions. Not long ago, on thinking over a conversation I had with a
lady whom I had known just three weeks, I found that these questions
had been propounded to me in the course of it: How old are you? Who
visits you? What is your income? Have you any money laid up? Have you
sold your last story? To whom have you sold it? How much do they pay
you? Is it paid for? Of course the lady was fitting herself to speak
with authority of my affairs.”
The Signora made an impatient motion of the shoulders, as if throwing
off a disagreeable burden. “How did we fall into this miserable
subject? Let us walk about awhile and shake it off. We might go into
the church and say a little prayer for poor Beatrice Cenci, who is
buried here. One glance at Piombo’s _Scourging of Christ_, one thought
of that girl’s terrible tragedy, will scorch out these petty thoughts,
if one breath of the Lord’s presence should not blow them away.”
She hurried up the steps and ran into the church, as one soiled and
dusty with travel rushes into a bath. Coming out again, they strolled
back into the gardens, and looked off over the green sea of the
luxuriant Campagna, where St. Paul’s Church floated like an ark, half
swamped in verdure and flowers, and a glistening bend of the Tiber
bound the fragrantly breathing groves like a girdle, the bridge across
it a silver buckle. Beneath the wall that stopped their feet a grassy
angle of the villa beyond was red with poppies growing on their tall
stems in the shade. So everywhere in Italy the faithful soil
commemorates the blood of the martyrs that has been sprinkled over it,
a scarlet blossom for every precious drop, flowering century after
century; to flower in centuries to come, till at last the scattered
dust and dew shall draw together again into the new body, like
scattered musical notes gathering into a song, and the glorified
spirit shall catch and weld them into one for ever!
Looking awhile, they turned silently back into the garden. The two
girls wandered among the flowers; Mr. Vane and the Signora walked
silently side by side. Now and then they stopped to admire a campanile
of lilies growing around a stem higher than their heads, springing
from the midst of a sheaf of leaves like swords. One of these leaves,
five feet long, perhaps, thrown aside by the gardener, lay in the
path. It was milk-white and waxy, like a dead body, through its
thickness of an inch or two. Long, purple thorns were set along its
sides and at the point, and a faint tinge of gold color ran along the
centre of its blade. It was not a withered leaf, but a dead one, and
strong and beautiful in death.
Mr. Vane glanced over the bristling green point of the plant, and up
the airy stem where its white bells drooped tenderly. “So God guards
his saints,” he said.
Isabel came to them in some trepidation with her fingers full of small
thorns. She had been stealing, she confessed. Seeing that, in all the
crowds of great, ugly cacti about, one only had blossomed, she had
been smitten by a desire to possess that unique flower.
“I called up my reasoning powers, as people do when they want to
justify themselves,” she said, “and I reasoned the matter out, till it
became not only excusable but a virtue in me to take the flower. I
spare you the process. If only you would pick the needles out of my
fingers, papa! Isn’t it a pretty blossom? It is a bell of golden
crystal with a diamond heart.”
When the tiny thorns were extracted and the young culprit properly
reproved for her larceny, the clouds of the west had lost all their
color but one lingering blush, and were beginning to catch the light
of the moon, that was sailing through mid-air, as round as a bubble.
They went down the winding avenue on foot, sending the carriage to
wait for them in the street below. The trees over their heads were
full of blossoms like little flies with black bodies and wide-spread,
whitish wings, and through the heaps of these blossoms that had fallen
they could see a green lizard slip now and then; the fountains plashed
softly, lulling the day to sleep. Near the foot of the hill all the
lower wall of one of the houses was hidden by skeins of brilliant,
gold-colored silk, hung out to dry, perhaps, making a sort of sunshine
in the shady street.
It was a lovely drive home through the _Ave Marias_ ringing all about,
through the alternate gloom and light of narrow streets and open
_piazze_, where they spoke no word, but only looked about them with
perhaps the same feeling in all their minds:
“How good is our life――the mere living!”
Not only the beauty they had seen and their own personal contentment
pleased them; the richness and variety of the human element through
which they passed gave them a sense of freedom, a fuller breath than
they were accustomed to draw in a crowd. It was not a throng of people
ground and smoothed into nearly the same habits and manners, but a
going and coming and elbowing of individuals, many of whom retained
the angles of their characters and manners in all their original
sharpness.
“The moon will be full to-morrow in honor of your _festa_,” Isabel
said as they went into the house; “and there is a prospect that the
roads may be sprinkled.”
The roads were sprinkled with a vengeance; for the delectable
mountains of sunset came up in the small hours and broke over the city
in a torrent. There had not been such a tempest in Rome for years. It
was impossible to sleep through it, and soon became impossible to lie
in bed. Not all their closing of blinds and shutters could keep out
the ceaseless flashes, and the windows rattled with the loud bursts of
thunder. The three ladies dressed and went into the little _sala_,
where the Signora lighted two blessed candles and sprinkled holy
water, like the old-fashioned Catholic she was; and presently Mr. Vane
joined them.
“I should have expected to hear more cultivated thunders here,” he
said. “These are Goths and Vandals.”
“Speak respectfully of those honest barbarians,” exclaimed the
Signora. “They were strong and brave, and some things they would not
do for gain. Do you recollect that Alaric’s men, when they were
sacking Rome, being told that certain vessels of silver and gold were
sacred, belonging to the service of the church, took the treasure on
their heads and carried it to St. Peter’s, the Romans falling into the
procession, hymns mingling with their war-cries? Fancy Victor
Emanuel’s people making restitution! Fancy Signor Bonghi and his
associates marching in procession through the streets of Rome, bearing
on their heads the libraries they have stolen from religious houses to
make their grand library at the Roman College, which they have also
stolen. Honor to the barbarians! There were things they respected.
Ugh! what a flash. And what about cultivated thunders, Mr. Vane?”
“Do you not know that there are thunders and thunders?” he replied.
“Some roll like chariot-wheels from horizon to horizon, rattling and
crashing, to be sure, but following a track. Others go clumsily
tumbling about, without rhyme or reason, and you feel they may break
through the roof any minute.”
The rain fell in torrents, and came running in through chinks of the
windows. The storm seemed to increase every moment. Bianca drew a
footstool to the Signora’s side, and, seating herself on it, hid her
face in her friend’s lap. Isabel sought refuge with her father,
holding his arm closely, and they all became silent. Talk seems
trivial in face of such a manifestation of the terrible strength of
nature; and at night one is so much more impressed by a storm, all the
little daylight securities falling off. They sat and waited, hoping
that each sharp burst might be the culminating one.
While they waited, suddenly through the storm broke loudly three clear
strokes of a bell.
“Oh!” cried Bianca, starting up.
“_Fulgura frango_,” exclaimed the Signora triumphantly. Four strokes,
five, and one followed with the sweet and deliberate strength of the
great bell, then the others joined and sang through the night like a
band of angels.
“Brava, Maria Assunta!” exclaimed the Signora. “Where is the storm,
Mr. Vane?”
He did not answer. In fact, with the ceasing of the fifteen minutes’
ringing the storm ceased, and there was left only a low growling of
spent thunders about the horizon, and a flutter of pallid light now
and then. It was only the next morning at the breakfast-table that Mr.
Vane thought to remark that the bell-ringer of the basilica must be a
pretty good meteorologist, for he knew just when to strike in after
the last great clap.
“It was a most beautiful incident,” Bianca said seriously. “Please do
not turn it into ridicule, papa!”
They were just rising from the table, and, in speaking, the daughter
put her arm around her father’s shoulder and kissed him, as if she
would assure him of her loving respect in all that was human, even
while reproving him from the height of a superior spiritual wisdom.
The father had been wont to receive these soft admonitions
affectionately, indeed, but somewhat lightly. Lately, however, he had
taken them in a more serious manner. Perhaps the presence of the
Signora, whose sentiments in such matters he could not regard as
childish, and whose displeasure he could not look upon with the
natural superiority of a father, put him a little more on his guard.
He glanced at her now, biting his lip; but she did not seem to have
heard.
“May not the effect bell-ringing has on tempests be accounted for on
natural principles?” Isabel asked, with the air of one making a
philosophical discovery.
“My dear Isabel, it is said that the miracles of Christ may be so
accounted for,” the Signora replied. “But who is to account for the
natural principles? We have no time to spare,” she added brightly.
“The train starts in fifteen minutes. Hurry, children!”
But, brightly as she spoke, a slight cloud settled over her feelings
after this little incident. She was not displeased with Mr. Vane; for
she had learned that no real irreverence underlay these occasional
gibes, and had observed that they grew more rare, and were rather the
effect of habit than of intention. She was grateful to him, indeed,
for the delicacy and consideration he showed, and for the patience
with which he submitted himself to a Catholic atmosphere and mode of
life which did not touch his convictions, though it might not have
been foreign to his tastes.
“We are frequently as unjust to Protestants as they are to us,” she
constantly said to her over-zealous friends. “If they are sincere in
their disbelief, it would show a lack of principle in them to be
over-indulgent and complacent to us. You must recollect that many a
Protestant cannot help believing us guilty of something like, at
least, unconscious idolatry; cannot help having a sort of horror for
some of our ways. Besides, we must not claim merit to ourselves for
having faith. ‘_Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da
gloriam._’ Then, again, here is an inquiry worth making: Look about
among your Catholic acquaintances, including yourself among them, and
ask, from your knowledge of them and of yourself, ‘If the drama of
salvation were yet to be acted, and Christ were but just come on
earth, poor, humble, and despised, how many of these people would
follow him? Would I follow him? What instance of a sacrifice of
worldly advantages, a giving up of friends and happiness, a
willingness to be despised for God’s sake, have I or any of these
given?’ It is easy, it is a little flattering, indeed, to one’s
vanity, and pleasing to one’s imagination, to stand in very good
company, among people many of whom are our superiors in rank and
reputation, and have our opponents fire their poor little arrows at
us. We feel ourselves very great heroes and heroines indeed, when, in
truth, we are no more than stage heroes, with tinsel crowns and tin
swords, and would fly affrighted before a real trial. It is easy to
talk, and those who do the least talk the most and the most
positively. Some of the noblest natures in the world are outside of
the fold, some of the meanest are inside. God’s ways are not our ways,
and we cannot disentangle these things. Only we should not take airs
to ourselves. When I see the primitive ardor and nobleness of
Christianity in a person, I hold that person as independent of
circumstances, and am sure that he would join the company of the
fishermen to-day, if they were but just called. The others I do not
wish to judge, except when they make foolish pretences.”
The Signora had sometimes displeased some of her friends by talking in
this manner and pricking their vainglorious bubbles; and she
consistently felt that, according to his light, Mr. Vane was
forbearing with his daughters and with her, and that they should show
some forbearance with him. She was, therefore, not displeased with him
for his unintentional mocking. Her cloud came from another direction.
She found herself changing a little, growing less evenly contented
with her life, alternating unpleasantly between moods of happiness and
depression. While she lived alone, receiving her friends for a few
hours at a time, she had found her life tranquil and satisfying.
Sympathy and kind services were always at hand, and there was always
the equal or greater pleasure of sympathy and kind services demanded
to make of friendship a double benefit. But the question had begun to
glance now and then across her mind whether she had been altogether
wise in taking this family into her house, having before her eyes the
constant spectacle of an affection and intimacy such as she had left
outside her own experience, and had no desire to invite or admit, even
while she felt its charm. She, quite deprived of all family ties, felt
sometimes a loneliness which she had never before experienced, in
witnessing the affection of the father and his daughters; and, at the
same time that she saw them as enclosed in a magic circle from which
she was excluded, she looked forward with dread to the time when they
should leave her, with a new void in her life, and a serenity
permanently disturbed, perhaps. There were little moments, short and
sharp, when she could have sympathized with Faust casting aside with
passionate contempt his worthless gifts and learning at sight of the
simple happiness of love and youth.
But these moments and moods were short and disconnected. She was
scarcely aware of them, scarcely remembered that each, as it came, was
not the first, and her life flowed between them always pleasantly,
sometimes joyfully. She was quite gay and happy when they ran down to
the carriage and hurried to the station.
The morning was delicious, everything washed clean and fresh by the
plentiful shower. A light, pearly cloud covered the sky, veiling all
with a delicate softness that was to sunshine as contentment is to
joy. Here and there a deep shadow slept on the landscape. Our little
party took possession of a first-class car, and seated, each at a
corner of it, were every moment calling attention to some new beauty.
Isabel glanced with delight along the great aqueduct lines and the
pictures they framed, all blurred and swimming with the birds with
which the stone arches were alive; Bianca watched the mountain, her
eyes full of poetical fancies; and Mr. Vane presently fell in love
with a square of solid green he espied in the midst of the bare
Campagna, a little paradise, where the trees and flowers seemed to be
bursting with luxuriance over the walls, and regarding with
astonishment the dead country about them, that stretched off its low
waves and undulations in strong and stubborn contrast with that
redundant spot.
“Aladdin’s lamp must have done it,” he said; and after a moment added,
having followed the subject a little in his own mind: “I am inclined
to think that one element of the picturesque must be inconsistency.
Ah! here are your white Campagna cattle we have heard so much about.
Aren’t they of rather a bluish color?”
“But look and see what they are eating, papa,” Bianca said. “No wonder
it turns them blue.”
The ground all about was deeply colored with blue flowers, in the
midst of which these large, white cattle wandered, feeding lazily, as
if eating were a pleasure, not a necessity. They were like people
reading poetry.
“We do not often have such a day here,” the Signora said, “and to me
the clouds are a luxury. I own that I have sometimes grown weary of
seeing that spotless blue overhead week after week, month after month,
even. Clouds are tender, and give infinite lights and shades. The
first winter I spent in Rome there were a hundred days in succession
of windless, cloudless, golden weather, beginning in October, and
lasting till after New Year’s day. Then came a sweet three days’ rain,
which enchanted me. I went out twice a day in it.”
“This reminds me,” Isabel said, “of our first visit to the White
Mountains. We went there under the ‘rainy Hyades,’ apparently; for we
hadn’t seen sunshine for a week. When we reached Lancaster, at
evening, the fog touched our faces like a wet flannel, and there was a
fine, thick rain in the morning when I awoke. About nine o’clock there
was a brightening, and I looked up and saw a blue spot. The clouds
melted away from it, still raining, and sunbeams shot across, but none
came through. First I saw a green plain with a river winding through
it, and countless little pools of water, everything a brilliant green
and silver. A few trees stood about knee-deep in grass and yellow
grain. And then, all at once, down through the rain of water came a
rain of sunshine; and, lastly, the curtains parted, and there were the
mountains! They are a great deal more solemn looking and impressive
than these,” she said, with a depreciatory glance toward the Alban
Mountains. “On the whole, I think the scene was finer and more
brilliant.”
As if in answer to her criticism, a slim, swift sunbeam pierced
suddenly the soft flecks of mist overhead, shot across the shadowed
world, and dropped into Rome. Out blazed the marvellous dome, all
golden in that light, the faint line of its distant colonnades started
into vivid clearness with all their fine-wrought arches, and for a
moment the city shone like a picture of a city seen by a magic-lantern
in a dark room.
“Very true!” the young woman replied quite coolly, as if she had been
spoken to. “We have no such city, no such towns and villages and
villas set on the mountainside; but we are young and fresh and strong,
and we are brave, which you are not. Your past, and the ruins left of
it, are all you can boast of. We have a present and a future. And
after all,” she said, turning to her audience, who were smilingly
listening to this perfectly serious address, “it is ungrateful of the
sun to take the part of Italy so, when we welcome him into our houses,
and they shut him out. Why, the windows of the Holy Father’s rooms at
the Vatican are half walled up.”
“Maybe the sun doesn’t consider it such a privilege to come into our
houses,” her father suggested.
“And as for Rome,” the young woman went on, “to me it seems only the
skull of a dead Italy, and the Romans the worms crawling in and out.
But there! I won’t scold to-day. How lovely everything is!”
The yellow-green vineyards and the blue-green canebrakes came in
sight, the olive-orchards rolled their smoke-like verdure up the
hills, and at length the cars slid between the rose-trees of the
Frascati station, and the crowd of passengers poured out and hurried
up the stairs to secure carriages to take them to the town. The family
_Ottant’-Otto_, finding themselves in a garden, did not make haste to
leave it, but stayed to gather each a nosegay, nobody interfering.
More than one, indeed, of the passengers paused long enough to snatch
a rosebud in passing.
Going up then to the station-yard, they found it quite deserted,
except for the carriage that had been sent for them, and another drawn
by a tandem of beautiful white horses, in whose ears their owner, one
of the young princes living near the town, was fastening the roses he
had just gathered below. The creatures seemed as vain of themselves as
he evidently was proud of them, and held their heads quite still to be
adorned, tossing their tails instead, which had been cut short, and
tied round with a gay scarlet band.
Every traveller knows that Frascati is built up the sides of the
Tusculan hills, looking toward Rome, the railway station on a level
with the Campagna, the town rising above with its countless
street-stairs, and, still above, the magnificent villas over which
look the ruins of ancient Tusculum. On one of the lower streets of the
town, in Palazzo Simonetti, lived a friend of the Signora, and there
rooms had been provided for the family, and every preparation made for
their comfort. They found a second breakfast awaiting them, laid out
in a room looking up to one of the loveliest nooks in the world――the
little _piazza_ of the _duomo vecchio_, with its great arched doorway,
and exquisite fountain overshadowed by a weeping willow. If it had
been a common meal, they would have declined it; but it was a little
feast for the eyes rather: a dish of long, slim strawberries from
Nemi, where strawberries grow every month in the year by the shores of
the beautiful lake, in a soil that has not yet forgotten that it once
throbbed with volcanic fires; tiny rolls, ring-shaped and not much too
large for a finger-ring, and golden shells of butter; all these laid
on fresh vine-leaves and surrounded by pomegranate blossoms that shone
like fire in the shaded room. The coffee-cups were after-dinner cups,
and so small that no one need decline on the score of having already
taken coffee; and there was no sign of cream, only a few lumps of
sugar, white and shining as snow-crust.
“It is frugal, dainty, and irresistible,” Mr. Vane said. “Let us
accept by all means.”
They were going up to Tusculum, and, as the day was advancing, set off
after a few minutes, going on foot. They had preferred that way, being
good walkers, and having, moreover, a unanimous disinclination to see
themselves on donkeys.
“A gentleman on a donkey is less a gentleman than the donkey,” Mr.
Vane said. “I would walk a hundred miles sooner than ride one mile on
a beast which has such short legs and such long ears. The atmosphere
of the ridiculous which they carry with them is of a circumference to
include the tallest sort of man. Besides, they have an uncomfortable
way of sitting down suddenly, if they only feel a fly, and that hurts
the self-love of the rider, if it doesn’t break his bones.”
“Poor little patient wretches! how they have to suffer,” said the
Signora. “Even their outcry, while the most pitiful sound in the
world, a very sob of despairing pain, is the height of the ridiculous.
If you don’t cry hearing it, you must laugh, unless, indeed, you
should be angry. For they sometimes make a ‘situation’ by an
inopportune bray, as a few weeks ago at the Arcadia. The Academy was
holding an _adunanza_ at Palazzo Altemps, and, as the day was quite
warm and the audience large, the windows into the back court were
opened. The prose had been read, and a pretty, graceful poetess, the
Countess G――――, had recited one of her best poems, when a fine-looking
monsignore rose to favor us with a sonnet. He writes and recites
enthusiastically, and we prepared to listen with pleasure. He began,
and, after the first line, a donkey in the court struck in with the
loudest bray I ever heard. Monsignore continued, perfectly inaudible,
and the donkey continued, obstreperously audible. A faint ripple of a
smile touched the faces least able to control themselves. Monsignore
went on with admirable perseverance, but with a somewhat heightened
color. A sonnet has but fourteen lines, and the bray had thirteen.
They closed simultaneously. Monsignore sat down; I don’t know what the
donkey did. One only had been visible, as the other only had been
audible. The audience applauded with great warmth and politeness. ‘Who
are they applauding,’ asked my companion of me――‘the one they have
heard, or the one they have not heard?’ If it had been my sonnet, I
should instantly have gone out, bought that donkey, and hired somebody
to throw him into the Tiber.”
“Here we are at the great _piazza_, and here is the cathedral. See how
the people in the shops and fruit-stands water their flowers!”
In fact, all the rim of the great fountain-basin was set round with a
row of flower-pots containing plants that were dripping in the spray
of the falling cascades. Just out of reach of the spray were two fruit
shops large enough to contain the day’s store and the chair of the
person who sold it. Temporary pipes from the fountain conducted water
to the counters, where a tiny fountain tossed its borrowed jet,
constantly renewed from the cool cascade, and constantly returning to
the basin.
“We must take _excelsior_ for our motto,” the Signora said to the two
girls, who wanted to stop and admire everything they saw. “We are for
the mountain-height now. When we return, you may like to dress up with
flowers two shrines on the road. I always do it when I come this way.”
They climbed the steep and rocky lane between high walls, passed on
the one side the house where Cardinal Baronius wrote his famous
_Annals_, which had an interest too dry to fascinate the two young
ladies; passed the wide iron gate of a villa to left, and another to
right, giving only a glance at the paradises within; passed the large
painting of the Madonna embowered in trees at the foot of the
Cappucini Avenue; passed under the stone portal, and the rod of
verdant shadow almost as solid, that formed the entrance to Villa
Tuscolana, ravished now and then by glimpses of the magnificent
distance; on into the lovely wood-road, the ancient _Via Tusculana_;
and presently there they were at last in the birthplace of Cato, the
air-hung city that broke the pride of Rome, and that, conquered at
last, died in its defeat, and remained for ever a ruin.
Not a word was spoken when they reached the summit, and stood gazing
on what is, probably, the most magnificent view in the world. Only
after a while, when the three new-comers began to move and come out of
their first trance of admiration, the Signora named some of the chief
points in the landscape and in the ruins. The old historical scenes
started up, the old marvellous stories rushed back to their memories,
the mountains crowded up as witnesses, and the towns, with all their
teeming life and countless voices of the present hushed by distance,
became voluble with voices and startling with life of the past.
After a while they seated themselves in the shade of a tree, facing
the west, and silently thought, or dreamed, or merely looked, as their
mood might be. Their glances shot across the bosky heights that
climbed to their feet, and across the wide Campagna, to where Rome lay
like a heap of lilies thrown on a green carpet, and the glittering
sickle of the distant sea curved round the world.
Day deepened about them in waves. They could almost feel each wave
flow over them as the sun mounted, touching degree after degree of the
burning blue, as a hand touches octaves up an organ. The birds sang
less, and the cicali more, and the plants sighed forth all their
perfume.
Isabel slipped off her shoes, and set her white-stockinged feet on a
tiny laurel-bush, that bent kindly under them without breaking, making
a soft and fragrant cushion. All took off their hats, and drank in the
faint wind that was fresh, even at noon.
“The first time I came here,” the Signora said after a while, “was on
the _festa_ of SS. Roch and Sebastian, in the heat of late summertime.
That is a great day for Frascati, for these two saints are their
protectors against pestilence, which has never visited the city. When,
in ’69, the cholera dropped one night on Albano, just round the
mountain there a few miles, and struck people dead almost like
lightning, and killed them on the road as they fled to other towns, so
that many died, perhaps, from fear and horror, having no other
illness, none who reached Frascati in health died. The nobility died
as well as the low, and the cardinal bishop died at his post taking
care of his people. Whole families came to Frascati, the people told
me, flying by night along the dark, lonely road, some half-starving;
for all the bakers were dead, and there was no bread except what was
sent from Rome. The saints they trusted did not refuse to help them.
In Frascati they found safety. If any died there, certainly none
sickened there. So, of course, the saints were more honored than ever.
I sat here and heard the bells all ringing at noon, and the guns
firing salutes, and saw the lovely blue wreaths of smoke curl away
over the roofs after each salvo. In Italy they do not praise God
solely with the organ, but with the timbrel and the lute. Anything
that expresses joy and triumph expresses religious joy and triumph,
and the artillery and military bands come out with the candles and the
crucifix to honor the saint as well as the warrior. Then in the
evening there was the grand procession, clergy, church choirs,
military bands, crucifixes, banners, women dressed in the ancient
costume of the town, and the bells all ringing, the guns all booming,
and the route of the procession strewn with fragrant green. The
evening deepened as they marched, and their candles, scarcely visible
at first, grew brighter as they wound about the steep streets and the
illuminated piazzas. All the houses had colored lamps out of their
windows, and there were fireworks. But my noon up here impressed me
most. My two guides, trusty men, and my only companions, sat
contentedly in the shade playing _Morra_ after their frugal bread and
wine. Sitting with my back to them, only faintly hearing their voices
as they called the numbers, I could imagine that they were Achilles
and Ajax, whom you can see on an ancient Etruscan vase in the Vatican
playing the same game. The present was quite withdrawn from me. I felt
like _Annus Mundi_ looking down on _Annus Domini_, and seeing the
whole of it, too. I could have stayed all day, but that hunger
admonished me; for I had not been so provident as my guides, nor as I
have been to-day. Going down, however, just below the Capuchin
convent, I saw a man on a donkey coming up, with a large basket slung
at each side of the saddle in front of him. No one could doubt what
was under those cool vine-leaves. He was carrying fresh figs up to the
Villa Tuscolana, where some college was making their _villigiatura_. I
showed him a few soldi, and he stopped and let me lift the leaves
myself. There they lay with soft cheek pressed to cheek, large, black
figs as sweet as honey. The very skins of them would have sweetened
your tea. Where we stood a little path that looked like a dry
rivulet-bed led off under the wall of the convent grounds. When I
asked where it went, they answered, ‘To the Madonna.’ We will go there
on our way down. Meantime, has Isabel nothing hospitable to say to
us?”
Miss Vane displayed immediately the luncheon she had been detailed to
prepare, a bottle of Orvieto, only less delicate because richer than
champagne, a basket of _cianbelli_, and lastly a box. “In the name of
the prophet, figs!” she said, opening it. “They are dried, it is true;
but then they are from Smyrna.”
They drank _felicissima festa_ to Bianca, drank to the past and the
present, to all the world; and Mr. Vane, when their little feast was
ended, slipped a beautiful ring on his younger daughter’s finger. “To
remember Tusculum by, my dear,” he said; and, looking at her
wistfully, seeming to miss some light-heartedness even in her smiles,
he added: “Is there anything you lack, child?”
She dropped her face to his arm only in time to hide a blush that
covered it. “What could I lack?” she asked.
But a few minutes afterward, while the others recalled historical
events connected with the place, and the Signora pointed out the
cities and mountains by name, the young girl walked away to the Roman
side, and stood looking off with longing eyes toward the west. She
lacked a voice, a glance, and a smile too dear to lose, and her heart
cried out for them. She was not unhappy, for she trusted in God, and
in the friend whose unspoken affection absence and estrangement had
only strengthened her faith in; but she wanted to see him, or, at
least, to know how he fared. It seemed to her at that moment that if
she should look off toward that part of the world where he must be,
fix her thoughts on him and call him, he would hear her and come. She
called him, her tender whisper sending his name out through all the
crowding ghosts of antiquity, past pope and king and ambassador, poet
and orator, armies thrust back and armies triumphant――the little
whisper winged and heralded by a power older and more potent than
Tusculum or the mountain whereon its ruins lie.
They went down the steep way again, gathering all the flowers they
could find, and, when they reached the shrine at the turn of the
Cappucini road, stuck the screen so full of pink, white, and purple
blossoms that the faces of Our Lady and the Child could only just be
discerned peeping out. Then they turned into the pebbly path under the
Cappucini wall, where the woods and briers on one side, and the wall
on the other, left them room only to walk in Indian file; came out on
the height above beautiful Villa Lancilotti, with another burst of the
Campagna before their eyes, and the mountains with their coronets of
towns still visible at the northeast over the Borghese Avenue and the
solid pile of Mondragone.
Here, set so high on the wall that it had to be reached by two or
three stone steps, was the picture of the Madonna, looking off from
its almost inaccessible height over the surrounding country. It was
visible from the villas below, and many a faithful soul far away had
breathed a prayer to Mary at sight of it, though nothing was visible
to him but the curve of high, white wall over the trees, and the
square frame of the picture. Now and then a devout soul came through
the lonely and thorny path to the very foot of the shrine, and left a
prayer and a flower there.
The others gave their flowers to Bianca, who climbed the steps, and
set a border of bloom inside the frame, and pushed a flower through
the wires to touch the Madonna’s hand, and set a little ring of yellow
blossoms where it might look like a crown.
As she stood on that height, visible as a speck only if one had looked
up from the villa, smiling to herself happily while she performed her
sweet and unaccustomed task, down in the town below, a speck like
herself, stood a man leaning against the eagle-crested arch of the
Borghese Villa gate, and watching her through a glass. He saw the
slight, graceful form, whose every motion was so well known to him;
saw the ribbon flutter in her uncovered hair, the little gray mantle
dropped off the gray dress into the hands of the group at the foot of
the steps; saw the arms raised to fix flower after flower; finally,
when she turned to come down, fancied that he saw her smile and blush
of pleasure, and, conquered by his imagination, dropped the glass and
held out his arms, for it seemed that she was stepping down to him.
The party went home tired and satisfied, and did not go out again that
day. It was pleasure enough to sit in the westward windows as the
afternoon waned and watch the sun go down, and see how the mist that
for ever lies over the Campagna caught his light till, when he burned
on the horizon in one tangle of radiating gold, the whole wide space
looked as if a steady rainbow had been straightened and drawn across
it, every color in its order, glowing stratum upon stratum pressed
over sea and city and vineyard, blurring all with a splendid haze,
till the earth was brighter than even the cloudless sky.
“It is so beautiful that even the stars come out before their time to
look,” the Signora said. “Your Madonna on the wall can see it too,
Bianca. But as for the poor Madonna in her nest of trees, she can see
nothing but green and flowers.”
“I wonder why I prefer the Madonna of the wall?” asked Bianca
dreamily. “I feel happy thinking of it.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
TEXT-BOOKS IN CATHOLIC COLLEGES.
After many advances on the part of editors and correspondents towards
approaching this question in a _tangible_ form, the Rev. Dr. Engbers,
a professor of the Seminary of Mount St. Mary’s of the West,
Cincinnati, Ohio, has been the first to take up the subject in
earnest. Often have we heard men, admirably adapted to handle this
question, express the wish that some one would come forward and
propose a system of improvement: we need better books, we are at the
mercy of non-Catholic compilers, in every department of learning,
except divinity. “Well, why do you not set to work and give us such
text-books as can be safely adopted in _our_ schools?――books of
history, sacred, ecclesiastical, secular; books of mental or rational
and natural philosophy; treatises on the philosophy of religion; books
of geography, sadly wanted to let our boys know how wide the Catholic
world is; then grammars; then Greek and Latin text-books――all and each
of them fit to be placed in the hands of Catholic young men and women,
for the salvation of whose souls some one will be called to an
account, etc. etc.” “Oh! you see, I cannot tax my time to such an
extent; I cannot afford it. Then do you think I can face the apathy,
perhaps the superciliousness, of those who should encourage, but will
be sure to sneer at me and pooh-pooh me down? No, no; I cannot do it.”
Time and again have we heard such remarks. But, luckily, it seems as
if at this propitious moment _rerum nascitur ordo_. All praise to the
Rev. Dr. Engbers! Not only has he raised his voice and uttered words
expressive of a long, painful experience, and resolutely cried out
that something must be done, but has actually addressed himself to the
work, and has broken ground on a road whereon we can follow him,
whether pulling with him or not. That we need _text-books_ for _our_
schools is admitted by all who give a thought to the importance of a
proper training in Catholic schools――that training which should
distinguish the Catholic citizen from all others. There is no doubt
but a judicious training in a properly-conducted Catholic college will
stamp the pupil with a character we may dare to call _indelible_.
There must needs be a character imprinted on the mind of the graduate,
whether he goes forth from the halls of his Alma Mater as a literary
man or a philosopher, a scientist or a professional man. We cannot
refrain from transcribing the beautiful sentiments uttered by the Hon.
George W. Paschal, in his annual address before the Law Department of
the University of Georgetown, on the 3d of June, 1875:
“You go forth from an institution long honored for its
learning, its high moral character, its noble charities,
which have been bestowed in the best possible way――mental
enlightenment, and its watchful sympathy for its learned
children spread all over the land. The fathers of that
institution expect much from you, and they will be ever
ready to accord to you every possible encouragement. Your
immediate instructors in your profession cannot fail to feel
for you the deepest interest.”
Surely the gist of the above is that the graduates who “stand upon the
threshold of their profession, holding passes to enter the great
arena”――as Mr. Daly has so happily expressed it in his valedictory on
the same occasion――must bear imprinted on their brows the parting kiss
of their Alma Mater.
Now, if _bonum ex integrâ causâ, malum ex quocumque defectu_,
everything in a collegiate course must tend to give the graduate a
Catholic individuality in the world of science and of letters.
And here it is that we cannot fail to admire the great wisdom of the
Holy Father, who, when the question of classics in the Catholic
schools began to be mooted, _ex professo_ and in earnest, would not
sanction a total and blind exclusion of the pagan classics――for that
would be _obscurantism_――but advised the use of the classics, with a
_proviso_ that the rich wells of Christian classicism should not be
passed by.
Then it cannot be gainsaid that the use of pagan classics is necessary
in the curriculum of belles-lettres, just as, if we may be allowed the
comparison, the study of the sacred books is indispensable to the
student of divinity; although even in Holy Writ there are passages
which should not be wantonly read, and much less commented upon.
And here we must differ from the admirable letter of Dr. Engbers, who
certainly is at home on the subject and makes some excellent points.
He avers that it is neither possible nor necessary “to prepare
Catholic books for the whole extent of a college education.”
For brevity’s sake we shall not give his reasons, but shall limit
ourselves to our own views on the subject.
In the first place, it _is_ necessary to prepare text-books of the
classics for our schools. For, surely, we cannot trust to the
scholar’s hand Horace, or Ovid, or even Virgil, as they came from
their authors; and this on the score of morality. Secondly, we have no
hesitation in saying that we do not possess as yet a single Latin
classic (to speak of Latin alone) so prepared to meet all the
requirements of the youthful student. We may almost challenge
contradiction when we assert that, in all such editions as are
prepared for American schools, the passages really difficult are
skipped over. True, it is many years since we had an opportunity of
examining such works thoroughly; but from what we knew then, and have
looked into lately, we find no reason for a change of opinion. The
work of such editions is perfunctorily done. The commentators,
annotators, or whatsoever other name they may go by, seem to have only
aimed at doing a certain amount of work somewhat _à la_ penny-a-liner;
but nothing seems to be done _con amore_, and much less according to
thorough knowledge. Let our readers point to one annotator or editor
of any poet adopted in American schools who is truly æsthetic in his
labors.
Classics must, then, be prepared. Dr. Engbers avers that we can safely
use what we have, no matter by whom they have been prepared; and in
this we must willingly yield to his judgment, because it would be
temerity in us, who are not a professor and have so far led a life of
quite the reverse of classical application, to make an issue with him.
But we must be allowed to differ from him in that “we have not the
means to provide for all, and our educators are unable to satisfy the
wants for the whole college course.”
Let us bear in mind that we limit our disquisition to the Latin
classics for the present. What we say about them will be equally
applicable to the Greek, as well as to the authors of all nations.
It seems to us abundantly easy to prepare books for this department.
Let a certain number of colleges, schools, and seminaries join
together, and through their faculties make choice of a competent
scholar. Set him apart for one year for the purpose of preparing a
neat, cheap _school_ edition of the Latin classics _for our Catholic
schools_. He must limit himself to the _Ætas aurea_, giving some of
those authors in their entirety, such as Nepos; some with a little
pruning, such as the _Æneid_; others, again, _summo libandi calamo_;
while of Cicero and Livy we would advise only selections for a
beginning. Of Cicero, _e.g._, give us a few letters _Ad Familiares_,
his _De Oratore_, six Orations, _Somnium Scipionis_, _De Officiis_,
and _De Senectute_. From what we are going to say it will be evident
that no more will be necessary at first. Teach the above well, _et
satis superque satis_!
Exclude from your classes the cramming system. Prof. Cram is the bane,
the evil genius of our classical halls. Supporters of the “forty lines
a day” rule, listen! It was our good fortune to learn the classics in
a Jesuit college. We were in rhetoric. Our professor gave Monday and
Wednesday afternoons to Virgil, Tuesday to Homer, and Friday to
Horace. Of Virgil we read book vi., and of Horace the third book of
Odes――that is, what we _did_ read of them. The professor was a perfect
scholar, an orator, a poet, as inflammable as petroleum, and as
sensitive as the “touch-me-not” plant, with a mind the quickest we
ever knew, and a heart most affectionate, besides being truly a man of
God. Well, the session had entered its fourth month, and we had gone
through about three hundred verses of Virgil, while from Horace we
were just learning not _magna modis tenuare parvis_. One afternoon the
rector suddenly put in an appearance with some of the _patrassi_. As
they had taken their seats, the former asked what portions of the
Latin classics we had been reading. “Cicero and Livy of the prose,
Horace and Virgil of the poets.” “But what part?” quoth he. “Any
part,” replied the master. The rector looked puzzled; the boys――well,
we do not know, for we had no looking-glass, nor did we look at one
another――but perfectly astounded at the coolness of the teacher. One
thing, however, all who have survived will remember: the strange
feeling that seized us; for “Was he going to make a fool of every one
of his boys?” We were eleven in the class. It was a small college, in
a provincial town, that has given some very great men to the world,
but of which Lord Byron did not sing enthusiastically. There we were:
on the pillory, in the stocks, billeted for better for worse, for
“what not?” The rector, with ill-disguised impatience, called for one
of the boys, and, opening Virgil at random, chanced on the very death
of Turnus. The poor boy, pale and trembling, began to read, and on he
went, while the relentless questioner seemed carried away by the
beauty of the passage, unconscious of the torture to which he had
doomed the unlucky pupil. But, no; we take the word back: because as
he was advancing he seemed to become more self-possessed, and so much
so that at the end he described the last victim of the Lavinian
struggle with uncommon pathos, until, with a hoarse sound of his
voice, he launched the soul of the upstart _sub umbras_, just as the
teacher would himself have read to us a parallel passage. It was
evident that, although he had never before read those lines, he had
caught their spirit, and the recitation ended perfectly. Then, as he
was requested to render the whole passage into vernacular, with a
fluent diction, choice words, and not once faltering, he acquitted
himself with universal applause. One or two more boys were called up,
and the visitors took their leave much pleased.
Then it was our turn to ask the master why he had done that. “Well,
boys,” said he, “I expected it all along. You see it now. How many
times you have wondered at my keeping you so long on perhaps only
three or four lines a whole afternoon! Now you understand. We have not
read Virgil, but we have studied Latin poetry, and you have learned
it. In future we shall skim the poets here and there, as I may choose,
and at the final exhibition you shall be ready to read to the
auditorium any part of the Greek and Latin authors the audience may
think fit to call for.” And so we did, and did it well.
Once, being on a school committee, we asked the master of the
high-school――and a learned man he was――why he hurried through so many
lines. “I cannot help it,” said he; “they must have read so many lines
[_sic_] when they present themselves for examination at Harvard”! Nor
shall we omit here to note that young men have failed in their
examinations to enter Harvard because, in sooth, they could not get
through _the recitation_. Prof. Agassiz himself told us that one of
his favorite students (whom we knew well) failed because he could not
repeat _verbatim_ a certain portion of a treatise on some point of
natural philosophy. However, the good professor insisted on the youth
being examined as to the sense, and not, parrot-like, repeating
sentence after sentence, and the candidate carried the palm.
This “recitation” system, the “forty lines” routine, is a curse. We
are sure professors will bear us out in our assertion. Dr. Becker, in
his excellent article in the _American Catholic Quarterly_, deals with
this matter in a very luminous style. What use, then, of so many
authors, or of the whole of any one of them, for a text-book? _Non
multa sed multum, and multum in parvo._ The bee does not draw all that
is garnered in the chalice, but just that much which is necessary to
make the honey. No wonder that so few are endowed with the _nescio quo
sapore vernaculo_, as Cicero would call it. We have treasured for the
last three-and-forty years the paper on which we copied the
description of the war-horse, as rendered by our professor of
rhetoric, who gave two lectures on it, bringing in and commenting on
parallel descriptions in prose and verse. Nearly half a century has
passed away, and those two charming afternoons in that old class-room
are yet fresh in our remembrance.
If some prelates have gone so far as to exclude profane classics from
the schools in their seminaries altogether, the Holy Father, on the
other hand, does not approve of such indiscriminate ostracism; nay, he
recommends that a judicious adoption be made of the pagan classics, at
the same time bringing before the Catholic student the great patterns
of sacred writings which have been preserved for us from the Greek and
Latin fathers. Surely only a senseless man would withhold from the
“golden-mouthed John” that meed of praise which is allowed to the
Athenian Demosthenes. Are they not both noble patterns on which the
youthful aspirant to forensic or ecclesiastical eloquence should form
himself?
And here it is that the necessity of preparing _Catholic text-books_
becomes self-evident. Outsiders cannot furnish us with the materials
we need for a thorough and wholesome Catholic training――even more
important, in our estimation, when we take into consideration that
such works _in extenso_ are too costly and far beyond the means of the
average of scholars. Hence if we are really in earnest in our desire
of having perfect Catholic schools, such books must needs be prepared.
After we have carefully prepared proper editions of the pagan
classics, _Ætatis aureæ_, for our schools, what else have we to do to
furnish our arsenal with a well-appointed complement? We must look
about for a choice of the best Christian Latin classics. As for
Christian Latin poets of antiquity, the choice will be less difficult,
because there is not an embarrassing wealth of them, yet enough to
learn how to convey the holiest ideas in the phraseology of Parnassus,
how to sing the praises of Our Lady with the rhythm of the Muses.
It is well known that a new departure is about to take place, nay, has
taken place, in the Catholic schools of Europe. The great patristic
patterns of oratory and poetry will in future be held before the
Catholic student for his imitation and improvement.
The movement inside the Catholic world has become known, because there
is no mystery about it, and the Catholic Church, faithful to her
Founder’s example, does and says everything “openly.” The debate on
the classics is over, and every one is satisfied of the necessity of
the new arrangement. Outside the church some one stood on tiptoe,
_arrectis auribus_; all at once a clapping of hands――_presto!_ The
chance is caught, the opportunity improved. We have used pagan
classics in our schools as they came from a non-Catholic press, and
_we felt safe in adopting them_! Moreover, it has been, so far, next
to impossible to detail any one, chosen from our bands, to prepare new
sets. Now a plan seems to be maturing, and a line drawn, following
which one will know how to work; and it is on this line that the
writer is adding his feeble efforts to aid a great cause.
But what of the Christian classics? _Obstupescite, cœli!_ Harper &
Brothers have come to the rescue. To them, then, we must suppliantly
look for help to open this avenue of Christian civilization――the
blended instruction, in our schools, of pagan and Christian training
in belles-lettres!
“_Latin Hymns, with English Notes._ For use in schools and colleges.
New York: Harper & Bros., Publishers, Franklin Square. 1875. Pp. 333.
12mo, tinted paper, $1 75.”
The book is to be the first of a series of what may be called sacred
classics. The second of the series, already printed, is _The
Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius_; it will be followed by Tertullian
and Athanagoras (surely a worse choice as regards style could not be
made), both in press. Then, “_should the series be welcomed_, it will
be continued with volumes of Augustine, and Cyprian, and Lactantius,
and Justin Martyr, and Chrysostom, and others; in number sufficient
for a complete college course.”
From a notice intended to usher the whole series before the public we
learn that “for many centuries, down to what is called the pagan
Renaissance, they [the writings of early Christians] were the common
linguistic study of educated Christians.” A startling disclosure to
us. For the future, pagan classics are to be eliminated. Is it not
evident that the industrious editors have taken the clue from us?――at
least for a part of their programme; for they push matters too far.
But here is the mishap. If we have to judge by the first book, their
works will be unavailable, their labor bootless. Dr. Parsons closes
his admirable translation of Dante’s _Inferno_ (albeit with a little
profanity, which we are willing to forgive, considering the subject
and its worth) with those imploring words, _Tantus labor non sit
cassus!_ Mr. March will find them at page 155 of his book. He may as
well appropriate them to himself, with a little suppression, however;
nor should he scruple to alter the text, seeing that he has taken
other unwarrantable liberties with the ancient fathers. What right has
he to mutilate Prudentius’ beautiful hymn _De Miraculis Christi_, and
of thirty-eight stanzas give us only eight, therewith composing, as it
were, a hymn of his own, and entitling it _De Nativitate Christi_?
Without entering into other damaging details, we assure the projectors
of this new enterprise that they have undertaken a faithless job.
Catholic teachers cannot adopt their books. For, surely, we are not
going to make our youth buy publications which tell us, _e.g._, that
the hymn _Stabat Mater_ is “simple Mariolatry,” to say nothing of
other notes equally insulting, especially when we come to the
historical department. Nor can it be said that they give proof either
of knowledge or of taste when they choose Eusebius for the very first
sample of patristic classicism. Ah! _sutor, sutor!_
But enough. We have dwelt on this new departure of Protestant zeal for
the study of the fathers, to give an additional proof in favor of our
opinion as to how far we can trust non-Catholic text-books. Even the
most superficial reader will at once discover that we only take up
side questions, and our remarks and arguments do not in the least
clash with the argument and judgment of Dr. Engbers, with whom we
agree in the main. We only assert that it would be better were we to
strain every nerve in preparing text-books of our own, whilst we also
believe it would not be so very difficult to attain the
long-wished-for result. It will take some time, it will require
sacrifices, yet the object can be accomplished. A beginning has been
made already in two American Catholic colleges. Nor should we forget
that none but Catholics can be competent to perform such a work. The
fathers are _our_ property; and the same divine Spirit that illumined
their minds will not fail to guide the pens of those who, in obedience
to authority, undertake this work.
As for the Christian authors, the difficulty is in the choice, as Dr.
Engbers points out. For the sake of brevity we limit ourselves to the
Latin fathers.
From the works of St. Augustine (a mine of great wealth) might be
compiled a series of selections which, put together with some from the
Ciceronian Jerome and a few others, would furnish an anthology of
specimens of eloquence, whether sacred, historical, or descriptive,
that could not be surpassed. A judicious _spicilegium_ from the _Acta
Martyrum_ and the liturgies of the first ages should form the
introductory portion. This first volume would be characteristic. We
would suggest that it were so prepared as at once to rivet the
attention of the scholar and enamor him with the beauties of apostolic
literature.
Dr. Engbers is very anxious――and justly so, when we consider our
needs――that something were done to supply our schools with works of
“history, natural science, and geography.” Indeed, it is high time
that we had a supply of such works. But here many will ask: “Have we
resources in our own Catholic community on which to depend for such
works?” Most assuredly we have. For, to quote only a few, is not
Professor James Hall, of Albany, a Catholic? Indeed he is, and one of
the first men in the department of natural history, acknowledged as
such by all the eminent societies of the European continent.
And who is superior to S. S. Haldeman, of Pennsylvania? And is he not
“one of ours”? The fact is, we do not know our own resources. Here we
have two men, inferior to none in their own departments of learning,
and they are totally ignored by the Catholic body, to which they
nevertheless belong! Indeed, John Gilmary Shea, another of our best
men, has touched a sad chord in his article in the first number of the
new _Catholic Quarterly_. We have allowed our best opportunities to
slip by unnoticed, and may God grant it is not too late to begin the
seemingly herculean task before us!
We have written under the inspiration and after the guidance of the
well-known wishes, nay, commands, of our Holy Father. He insists upon
education being made more Christian. His Holiness does not exclude the
pagan authors; he wishes them to be so presented to our youth that no
harm may result therefrom to the morals of the student; and we have no
doubt that the programme we have only sketched will meet with the
approval of all who are interested in the matter, and who will give us
the credit of having most faithfully adhered to our Holy Father’s
admonition.
Nor will the reader charge us with presumption if we dare to quote the
words of our great Pope, with the pardonable assurance that no more
fitting close could be given to our paper.
Monseigneur Bishop of Calvi and Teano, in the kingdom of Naples, now a
cardinal, is a most determined advocate of the needed reform, and
justly claims the merit of having been the first to inaugurate it in
Italy. In a letter to him Pius IX. sets down the importance of the
movement, and distinctly places the limits within which it should be
confined in order to attain complete success.
“R. P. D. D’AVANZO, Episcopo Calven, Theanen.[45]
“PIUS P.P. IX., _Venerabilis Frater, Salutem et Apostolicam
Benedictionem_.
“Quo libentius ab orbe Catholico indicti a Nobis Jubilæi
beneficium fuit exceptum, Venerabilis Frater, eo uberiorem
inde fructum expectandum esse confidimus, divina favente
clementia. Grati propterea sensus animi, quos hac de causa
prodis, iucunde excipimus, Deoque exhibemus, ut emolumentum
lætitiæ a te conceptæ respondens diœcesibus tuis concedere
velit. Acceptissimam autem habemus eruditam epistolam a te
concinnatam de mixta latinæ linguæ institutione. Scitissime
namque ab ipsa vindicatur decus christianæ latinitatis, quam
multi corruptionis insimularunt veteris sermonis; dum patet,
linguam, utpote mentis, morum, usuum publicorum
enunciationem, necessario novam induere debuisse formam post
invectam a Christo legem, quæ sicuti consortium humanum
extulerat et retinxerat ad spiritualia, sic indigebat nova
eloquii indole ab eo discreta, quod societatis carnalis,
fluxis tantum addictæ rebus, ingenium diu retulerat. Cui
quidem observationi sponte suffragata sunt recensita a te
solerter monumenta singulorum Ecclesiæ sæculorum; quæ dum
exordia novæ formæ subjecerunt oculis, ejusque progressum et
præstantiam, simul docuerunt constanter in more fuisse
positum Ecclesiæ, juventutem latina erudire lingua per
mixtam sacrorum et classicorum auctorum lectionem. Quæ sane
lucubratio tua cum diremptam iam disceptationem clariore
luce perfuderit, efficacius etiam suadebit institutoribus
adolescentiæ, utrorumque scriptorum opera in eius usum esse
adhibenda. Hunc Nos labori tuo successum ominamur; et
interim divini favoris auspicem et præcipuæ nostræ
benevolentiæ testem tibi, Venerabilis Frater, universoque
Clero et populo tuo Benedictionem Apostolicam peramanter
impertimus.
“Datum Romæ apud S. Petrum die 1 Aprilis anno 1875,
Pontificatus Nostri anno Vigesimonono.
“PIUS PP. IX.”
This very letter is an instance of the results to which a thorough and
judicious mixed Latin classical education will lead the student of
Latinity――the resources of the pagan Latin made classically available
even to him who is secretary to the Pope _ab epistolis Latinis_, to
which post are appointed those who, with other proper qualifications,
are good Latin scholars. Some of these letters, especially those
issued under the pontificates of Benedict XIV. and Pius VI. and VII.,
are truly Ciceronian in style and language.
We call the closest attention of such of our readers as are not
acquainted with Latin to the following translation of the above most
important document:
“To the REV. FATHER BARTHOLOMEW D’AVANZO, Bishop of Calvi
and Teano.
“PIUS IX., Pope.
“Venerable Brother, health and Apostolic Benediction: In
proportion, Venerable Brother, to the eager good-will with
which our proclamation of the Jubilee has been received by
the Catholic world, is the harvest of good results we expect
therefrom under favor of divine mercy. Heartily, therefore,
do we welcome the sentiments of gratitude which you express,
and offer them to God, that he may vouchsafe to your
dioceses a share in your joy. Most seasonable, moreover, do
we account the learned letter you have written on the mixed
teaching of the Latin language. For with great erudition
have you therein vindicated the honor of Christian Latinity,
which many have charged with being a corruption of the
ancient tongue; whereas it is clear that speech, as the
expression of ideas, manners, and public usages, must
necessarily have assumed a new garb after the law introduced
by Christ――a law which, while it elevated human intercourse,
and refashioned it to spiritual requirements, needed a new
form of conversation, distinct from that which had so long
reflected the bent of a carnal society swayed only by
transitory things. And truly the monuments you have
skilfully gathered from the several ages of the church
afford a self-evident proof of our assertion; for, while
they lay before the eyes of the reader the beginnings of the
new form, its progress and importance, they also aver it to
have been an established practice in the church to train
youth in the Latin tongue by a mixed reading of sacred with
classic authors. And assuredly this your dissertation, in
throwing greater light on a question already well
ventilated, will the more effectually urge upon the
instructors of youth the advisability of calling to their
aid the works of authors of both kinds. Such is the result
we predict for your labors; and in the meanwhile, as a
pledge of divine favor and a token of our own good-will, we
most affectionately bestow upon yourself, Venerable Brother,
and upon all your clergy and people, the Apostolic
Benediction.
“Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, on the 1st of April, in the
year 1875, the twenty-ninth of our pontificate.”
“PIUS PP. IX.”
And thus _Roma locuta est_!
[45] _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, vol. viii. p. 560.
FLYWHEEL BOB.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “ROMANCE OF CHARTER OAK,” “PRIDE OF LEXINGTON,” ETC., ETC.
Down in a dismal cellar, so poorly lighted, indeed, that you could
scarce distinguish his tiny figure when it came into the world, Bob
was born. Our little hero began life where we all must end
it――underground; and certainly many a burial-vault might have seemed a
less grimy, gloomy home than his. But Bob’s wretchedness being coeval
with his birth, he never knew what it was to be otherwise than
wretched. He cried and crowed pretty much like other infants, and his
mother declared he was the finest child ever born in this cellar.
“And, O darling!” she sighed more than once, while he snugged to her
bosom――“O darling! if you could stay always what you are.” It was easy
to feed him, easy to care for him, now. How would he fare along the
rugged road winding through the misty future?
Nothing looked so beautiful to his baby eyes as the golden streak
across the floor which appeared once a day for a few minutes; and as
soon as he was able to creep he moved towards it and tried to catch
it, and wondered very much when the streak faded away.
Bob’s only playmate was a poodle dog, who loved the sunshine too, and
was able at first to get more of it than he; and the child always
whimpered when Pin left him to go bask on the sidewalk. But by and by,
when he grew older, he followed his dumb friend up the steps, and
would sit for hours beside him; and the dog was very fond of his
little master, if we may judge by the constant wagging of his bushy
tail.
When Bob was four years old his mother died. This was too young an age
for him to comprehend what had happened. It surprised him a little
when they carried the body away; and when she breathed her last words:
“I am going, dear one; I wish I could take you with me,” he answered:
“Going where, mammy?” “When is mammy coming home?” he asked of several
persons who lodged in the cellar with him, and stayed awake the first
night a whole hour waiting for her to return. But ere long Bob ceased
to think about his mother, and in the course of a month ’twas as if
she had never been; there was rather more space in the underground
chamber than before, and now he had all the blanket to himself.
Thus we see that the boy began early the battle of life. When he felt
hungry, he would enter a baker’s shop near by, and stretch forth his
puny hand; and sometimes he was given a morsel of bread, and sometimes
he was not. But Bob was too spirited to lie down and starve. So, when
the baker shook his head, saying, “You come here too often,” he
watched a chance and stole peanuts from the stand on the corner. The
Ten Commandments did not trouble him in the least; for he had never
heard of them. Bob only knew that there was a day in the week when the
baker looked more solemn than on other days, and when the streets were
less crowded.
The one thing in the world Bob cherished was Pin. And the feeling was
mutual; for not seldom, when the dog discovered a bone or crust of
bread among the rubbish-heaps, he would let himself be deprived of the
treasure without even a growl. Then, when Christmas came round, Bob
and the poodle would stand by the shop-windows and admire the toys
together; and the child would talk to his pet, and tell him that this
was a doll and that a Noe’s ark. Once he managed to possess himself of
a toy which a lady let drop on the side-walk. But he did not keep it
long; for another urchin offered him a dime for it, which Bob
accepted, then forthwith turned the money into gingerbread, which he
shared with Pin.
Such was the orphan’s childhood. He was only one vagrant amid
thousands of others. In the great beehive of humanity his faint buzz
was unheard, and he was crowded out of sight by the swarm of other
bees. Still, there he was, a member of the hive; moving about and
struggling for existence; using his sting when he needed it, and
getting what honey he could. When the boy was in his seventh year, a
misfortune befell him which really smote his heart――the poodle
disappeared. And now, for the first time in his life, Bob shed tears.
He inquired of everybody in the tenement-house if they had seen him;
he put the same query to nearly every inhabitant of Mott Street. But
all smiled as they answered: “In a big city like New York a lost dog
is like a needle in a haystack.” Many a day did Bob pass seeking his
friend. He wandered to alleys and squares where he had never been
before, calling out, “Pin! Pin!” but no Pin came. Then, when night
arrived and he lay down alone in his blanket, he felt lonely indeed.
Poor child! It was hard to lose the only creature on earth that he
loved――the only creature on earth, too, that loved him. “I’ll never
forget you,” he sighed――“never forget you.” And sometimes, when
another dog would wag his tail and try to make friends, Bob would
shake his head and say: “No, no, you’re not my lost Pin.”
It took a twelvemonth to become reconciled to this misfortune. But
Time has broad wings, and on them Time bore away Bob’s grief, as it
bears away all our griefs; otherwise, one sorrow would not be able to
make room for another sorrow, and we should sink down and die beneath
our accumulated burdens.
We have styled Bob a vagrant. Here we take the name back, if aught of
bad be implied in it. It was not his fault that he was born in a
cellar; and if he stole peanuts and other things, ’twas only when
hunger drove him to it. Doubtless, had he first seen the light in
Fifth Avenue, he would have known ere this how to spell and say his
prayers; might have gone, perhaps, to many a children’s party, with
kid gloves on his delicate hands and a perfumed handkerchief for his
sensitive little nose. But Bob was not born in Fifth Avenue. He wore
barely clothes enough to cover his nakedness. His feet, like his
hands, had never known covering of any sort; they were used to the mud
and the snow, and once a string of red drops along the icy pavement
helped to track him to his den after he had been committing a theft.
In this case, however, the blood which flowed from his poor foot
proved a blessing in disguise, for Bob spent the coldest of the winter
months in the lock-up: clean straw, a dry floor, regular meals――what a
happy month!
As for not being able to read――why, if a boy in such ragged raiment as
his were to show himself at a public school, other boys would jeer at
him, and the pedagogue eye him askance.
But Bob proved the metal that was in him by taking, when he was just
eight years of age, a place in a factory. “Yes,” he said to the man
who brought him there, “I’d rather work than be idle.”
It were difficult to describe his look of wonder when he first entered
the vast building. There seemed to be no end of people――old men, young
men, and children like himself, all silent and busy. Around them,
above them, on every side of them, huge belts of leather, and rods of
iron, and wheels and cog-wheels were whirring, darting in and out of
holes, clearing this fellow’s head by a few inches, grazing that one’s
back so close that, if he chanced to faint or drop asleep, off in an
eye’s twinkle the machinery would whirl him, rags, bones, and flesh
making one ghastly pulp together. And the air was full of a loud,
mournful hum, like ten thousand sighs and groans. Presently Bob sat
down on a bench; then, like a good boy, tried to perform the task set
for him. But he could only stare at the big flywheel right in front of
him and close by; and so fixed and prolonged was his gaze that, by
common consent, the operatives christened him Flywheel Bob. Next day,
however, he began work in earnest, and it was not long ere he became
the best worker of them all.
When Bob was an infant, we remember, he used to creep toward the
sun-streak on the cellar floor, and cry when it faded away.
Now, although the building where he toiled twelve hours a day was
gloomy and depressing, and the sunshine a godsend to the spirits, the
boy never lifted his eyes for a single moment when it shimmered
through the sooty windows. At his age one grows apace; one is likewise
tender and easily moulded into well-nigh any shape.
So, like as the insect, emerging from the chrysalis, takes the color
of the leaf or bark to which it clings, Bob grew more and more like
unto the soulless machinery humming round him. If whispered to, he
made no response. When toward evening his poor back would feel weary,
no look of impatience revealed itself on his countenance. If ever he
heaved a sigh, no ears heard it, not even his own; and the foreman
declared that he was a model boy for all the other boys to imitate――so
silent, so industrious, so heartily co-operating with the wheels and
cog-wheels, boiler, valves, and steam; in fact, he was the most
valuable piece in the whole complicated machinery.
Bob was really a study. There are children who look forward to happy
days to come; who often, too, throw their mind’s eye backward on the
Christmas last gone by. This Bob never did. His past had no Santa
Claus, his present had none, his future had none. It were difficult to
say what life did appear to him, as day after day he bent over his
task. Mayhap he never indulged in thoughts about himself――what he had
been, what he was, what he might become. Certainly, if we may judge by
the vacant, leaden look into which his features ere long crystallized,
Bob was indeed what the foreman said――a bit of the machinery. And more
and more akin to it he grew as time rolled by. Bob had never beheld it
except in motion; and on Sundays, when he was forced to remain idle,
his arm would ever and anon start off on a wild, crazy whirl; round
and round and round it would go; whereupon the other children would
laugh and shout: “Hi! ho! Look at Flywheel Bob!”
The child’s fame spread. In the course of time Richard Goodman, the
owner of the factory, heard of him. This gentleman, be it known, was
subject to the gout; at least, he gave it that name, which sounded
better than rheumatism, for it smacked of family, of gentle birth;
though, verily, if such an ailment might be communicated through a
proboscis, there was not enough old Madeira in his veins to have given
a mosquito the gout.
When thus laid up, Mr. Goodman was wont to send for his superintendent
to inquire how business was getting on; and it was upon one of these
occasions that he first heard of Bob. Although not a person given to
enthusiasm, not even when expressing himself on the subject of
money――money, which lay like a little gold worm in the core of his
heart――he became so excited when he was told about the model child,
who never smiled, who never sulked, who never asked for higher wages,
that the foreman felt a little alarm; for he had never seen his
employer’s eyes glisten as they did now, and even the pain in his left
knee did not prevent Mr. Goodman from rising up out of the easy-chair
to give vent to his emotion. “Believe me,” he exclaimed, “this child
is the beginning of a new race of children. Believe me, when our
factories are filled by workers like him, then we’ll have no more
strikes; strikes will be extinguished for ever!” Here Mr. Goodman sank
down again in the chair, then, pulling out a silk handkerchief, wiped
his forehead. But presently his brow contracted. “There is some talk,”
he continued, “of introducing a bill in the legislature to exclude all
children from factories under ten years of age. Would such a bill
exclude my model boy?”
“I can’t say whether it would,” replied the manager. “Bob may be ten,
or a little under, or a little over. I don’t think he’ll change much
from what he is, not if he lives fifty years. His face looks just like
something that has been hammered into a certain shape that it can’t
get out of.”
“And they talk, too, of limiting the hours of work to ten per day for
children between ten and sixteen years,” went on Mr. Goodman, still
frowning; “and, what’s more, the bill requires three months’
day-schooling or six months’ night-schooling. I declare, if this bill
becomes a law, I’ll retire from business. The public has no right to
interfere with my employment of labor. It is sheer tyranny.”
“Well, it would throw labor considerably out of gear,” remarked the
superintendent; “for there are a hundred thousand children employed in
the shops and factories of this city and suburbs.”
“But, no; the bill sha’n’t pass!” exclaimed Mr. Goodman, thumping his
fist on the table. “Why, what’s the use of a lobby, if such a bill can
go through?”
Here the foreman smiled, whereupon his employer gave a responsive
smile; then pulling the bell, “Now,” said the latter, “let us drink
the model boy’s health.” In a few minutes there appeared a decanter of
sherry. “Here’s to Flywheel Bob!” cried Mr. Goodman, holding up his
glass.
“To Flywheel Bob!” repeated the other; and they both tossed off the
wine.
“Flywheel Bob! Why, what a funny name!” spoke a low, silvery voice
close by. Mr. Goodman turned hastily round, and there, at the
threshold of the study, stood a little girl, with a decidedly pert
air, and a pair of lustrous black eyes fixed full upon him; they
seemed to say: “I know you told me not to enter here, yet here I am.”
A profusion of ringlets rippled down her shoulders, and on one of her
slender fingers glittered a gold ring.
“Daisy, you have disobeyed me,” said her father, trying to appear
stern; “and, what is more, you glide about like a cat.”
“Do I?” said Daisy, smiling. “Well, pa, tell me who Flywheel Bob is;
then I’ll go away.”
“Something down at my factory――a little toy making pennies for you.
There, now, retire, darling, retire.”
“A little toy? Then give me Flywheel Bob; I want a new plaything,”
pursued the child, quite heedless of the command to withdraw.
“Well, I’d like to know how many toys you want?” said Mr. Goodman
impatiently. “You’ve had dear knows how many dolls since Christmas.”
“Nine, pa.”
“And pray, what has become of them all, miss?”
“Given away to girls who didn’t get any from Santa Claus.”
“I declare! she’s her poor dear mother over again,” sighed the
widower. “Margaret would give away her very shoes and stockings to the
poor.”
The sigh had barely escaped his lips when the foreman burst into a
laugh, and presently Mr. Goodman laughed too; for, lo! peeping from
behind the girl’s silk frock was the woolly head of a poodle. In his
mouth was a doll with one arm broken off, hair done up in curls like
Daisy’s, and a bit of yellow worsted twined around one of the fingers
to take the place of a ring. “Humph! I don’t wonder you’ve had nine
dolls in five months,” ejaculated Mr. Goodman after he had done
laughing. “Rover, it seems, plays with them too; then tears them up.”
“Well, pa, he is tired of dolls now, and wants Flywheel Bob; and so do
I.”
“I wish I hadn’t mentioned the boy’s name,” murmured Mr. Goodman. Then
aloud: “Daisy dear, I am going out for a drive by and by; which way
shall we go? To the Park?”
“No; to Tiffany’s to have my ears pierced.” At this he burst into
another laugh.
“Why, pa, I’m almost ten, and old enough for earrings,” added Daisy,
tossing her head and making the pretty ringlets fly about in all
directions.
“Well, well, darling; then we will go to Tiffany’s.”
“And afterwards, pa, we’ll get Flywheel Bob.”
“Oh! hush, my love. You cannot have him.”
“_Him!_ Is he a little boy, pa?” Mr. Goodman did not answer. “Well,
whatever Flywheel Bob is,” she continued, “I want a new plaything.
This doll Rover broke all by accident. And I scolded you hard; didn’t
I, Rover?” Here she patted the dog’s head. “But, pa, he sha’n’t hurt
Flywheel Bob.”
“Well, well, we’ll drive out in half an hour,” said her parent, who
would fain have got the notion of Flywheel Bob out of his child’s
head, yet feared it might stick there.
“In half an hour,” repeated Daisy, feeling the tips of her ears, while
her eyes sparkled like the jewels which were shortly to adorn them.
Then, going to the bell, she gave a ring. Mr. Goodman, of course,
imagined that it was to order the carriage. But when the domestic
appeared, Daisy quietly said: “Jane, I wish the boned turkey brought
here.” No use to protest――to tell the child that this room was his own
private business room, and not the place for luncheon.
In the boned turkey was brought, despite Mr. Goodman’s sighs. But it
was well-nigh more than he could endure when presently, after carving
off three slices, she bade Rover sit up and beg.
In an instant the poodle let the doll drop, then, balancing himself on
his haunches, gravely opened his mouth. “He never eats anything except
boned turkey,” observed Daisy in answer to her father’s look of
displeasure. “Bones are bad for his teeth.” Then, while her pet was
devouring the dainty morsels: “Pa,” she went on, “you haven’t yet
admired Rover’s blue ribbon.”
“Umph! he certainly doesn’t look at all like the creature he was when
you bought him three years ago,” answered Mr. Goodman.
“Well, pa, this summer I will not go to the White Mountains.
Remember!”
“Why not?” inquired Mr. Goodman, who failed to discern any possible
connection between the poodle and this charming summer resort.
“Because I want surf-bathing for Rover. I love to throw your cane into
the big waves, then see him rush after it and jump up and down in the
foam. This season we must go to Long Branch.” Her father made no
response, but turned to address a parting word to the superintendent,
who presently took leave, highly amused by the child’s bold, pert
speeches.
“Now, Daisy, for our drive,” said Mr. Goodman, rising stiffly out of
the arm-chair.
But he had only got as far as the door when another visitor was
announced. It proved to be a member of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals――a society which has already done much good, and
whose greatest enemy is the ill-judged zeal of some of its own
members.
“What on earth can he want?” thought Mr. Goodman, motioning to the
gentleman to take a seat.
“I am come, sir,” began the latter, “to inquire whether you would
accept the position of president of our society? We have much to
contend with, and gentlemen like yourself――gentlemen of wealth and
influence in the community――are needed to assist us.”
Mr. Goodman, who in reality cared not a rush how animals were treated,
yet was ambitious to be known as a citizen of influence, bowed and
replied: “I feel highly honored, sir, and am willing to become your
president.” Then, filling anew the wine-glasses, he called out:
“Here is success and prosperity to――”
“Flywheel Bob,” interrupted Daisy. “For, pa, he is a little boy, isn’t
he? A little boy making pennies?”
Mr. Goodman frowned, while the child laughed and Rover barked. But
presently the toast to the society was duly honored, after which the
visitor proceeded to speak of several cruel sports which he hoped
would soon be put a stop to. “Turkey-matches on Thanksgiving day must
be legislated against, Mr. President.” Mr. President bowed and waved
his hand. “And there is talk, sir, of introducing fox-chases, as in
England. This sport must likewise be prevented by law.” Another bow
and wave of the hand.
“Well, pa, you sha’n’t stop me killing flies; for flies plague Rover,”
put in Daisy, with a malicious twinkle in her eye.
Again the poodle barked. Then, clapping her hands, off she flew to get
her hat and gloves, leaving the gentlemen smiling at this childish
remark.
“My darling,” said Mr. Goodman a quarter of an hour later, as they
were driving down Fifth Avenue together――“my darling, I have been
placed at the head of another society――a society to prevent cruelty to
animals.”
“I am glad,” replied Daisy, looking up in his face. “Everybody likes
you, pa; don’t they?”
Daisy, let us here observe, was the rich man’s only child. His wife
was dead; but whenever he gazed upon the little fairy at this moment
seated beside him, he seemed to behold his dear Margaret anew: the
same black eyes, the same wilful, imperious, yet withal tenderly
affectionate ways. No wonder that Richard Goodman idolized his
daughter. To no other living being did he unbend, did his heart ever
quicken.
But to Daisy he did unbend. He loved to caress her, to talk to her,
too, about matters and things which she could hardly understand. And
she would always listen and appear very pleased and interested. Search
the whole city of New York, and you would not have found another of
her age with so much tact when she chose to play the little lady, nor
a better child, either, considering how thoroughly she had been
spoilt. If Daisy was a tyrant, she was a very loving one indeed, and
none knew this better than her father and the poodle, who is now
perched on the front cushion of the barouche, looking scornfully down
at the curs whom he passes, and saying to himself: “What a lucky dog I
am!”
“I am sure the Society to prevent Cruelty to Animals will do good,”
observed Daisy, after holding up her finger a moment and telling Rover
to sit straight. “But, pa, is Flywheel Bob an animal or a toy? Or is
he really a little boy, as I guessed awhile ago?”
“There it comes again,” murmured Mr. Goodman. Then, with a slight
gesture of impatience, he answered: “A boy, my love, a boy.”
“Well, what a funny name, pa! Oh! I’m glad we’re going to see him.”
“No, dear, we are going to Tiffany’s――to Tiffany’s, in order to have
your darling ears pierced and elegant earrings put in them.”
“I know it, pa, but I ordered James to drive first to the factory.”
No use to protest. The coachman drove whither he was bidden. But not a
little surprised was he, when they arrived, to see his young mistress
alight instead of his master.
“I am too lame with gout to accompany her,” whispered Mr. Goodman to
the foreman, who presently made his appearance. “It is an odd whim of
hers. Don’t keep her long, and take great care about the machinery.”
“I’ll be back soon, pa,” said Daisy――“very soon.” With this she and
Rover entered the big, cheerless edifice, which towered like a giant
high above all the surrounding houses.
“Now, Miss Goodman, keep close to me and walk carefully,” said her
guide.
“Let me hold your hand,” said the child, who already began to feel
excited as the first piece of machinery came in view. Then, pausing at
the threshold of floor number one, “Oh! what a noise,” she cried, “and
what a host of people! Which one is Flywheel Bob?”
“Yonder he sits, miss,” replied the superintendent, pointing to the
curved figure of a boy――we might better say child; for, in the two and
a half years since we last met him, Bob has hardly grown a quarter of
an inch. “Why doesn’t he sit straight?” asked Daisy, approaching him.
“Because, miss, Bob minds his task.”
“Well, he does indeed; for he hasn’t looked at me once, while all the
rest are staring.”
“You are the first young lady that has ever honored us by a visit,”
answered the foreman.
“Am I?” exclaimed Daisy, not a little gratified to have so many eyes
fastened upon her. At children’s parties, pretty as she was, she had
rivals; here there were none. And now, as she moved daintily along,
with her glossy curls swaying to and fro, and her sleeves not quite
hiding the gold bracelets on her snowy wrists, she formed indeed a
bewitching picture. Presently they arrived beside Flywheel Bob; then
Daisy stopped and surveyed him attentively, wondering why he still
refused to notice her. “How queerly he behaves!” she said inwardly,
“and how pale he is! I wonder what he gets to eat? His fingers are
like spiders’ claws. I’d rather be Rover than Bob.” While she thus
soliloquized the poodle kept snuffing at the boy’s legs, and his tail,
which at first had evinced no sign of emotion, was now wagging slowly
from side to side, like as one who moves with doubt and deliberation.
Mayhap strange thoughts were flitting through Rover’s head at this
moment. Perchance dim memories were being awakened of a damp abode
underground; of a baby twisting knots in his shaggy coat; of hard
times, when a half-picked bone was a feast. Who knows? But while the
dog poked his nose against the boy’s ragged trowsers, while his tail
wagged faster and faster, while his mistress said to herself: “I’ll
tell pa about poor Bob, and he shall come to Long Branch with us,” the
object of her pity continued as unmoved by the attention bestowed on
him as if he had been that metal rod flashing back and forth in yon
cylinder.
“How many hours does Bob work?” inquired Daisy, moving away and
drawing Rover along by the ear; for Rover seemed unwilling to depart.
“Twelve, miss,” replied the foreman.
“Twelve!” repeated Daisy, lifting her eyebrows. “Does he really? Why,
I don’t work two. My governess likes to drive in the Park, and so do
I; and we think two hours long enough.”
“Well, I have seen him, pa,” said Daisy a few minutes later, as she
and her father were driving away.
“Have you? Humph! then I suppose we may now go to Tiffany’s,” rejoined
Mr. Goodman somewhat petulantly.
“And, pa, Flywheel Bob isn’t a bit like any other boy I have ever
seen. Why, he is all doubled up; his bony fingers move quick, quick,
ever so quick; his eyes keep always staring at his fingers, and”――here
an expression of awe shadowed the child’s bright face a moment――“and
really, pa, I thought he said ‘hiss-s-s’ when the steam-pipe hissed.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the manufacturer. Then, after a pause: “Well, now,
my dear, let us talk about something else――about your earrings; which
shall they be, pearls or diamonds?”
“Diamonds, pa, for they shine prettier.” Then clapping her hands: “Oh!
wouldn’t it surprise Bob if I gave him a holiday? He is making pennies
for me, isn’t he? You said so this morning. Well, pa, I have pennies
enough, so Bob shall play awhile; he shall come to Long Branch.”
“My daughter, do not be silly,” said Mr. Goodman.
“Silly! Why, pa, if Rover likes surf-bathing, I’m sure Flywheel Bob’ll
like it too.”
“He is too good a boy to idle away his time, my love.”
“Well, but, pa, I heard you say that bathing was so healthy; and Bob
doesn’t look healthy.”
“Thank heavens! here we are at Tiffany’s,” muttered Mr. Goodman when
presently the carriage came to a stop. But before his daughter
descended he took her hand and said: “Daisy, you love me, do you not?”
“Love you, pa? Of course I do.” And to prove it the child pressed her
lips to his cheek.
“Then, dearest, please not to speak any more about Flywheel Bob;
otherwise your governess will think you are crazy, and so will
everybody else who hears you.”
“Crazy!” cried Daisy, opening her eyes ever so wide. Then turning up
her little, saucy nose: “Well, pa, I don’t care what Mam’selle
thinks!”
“But you care about what I think?” said Mr. Goodman, still retaining
her hand; for she seemed ready to fly away.
“Oh! indeed I do.”
“Then I request you not to mention Flywheel Bob any more.”
“Really?” And Daisy gazed earnestly in his face, while astonishment,
anger, love, made her own sweet countenance for one moment a terrible
battle-field. It was all she spoke; in another moment she and Rover
were within the splendid marble store.
As soon as she was gone Mr. Goodman drew a long breath. Yet he could
not bear to be without his daughter, even for ever so short a time;
and now she was scarcely out of sight when he felt tempted to hobble
after her. He worshipped Daisy. But who did not? She was the life of
his home. Without her it would have been sombre indeed; for No. ――
Fifth Avenue was a very large mansion, and no other young person was
in it besides herself. But Daisy made racket enough for six, despite
her French governess, who would exclaim fifty times a day:
“Mademoiselle Marguerite, vous vous comportez comme une bourgeoise.”
If an organ-grinder passed under the window, the window was thrown
open in a trice, and down poured a handful of coppers; and happy was
the monkey who climbed up to that window-sill, for the child would
stuff his red cap with sugar and raisins, and send him off grinning as
he had never grinned before.
“O darling! do hurry back,” murmured Mr. Goodman, while he waited in
the carriage, longing for her to reappear. At length she came, and the
moment she was beside him again he gave her an embrace; then the rich
man drove home, feeling very, very happy.
But not so Daisy. And this afternoon she stood a whole hour by the
window, looking silently out. In vain the itinerant minstrel played
his finest tunes; she seemed deaf to the music. Rover, too, looked
moody and not once wagged his tail; nor when dinner-time came would he
touch a mouthful of anything――which, however, did not surprise the
governess, who observed: “Ma foi! l’animal ne fait que manger.” But
when a whole week elapsed, and Daisy still remained pensive, her
father said: “You need change of air, my love; so get your things
ready. To-morrow we’ll be off for Long Branch.”
“So soon!” exclaimed Daisy. It was only the first of June.
“Why, my pet, don’t you long to throw my cane into the waves, to see
Rover swim after it?” Then, as she made no response, “Daisy,” he went
on, “why do you not laugh and sing and be like you used to be? Tell me
what is the matter.”
Without answering, Daisy looked down at the poodle, who turned his
eyes up at her and faintly moved his tail.
“Yes, yes; I see you need a change,” continued Mr. Goodman. “So
to-morrow we’ll be off for the seaside. There I know you will laugh
and be happy.”
“Is Flywheel Bob happy?” murmured the child under her breath.
“A little louder, dear one, a little louder. I didn’t catch those last
words.”
“You asked me, pa, not to speak of Flywheel Bob to you; so I only
spoke about him to myself.”
“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Mr. Goodman in a tone of utter
amazement; then, after staring at her for nearly a minute, he rose up
and passed into his private room, thinking what a very odd being Daisy
was. “She is her poor, dear mother over again,” he muttered. “I never
could quite understand Margaret, and now I cannot understand Daisy.”
Mr. Goodman had not been long in his study when a visitor was
announced. The one who presently made his appearance was as unlike the
benevolent and scrupulous gentleman who came here once to beg the
manufacturer to become president of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals――as unlike him, we repeat, as a man could possibly
be.
This man’s name was Fox; and verily there was something of his
namesake about him. Explain it as we may, we do occasionally meet with
human beings bearing a mysterious resemblance to some one of the lower
animals; and if Mr. Fox could only have dwindled in size, then dropped
on his hands and knees, we should have fired at him without a doubt,
had we discovered him near our hen-roost of a moonlight night.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Fox,” said Mr. Goodman, motioning to him to be
seated. “I sent for you to talk about important business.”
“At your service, sir,” replied the other, with a twinkle in his gray
eye which pleased Daisy’s father; for it seemed to say, “I am ready
for any kind of business.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Goodman; then, after tapping his fingers a
moment on the table: “Now, Mr. Fox, I would like you to proceed at
once to Albany. Can you go?”
Mr. Fox nodded.
“Very good. And when you are there, sir, I wish you to exert yourself
to the utmost to prevent the passage of a bill known as ‘The Bill for
the protection of factory children.’”
Here Mr. Fox blew his nose, which action caused his cunning eyes to
sparkle more brightly. Then, having returned the handkerchief to his
pocket, “Mr. Goodman,” he observed, “of course you are aware that it
takes powder to shoot robins. Now, how much, sir, do you allow for
this bird?”
Mr. Goodman smiled; then, after writing something on a slip of paper,
held it up before him.
“Humph!” ejaculated Mr. Fox. “That sum may do――it may. But you must
know, sir, that this legislature is not like the last one. This
legislature”――here Mr. Fox himself smiled――“is affected with a rare
complaint, which we gentlemen of the lobby facetiously call
‘Ten-Commandment fever’; and the weaker a man is with this complaint,
the more it takes to operate on him.”
“Then make it this.” And Mr. Goodman held up another slip with other
figures marked on it.
“Well, yes, I guess that’ll cure the worst case,” said Mr. Fox,
grinning.
“Good!” exclaimed Daisy’s father. “Then, sir, let us dismiss the
subject and talk about something else――about a bill introduced by the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of which society I
am president. It relates to chasing foxes.”
“And this bill you _don’t_ want killed?” said Mr. Fox.
“Precisely.”
“Well, sir, how much are you willing to spend for that purpose?”
Again Mr. Goodman held up a piece of paper.
“Why, my stars!” cried the lobby-member, after glancing at the
figures――“my stars! isn’t it as important a bill as the other?”
“I won’t alter my figures,” replied Mr. Goodman.
“But remember, sir, you are president of the So――”
“I won’t alter my figures,” repeated Mr. Goodman, interrupting him.
“Then, sir, you cannot count on a law to prevent people running after
foxes,” answered Mr. Fox dryly; but presently, shrugging his
shoulders, “However, as much as can be accomplished with that small
sum of money, I will accomplish.”
“I don’t doubt it,” observed Mr. Goodman; then, turning toward the
table, “And now, sir, suppose we drink a glass of wine, after which
you will proceed to Albany.”
Accordingly, to Albany Mr. Fox went, while Richard Goodman and his
daughter took wing for Long Branch.
But, strange to relate, the change of air did not work the beneficial
effects which her father had expected. There was evidently something
the matter with Daisy. She had grown thoughtful beyond her years, and
would ever and anon sit down on the beach, and, with Rover’s head
resting on her lap, gaze out over the blue waters without opening her
lips for perhaps a whole hour.
“What can ail my darling child?” Mr. Goodman often asked himself
during these pensive moods. Then he consulted three physicians who
happened to be taking a holiday at the Branch; one of whom recommended
iron, another cod-liver oil, while the third doctor said: “Fresh milk,
sir, fresh milk.”
While he was thus worried about Daisy, the torrid, sunstroke heat of
summer flamed down upon the city, and more and more people followed
his example and fled to Newport and the White Mountains, to Saratoga
and Long Branch. But those who went away were as a drop in the ocean
to those who remained behind. The toilers are ever legion. We see them
not, yet they are always near, toiling, toiling; and our refinement,
our luxury, our happiness, are too often the fruit of their misery.
The deeper the miner delves in the mine, the higher towers the castle
of Mammon. So in these sultry dog-days Flywheel Bob’s spider fingers
were at work for Richard Goodman’s benefit, as deftly as in the depths
of winter――no holiday for those poor fingers. Yet not even a sigh does
Bob heave, and he cares less now for the blessed sunshine than he did
in his baby days, when it painted a golden streak on the cellar floor.
O foolish boy! why didst thou not go with thy mother? There was room
enough in the pine box to have held ye both, and in Potter’s field thy
weary body would have found rest long ago.
But Bob, instead of dying, lived; and now behold him, in his eleventh
year, in the heart of this big factory, the biggest in the metropolis,
and the clatter and din of it are his very life. Oh! show him not a
rose, Daisy dear. Keep far from his ears the song of the birds! Let
him be, let him be where he is! And O wheels and cogwheels, and all ye
other pieces of machinery! whatever name ye go by, keep on turning and
rumbling and groaning; for Flywheel Bob believes with all his heart
and soul that he is one with you, that ye are a portion of himself.
Break not his mad illusion! ’Tis the only one he has ever enjoyed. And
on the machinery went――on, on, on, all through June, July, August,
earning never so much money before; and the millionaire to whom it
belonged would have passed never so happy a summer (for his manager
wrote him most cheering reports), if only Daisy had been well and
cheerful.
It was the 1st of September when Mr. Goodman returned to New York――the
1st of September; a memorable day it was to be.
Hardly had he crossed the threshold of his city home when he received
a message which caused him to go with all haste to the factory. What
had happened? The machinery had broken down, come to a sudden dead
pause; and the moment’s stillness which followed was not unlike the
stillness of the death-chamber――just after the vital spark has fled,
and when the mourners can hear their own hearts beating. Then came a
piercing, agonizing cry; up, up from floor to floor it shrilled. And
lo! Flywheel Bob had become a raving maniac, and far out in the street
his voice could be heard: “Don’t let the machine stop! Don’t let the
machine stop! Oh! don’t, oh! don’t. Keep me going! keep me going!”
Immediately the other operatives crowded about him; a few laughed,
many looked awe-stricken, while one stalwart fellow tried to prevent
his arms from swinging round like the wheel which had been in motion
near him so long. But this was not easy to do, and the mad boy
continued to scream: “Keep me going, keep me going, keep me going!”
until finally he sank down from utter exhaustion. Then they carried
him away to his underground home, the same dusky chamber where he was
born, and left him.
But ere long the place was thronged with curious people, drawn thither
by his cries, and who made sport of his crazy talk; for Bob told them
that he was a flywheel, and it was dangerous to approach him. Then
they lit some bits of candle, and formed a ring about him, so as to
give his arms full space to swing. And now, while his wild, impish
figure went spinning round and hissing amid the circle of flickering
lights, it was well-nigh impossible to believe that he was the same
being who eleven years before had crept and crowed and toddled about
in this very spot, a happy babe, with Pin and a sunbeam to play with.
It was verging towards evening when Mr. Goodman received the message
alluded to above; and Daisy, after wondering a little what could have
called her father away at this hour, determined to sally forth and
enjoy a stroll in the avenue with Rover. Her governess had a headache
and could not accompany her; but this did not matter, for the child
was ten years old and not afraid to go by herself. Accordingly, out
she went. But, to her surprise, when she reached the sidewalk her pet
refused to follow. He stood quite still, and you might have fancied
that he was revolving some project in his noddle. “Come, come!” said
Daisy impatiently. But the dog stirred not an inch, nor even wagged
his tail. And now happened something very interesting indeed. Rover
presently did move, but not in the direction which his young mistress
wished――up towards the Park――but down the avenue. Nor would he halt
when she bade him, and only once did he glance back at her. “Well,
well, I’ll follow him,” said Daisy. “He likes Madison Square; perhaps
he is going there.”
She was mistaken, however. Past the Square the poodle went, then down
Broadway, and on, on, to Daisy’s astonishment and grief, who kept
imploring him to stop; and once she caught his ear and tried to hold
him back, but he broke loose, then proceeded at a brisker pace than
before, so that it was necessary almost to run in order to keep up
with him. By and by the child really grew alarmed; for she found
herself no longer in Broadway, but in a much narrower street, where
every other house had a hillock of rubbish in front of it, and where
the stoops and sidewalks were crowded with sickly-looking children in
miserable garments, and who made big eyes at her as she went by. The
curs, too, yelped at Rover, as if he had no business to be among them;
and one mangy beast tried to tear off his pretty blue ribbon. But,
albeit no coward, Rover paused not to fight; steadily on he trotted,
until at length he dived down a flight of rickety steps. Daisy had to
follow, for she durst not leave him now; she seemed to be miles away
from her beautiful home on Murray Hill, and there was no choice left,
save to trust to her pet to guide her back when he felt inclined.
But it was not easy to penetrate into the cavern-like domicile whither
the stairway led; for it was very full of people. The dog, however,
managed to squeeze through them; and Daisy, who was clinging to his
shaggy coat, presently found herself in an open space lit up by half a
dozen tapers, and in the middle of the ring a boy was yelling and
swinging his arms around with terrific velocity, and the boy looked
very like Flywheel Bob.
“Hi! ho! Here’s a fairy, Bob――a fairy!” cried a voice, as Daisy
emerged from the crowd and stood trembling before him. “It’s
Cinderella,” shouted another. “Isn’t she a beauty!” exclaimed a third
voice.
While they were passing these remarks upon the child, Rover was
yelping and frisking about as she had never seen him do before; he
seemed perfectly wild with delight. But the one whom the poodle
recognized and loved knew him not.
“O Bob! Bob!” cried Daisy presently, stretching forth her hands in an
imploring manner, “don’t kill my Rover! Don’t, don’t!”
There was indeed cause for alarm. The mad boy had suddenly ceased his
frantic motions and clutched her pet by the throat, as if to choke
him. Yet, although in dire peril of his life, Rover wagged his tail,
and somebody shouted: “Bully dog! He’ll die game!”
“Come away, come away quick!” said a man, jerking Daisy back by the
arm. Then three or four other men flew to the rescue of the poodle,
and not without some difficulty unbent Bob’s fingers from their iron
grip; after which, still wagging his poor tail, Rover was driven out
of the room after his mistress.
Oh! it seemed like heaven to Daisy when she found herself once more in
the open air. But what she had heard and witnessed in the horrible
place which she had just quitted wrought too powerfully on her nerves,
and now the child burst into hysterical sobs. While Daisy wept,
somebody――she hardly knew whether it was a man or woman――fondled her
and tried to soothe her, and at the same time slipped off her ring,
earrings, and bracelets. The tender thief was in the very nick of
time; for in less than five minutes, to Daisy’s unutterable joy, who
should appear but her father, accompanied by a policeman and the
superintendent of the factory. “O my daughter! my daughter! how came
you here?” cried Mr. Goodman, starting when he discovered her. “Have
you lost your senses too?”
“Oh! no, no, pa,” answered Daisy, springing into his arms. “Rover
brought me here.”
Then after a brief silence, during which her father kissed the tears
off her cheek: “And, pa,” she added, “I have seen Flywheel Bob, and do
you know I think they have been doing something to him; for he acts so
very strangely. Poor, poor Bob!”
While she was speaking the object of her commiseration was carried up
the steps. Happily, he was tired out by his crazy capers and was now
quite calm, nor uttered a word as they laid him on the sidewalk.
“Dear Bob, what is the matter? What have they done to you?” said
Daisy, bending tenderly over him. Bob did not answer, but his eyes
rolled about and gleamed brighter than her lost diamonds.
“Don’t disturb him, darling. He is going to the hospital, where he
will soon be well again,” said Mr. Goodman.
“Well, pa, he sha’n’t go back to that horrid factory,” answered Daisy;
“and, what’s more, now that he is ill, he sha’n’t go anywhere except
to my house.”
“Darling, don’t be silly,” said Mr. Goodman, dropping his voice. “How
could a little lady like you wish to have him in your house?”
“Why, pa, Bob is ill; look at the foam on his lips. Yes, I’m sure he
is ill, and I wish to nurse him.”
“Well, my child, you cannot have him; therefore speak no more about
it,” replied Mr. Goodman, who felt not a little annoyed at the turn
things were taking.
“Then, pa, I’ll go to the hospital too, and nurse him there; upon my
word I will.”
“No, you sha’n’t.”
“But I will. O father!” Here the child again burst into sobs, while
the crowd looked on in wonder and admiration, and one man whispered:
“What a game thing she is!”
Three days have gone by since Daisy’s noble triumph, and now, on a
soft, luxurious couch in an elegant apartment, lies Flywheel Bob,
while by the bedside watches his devoted little nurse. The boy’s
reason has just returned, but he can hardly move or speak.
“O Bob! don’t die,” said Daisy, taking one of his cold,
death-moistened hands in hers. “You sha’n’t work anymore. Don’t, don’t
die!” The physician has told her that death is approaching.
“Where am I?” inquired Bob in a faint, scarce audible whisper, and
turning his hollow, bewildered eyes on the child.
“You are here, Bob, in my home, and nobody shall put you out of it;
and when you get well, you shall have a long, long holiday.”
The boy did not seem to understand; at least, his eyes went roving
strangely round the room, and he murmured the word “Pin.”
“What do you mean, dear Bob?” asked Daisy.
“Pin,” he repeated―― “my lost Pin.”
Here the door of the chamber was pushed gently open and Rover thrust
his head in. The dog had been thrice ordered out for whining and
moaning, and Daisy was about to order him away a fourth time, when Bob
looked in the direction of the door. Quick the poodle bounded forward,
and as he bounded Flywheel Bob rose up in the bed, and cried in a
voice which startled Daisy, it was so loud and thrilling: “O Pin! Pin!
Pin!” In another moment his arms were twined round the creature’s
neck; then he bowed down his head.
Bob spoke not again――Bob never spoke again and when Daisy at length
discovered that he was dead, she wept as if her heart would break.
* * * * *
“Father, I think poor Bob would not have died, if you had let me have
him sooner,” said Daisy the evening of the funeral.
“Alas! my child, I believe what you say is too true,” replied Mr.
Goodman. “But his death has already caused me suffering enough; do let
me try and forget it. I promise there shall be no more Flywheel Bobs
in my factory.”
“Oh! yes, pa; give them plenty of holidays. Why, Rover, I think, is
happier than many of those poor people.” Then, patting the dog’s head:
“And, pa, I am going now to call Rover Pin; for I am sure that was his
old name.”
“Perhaps it was, darling,” said Mr. Goodman, fondling with her
ringlets. Then, with a smile, he added: “Daisy, do you know both Mr.
Fox and my superintendent believe that I am gone mad!”
“Mad? Why, pa?”
“Because I have sworn to undo all I have done. Ay, I mean to try my
best to be elected president of another society――the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children; and I will try to make them all
happy.”
“Oh! yes, yes, as happy as Pin is,” said Daisy, laughing. “Why, pa, I
only work two hours a day, and Mam’selle is always pleased with me.”
Then, her cherub face growing serious again: “And now,” she added, “I
must have a pretty tombstone placed on Bob’s grave, and I will pay for
it all myself out of my own money.”
“Have you enough, darling?”
“Well, if I haven’t, pa, you’ll give me more money; for I wish to pay
for it all, all myself.”
“So you shall, my love,” said Mr. Goodman, smiling. “But what kind of
a monument is it to be?”
“A white marble cross, pa. Then I’ll often go and hang wreaths upon
it――wreaths of beautiful flowers; for I never, never, never will
forget Flywheel Bob.”
THE PONTIFICAL VESTMENTS OF EGYPT AND ISRAEL.
Much discussion has arisen among commentators and archæologists with
regard to the sacred vestments of the Jewish high-priest and the
Levites; and yet it does not appear to have hitherto occurred to them
to refer to the only sources whence additional and authentic
information respecting these vestments can be obtained――namely, the
monuments of ancient Egypt.
Age after age have repeated attempts been made to remake the vestments
of the Hebrew priesthood solely from the descriptions given in the
Pentateuch; but hitherto the words of Moses have been subjected to the
most discordant interpretations. In a book by the Abbé Ancessi,
entitled _Egypt and Moses_,[46] the first part only of which has as
yet appeared, we at last obtain a lucid idea of the Mosaical
directions, the very vagueness of which testifies that the great
Lawgiver is speaking of things already familiar to those whom he
addresses. So much in this work is new, and so much is suggestive of
what farther discoveries may bring to light, that we shall, with the
kind permission of the learned author, make free use of it in the
present notice.
At the very epoch to which chronologists are wont to refer the origin
of the human race we find on the borders of the Nile an already
powerful nation. Most of the peoples whose names were in after-times
to be renowned in history were then tribes of mere barbarians,
dwelling in the depths of forests, in caverns, or on the islets of the
lakes, their weapons rude flint-headed axes and arrows, and their
ornaments the teeth of the wild beasts they had slain in the chase, a
few amber beads or rings of cardium, threaded on tendons dried in the
sun.
At this time the nobles of Egypt inhabited sumptuous palaces, wore
necklaces of gold adorned with brilliant enamels, and hung from their
girdles _laminæ_ of bronze, damascened in gold with marvellous
delicacy.[47] Already during a long period had the Egyptians depicted
their annals, their symbolism, and their daily life and surroundings
on the massive pages of stone which fill the museums of two of the
greatest capitals of modern Europe, and on the rolls of linen and
papyrus which enfold their mummies in the depth of those _Eternal
Abodes_[48] whose sleep of ages has been disturbed by our unsparing
hands. The bold chisel of the Egyptian sculptors carved from the
hardest rock these statues of strange aspect, these grave and tranquil
countenances of the sovereigns contemporary with Abraham or Moses,
which, after long centuries, passed in their own unchanging and
conservative clime, we find amongst us, under our own changeful skies,
and amid the noise and unrepose of our modern existence.
The deciphering of inscriptions has given an insight into the history
of Egypt, and “there are,” as M. Ancessi observes, “kings of the
middle ages who are less known to us than these Pharaos of every
dynasty,” who, by way of relaxation from the long, funereal labors in
the building of the Pyramids imposed upon each prince by the belief
and traditions of his ancestors, would ravage Africa or Asia; then,
returning from these expeditions, exchange the fatigues of arms for
the pleasures of the chase. In the desert or on Mount Sinai we find
them hunting the lion and the gazelle, after having carried their
thank-offerings to the temples of Memphis or of Thebes.
Thus we find in remote ages the fame of Egypt reaching to distant
regions, besides exercising an immense influence on neighboring
nations. It was what, later on, Athens became, and after Athens
Rome――an object of wonder, interest, and envy for its power, its
wealth, and splendor.
Such were the position and influence of Egypt when the family of
shepherds which was one day to become the Hebrew nation wandered in
the valley of the Jordan and on the plains of Palestine――that family
to whom those pastures, streams, and mountain gorges were already
peopled with precious memories, and who were farther bound to the land
by the promises of God and their own most cherished hopes. Too feeble
then to overcome the races of Amalec and Chanaan, it was needful that
this tribe should be for a time withdrawn into a country in which they
would forget their nomadic habits and become habituated to the settled
life of civilized nations; in which, moreover, they would be
disciplined and strengthened, and where their numbers would increase,
until the time appointed should arrive when God would deliver into
their hands the country so repeatedly promised to their race. This
time being come, he had recourse, if one may say so, to a touching
stratagem, and drew the sons of Jacob into the land of the Pharaos by
placing Joseph on the steps of the throne.
During the gradual transformation of a wandering tribe into a settled
people, another process, no less slow and difficult, was also
preparing them for the future to which they were destined.
On the arrival of the patriarch Jacob in the fertile plains of the
Delta the great and powerful of that day hastened to meet him with
royal magnificence. These shepherds, accustomed only to the shelter of
the tents which they carried away at will on their beasts of burden,
found themselves face to face with palaces and temples of which the
very ruins strike us with amazement.
And farther, what marvels were in store for the strangers in the
various arts of civilization carried on in the cities of Mizraim,
where painting and music flourished, where gravers and goldsmiths
produced their excellent works, where unceasingly resounded the
hammers of those who wrought in wood and stone, and the hum of a
thousand looms, weaving those wondrous tissues[49] famous alike in the
time of Solomon, of Ezechiel, and of Pliny――the “fine linen of Egypt.”
The sight of all this must have vividly struck the imagination of the
strangers; nevertheless, the prejudices and antipathies of race which
speedily declared themselves, doubtless on the occasion of changes on
the throne, would have kept them aloof from sharing in the pursuits by
which they were surrounded, had not their new masters forced them away
from tending their flocks and herds in the land of Goshen, and
scattered them in the cities, mingling them with the Egyptian people.
They now found themselves compelled to make brick, hew stone, and
handle the workman’s hammer; to build, to cultivate the ground, and,
in spite of any hereditary repugnance which might exist, to suffer
themselves to be initiated into the arts and manufactures of ancient
Egypt.
That which at first was only submitted to under coercion soon grew
into the habits, tastes, and customs of the Israelites. They had
entered upon a new phase of their existence, thence to issue, after a
period of four hundred years, transformed into a people ripe for a
constitution, laws, government, and national worship. A man alone was
wanting to them, and this man God provided. When Moses arose amongst
them, they were familiar with all the secrets of Egyptian art and
manufacture. But it was not only by the formation of skilful craftsmen
that the influence of this mighty nation made itself felt. It
penetrated the whole of their daily life; and this indelible
impression was not effaced when Israel had traversed a career of
well-nigh twenty centuries. After the fall of Jerusalem and the
dispersion of the Jewish people, it still attracted the attention of
historians and thoughtful men.
It did not even occur to those not well acquainted with the customs of
the Hebrews and of ancient Egypt, such as Tacitus, to separate the
names of the two peoples, which were included by them in one and the
same judgment, meriting in their eyes the same reproaches and together
sharing the scanty praise which their new masters allowed at times to
fall from their disdainful lips.
But there were others, more attentive and better informed, who entered
more deeply into the study and comparison of the two races――to name
only Tertullian, Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. Eusebius had
been attracted by the problem, as is proved by the few almost
parenthetical lines in his great work, _The Preparation of the
Gospel_, where he says: “During their sojourn in Egypt the Israelites
adopted so completely the habits and customs of the Egyptians that
there was no longer any apparent difference in the manner of life of
the two peoples.”[50]
Nearer to our own time the learned Kircher devoted long years to
searching out those points of resemblance which could not at that time
be studied by the light of original documents. The severest censors
would be disarmed by the telling, though somewhat barbaric, form in
which he has presented the true relationship existing between the
Mosaic and Egyptian constitutions: “Hebræi tantam habent ad ritus,
sacrificia, cæremonias, sacrasque disciplinas Ægyptiorum affinitatem,
ut vel Ægyptios hebraïzantes, vel Hebræos ægyptizantes fuisse, mihi
plane persuadeam.”[51]
Kircher is right. These men of Asiatic race, born at Memphis, Tanis,
or Ramses, were practically Egyptians, and had forgotten their ancient
habits, their pastoral life, and the land where the ashes of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob were awaiting them. They had grown up and lived
amongst a people whose tongue they had learned,[52] whose toils they
shared, and whose gods they worshipped.[53] The children of Jacob
could only be distinguished by the aquiline nose and slight beard from
the brickmakers and masons of the country, as we see them frequently
represented in the monuments of this epoch.
Moses, who was to become their lawgiver, was a learned and
accomplished Egyptian in everything but the fact of race. Early
separated from his family and countrymen, he had grown up at the court
of Pharao, among the near attendants and favorites of the king, and
was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”[54] He had beheld
the statues of the gods borne in the long processions, and had entered
the now silent temples of Memphis; he had looked upon the arks whereon
were portrayed the divine symbols, hidden under the guarding wings of
mysterious genii;[55] and he had been present when the king, who was
also sovereign pontiff, removed on solemn occasions the seals of clay
from this sombre abode where, veiled in mystery, dwelt the name and
the glory of God.
Into this inner sanctuary, the Egyptian Holy of Holies, the pontiff
alone entered, but Moses could behold him from afar, when he burnt the
incense before the veiled ark, where, concealing itself from mortal
sight, dwelt the invisible majesty of Ra, “Creator and lord of the
world.”
Many a time must Moses have been present when the Pharao arrayed
himself in the sacerdotal vestments――the long linen tunic and the
bright, engirdling ephod. With his own hands he may have tied the
cords of the sacred tiara upon the monarch’s head, and clasped on his
shoulders the golden chains of the pectoral. With the colleges of the
priests he had chanted the hymns and litanies it was customary to sing
in procession around the sanctuaries during the octaves and on the
vigils of great solemnities. He was familiar with the legislative and
moral code of the Egyptians, and all the ancient traditions of their
race. And after he had crossed the frontier and the Red Sea, all these
things could not disappear from his remembrance; in fact, they were
intended to live in the constitution, laws, and religious ceremonial
of the Israelites, but purified and freed from the corrupt elements of
Egyptian mythology.
To show this in detail is the object of M. Ancessi’s interesting work,
in which, with minute care and research, he proceeds, in the first
place, to consider the material portion of the worship――the sacerdotal
garments, the ark, the altars, and the sacrifices――with the intention
later of approaching the moral code, and, lastly, the literature of
the two peoples.
The first of the sacerdotal garments described by Moses is the
_ephod_. This vestment, conspicuous for its richness, was woven of
threads of brilliant colors and adorned with precious stones set in
gold. But it owed its peculiar excellence to the pectoral with the
Urim and Thummim, that mysterious organ of the divine oracles which
manifested God’s care over his people by a perpetual miracle.[56]
Tradition makes frequent mention of this marvellous vestment. After
the ruin of the Temple, Oriental writers gave free scope to their
imagination and to the influence of family reminiscences in their
descriptions of the ephod. We must not, however, take these as guides
by any means trustworthy, but endeavor to arrive at the exact meaning
of the Mosaic description,[57] as this, though brief and obscure,
suffices to enable us to recognize the representations of the vestment
which come to us from those remote ages.
Referring to the Vulgate, we find as follows: “Facient autem
superhumerale [ephod] de auro et hyacintho et purpura, coccoque bis
tincto, et bysso retorta, opere polymito.”[58] And farther on:
“Inciditque bracteas aureas, et extenuavit in fila, ut possint
torqueri cum priorum colorum subtegmine.”[59]
This gives us the tissue of which the ephod was made――namely, a rich
stuff of fine linen, composed of threads of blue, purple, and scarlet
worked in with filaments of gold. So far there is no difficulty.[60]
In the following verses Moses describes its form, and his words are:
“Duo humeralia juncta erunt ei ad ejus duas extremitates et
jungetur”――that is to say, literally: “Two joined shoulder-bands shall
be fixed to the ephod at its two extremities, and thus it shall be
fastened.”
Now, if we compare with this the drawings representing the gods or
kings of Egypt in their richest apparel, our attention is at once
attracted by a broad belt of precious material and brilliant colors
which encircles the body from the waist upwards to a little below the
arms, and is upheld by two narrow bands, one passing over each
shoulder, and joined together at the top, their lower extremities
being sewn to the vestment before and behind. These are clearly the
two _humeralia_ spoken of by Moses.
In the Egyptian paintings we notice that the buttons by which the
bands are fastened together on the shoulders are precious stones in a
gold setting, and fixed, not on the top, but a little lower down
towards the front, and at the exact place where Moses directs two gems
to be placed, each on a disc of gold.
We know from Josephus that in the vesture of the high-priest these two
uncut stones joined the shoulder-bands of the ephod together;[61] the
parallel is therefore complete. Indeed, if we may believe Dom Calmet,
a reminiscence of ancient Egypt is to be found even in the form of the
hooks affixed to the two precious stones. These hooks, he tells us,
had the form of an asp biting into the loop or eye of the opposite
shoulder-band: “Dicunt Græci uncum illum exhibuisse formam aspidis
admordentis oram hujus hiatus.”[62] The head of the asp is a favorite
object in Egyptian decoration.[63] This detail, however, is not
insisted on, but merely mentioned in passing, as we find no allusion
to it in the Pentateuch, nor is it based upon a tradition of
ascertained authority.
We read further: “And thou shalt take two onyx stones, and shalt grave
on them the names of the children of Israel: six names on one stone,
and the other six on the other, according to the order of their birth.
With the work of an engraver and a jeweller thou shalt engrave them
with the names of the children of Israel, set in gold and compassed
about: _and thou shalt put them on both sides of the ephod_, a
memorial of the children of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names
before the Lord upon both shoulders, for a remembrance.”[64]
Our European museums, and more so still that of Boulaq, near Cairo,
possess a large number of gems of every form, engraven with mystic
inscriptions or the names of the members of a noble family. The exact
destination of many of these stones is often unknown, and it is
probable that some of them have belonged to sacerdotal garments, or
may have adorned the shoulder-bands we are considering. In any case,
we know not only that the Egyptians engraved precious stones with
marvellous skill, but also that they were in the habit of dedicating,
as _ex voto_, gems bearing the names of a whole family, to render each
of its members always present to the remembrance of the gods. Thus
many of the stones now in the Louvre were offered by princely houses
to the gods whose protection they sought to secure.[65]
Moses, by the command of God, adopted this idea in composing the
vestments of Aaron, placing on the shoulders of the high-priest two
precious stones, upon which were engraven the names of the twelve
tribes of Israel; expressing under this graceful symbolism the office
and character of the priesthood. He thus reminded his people that the
priest is a mediator between God and men, and that he presents himself
before JEHOVAH in the name and on behalf of this people, whose whole
weight, so to speak, he seems to bear upon his shoulders.
“The ephod,” says Josephus, “is a cubit in width, and leaves the
middle of the chest open.”[66] These words have been a great
perplexity to the learned, but are easily explained when we look at
the Egyptian vestment, which is not more than a cubit in width, and
leaves open the middle of the chest in the space between the two
shoulder-bands and the upper edge of the corselet. “It is there,” adds
Josephus, “that the pectoral is placed.” This was a span square, of
the same fabric as the ephod, enriched with precious stones, and
called εσσήνης, (essenes), which signifies also λόγιον, _oracle_. This
exactly filled up the space left bare by the ephod. It would be
difficult to give a more accurate description of the Egyptian
vestment. In the eighth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of Exodus
we read: “_And the belt of the ephod, which passes over it, shall be
of the same stuff._”
In the Egyptian paintings the lower edge of the ephod is encircled by
a girdle usually made of the same material as the corselet itself. The
resemblance in every particular between the Hebrew and the Egyptian
ephod is, in fact, perfect.
We must now proceed more fully to consider the pectoral, the
importance of which renders it worthy of very careful study.
“And thou shalt make the rational of judgment,”[67] the Lord
God commands Moses, “with embroidered work of divers colors,
according to the workmanship of the ephod, of gold, violet,
and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen.
It shall be four-square and doubled: it shall be the measure
of a span both in length and breadth. And thou shalt set in
it four rows of stones: in the first row shall be a sardius
stone, a topaz, and an emerald; in the second a carbuncle, a
sapphire, and a jasper; in the third a ligurius, an agate,
and an amethyst; in the fourth a chrysolite, an onyx, and a
beryl. They shall be set in gold by their rows. And they
shall have the names of the children of Israel: with twelve
names shall they be engraved, each stone with the name of
one according to the twelve tribes.… And Aaron shall bear
the names of the children of Israel in the rational of
judgment upon his breast, when he shall enter into the
sanctuary, a memorial before the Lord for ever.”
This passage has been compared by commentators with the following from
Elian: “Among the Egyptians, from the remotest ages, the priests were
also the judges; the senior being chief, and judge over all the rest.
It was required of him that he should be the most just and upright of
men. He wore suspended from his neck an image made of sapphire, and
which was called TRUTH.”[68]
And Diodorus Siculus, respecting the same symbol, writes as follows:
“The chief of the judges of Egypt wore round his neck, suspended from
a chain of gold, a symbol made of precious stones, and called _Truth_.
Until the judge had put on this image no discussion began.”[69]
In examining the Egyptian monuments we find that the personages who
are represented wearing the vestment corresponding to that which, by
Moses, is designated the ephod, usually also wear upon the breast a
square ornament adorned with precious stones. It is placed between the
shoulder-bands, and rests, as it were, on the upper edge of the ephod,
its position exactly corresponding to that of the pectoral of Aaron.
The museums of Boulaq and the Louvre possess pectorals of rare beauty.
That of Boulaq was sent to Paris, with the other jewels of Queen Aa
Hotep, to the Exhibition of 1867. It is a _chef-d’œuvre_ of ancient
jewelry. The frame, which is almost square, encloses a mythological
scene much in favor with the Egyptians. King Amosis is standing in a
bark of lapis lazuli and enamel, while two divinities pour upon his
head the waters of purification.[70]
This pectoral, which belonged to the mother of Amosis, is worthy of
particular notice, not only because of its admirable workmanship, but
also because its date is known to us as being to a certainty anterior
to Moses.
In the pectoral of Aaron the precious stones were attached to the rich
stuff which formed the foundation by little rings of fine gold,
instead of being held in place by small plates of gold, as they
usually are in the Egyptian pectorals. There is, however, in the
museum at Boulaq, a splendid necklace, the arrangement of which proves
that if the idea of the pectoral is Egyptian, so also is the manner of
its workmanship. This necklace is composed of a multiplicity of tiny
objects, garlands, twisted knots, four-petalled flowers, lions,
antelopes, hawks, vultures, and winged vipers, etc., all of which are
arranged so as to lie in parallel curves on the breast of the wearer.
_Now, each one of these objects_ forms a piece apart, quite separate
from the others, and is sewn to the stuff serving for a foundation by
minute rings fastened behind each. It seems to have been by a similar
arrangement that the precious stones were attached to, or, to speak in
more exact accordance with the meaning of the Hebrew, _embedded_ in,
the pectoral of Aaron.
With regard to the word _caphul――duplicatum_: “it shall be square and
_doubled_ [or double]”――it is, with our present knowledge, impossible
to say whether Moses intended to direct that the ornamentation of the
_back_ of the pectoral was not to be neglected, or that the stuff was
to be doubled, so as the better to support the weight of the precious
stones.
Some of these stones it is now difficult to identify; but we cannot
leave this part of the subject without giving an abridged quotation
from the ingenious work of M. de Charancey, _Actes de la Société
philologique_, v. iii. No. 5: “_De quelques Idées symboliques_,” etc.
According to M. de Charancey, the twelve stones of the pectoral ought
to be divided into two series,[71] the first of seven stones,
answering, in accordance with Judaic symbolism, to the celestial
spheres and the seven planets; while the second, of five stones,
related to the terrestrial sphere, to the five regions of space,
including the central point; the whole creation being gathered up, as
it were, into this microcosm, resplendent with the wisdom and goodness
of God in the oracles of the urim and thummim.
It is in any case certain that the church, in her liturgy, makes
occasional allusion to this symbolism; as, for instance, in the second
response for the Tuesday following the third Sunday after Easter we
find: “In diademate capitis Aaron magnificentia Domini sculpta erat.…
In veste poderis quam habebat totus erat orbis terrarum et parentum
magnalia in quatuor ordinibus lapidum sculpta erant” (_Brev.
Romanum_).
The Egyptian pectorals, being usually made with a ground-work of
metal, were simply suspended from a gold chain which passed round the
neck; but the foundation of the Aaronic pectoral, being of woven
material, needed a different kind of support to keep it stretched out
and in place. We accordingly find exact directions given that to each
of the two upper corners should be fastened a ring of pure gold, and
to each ring a chain, the other end of which should be fixed to one of
the gems on the shoulders. These gems are also directed to be placed,
not on the top of the shoulders, but a little lower and towards the
front, exactly as we see them in the sculptures and paintings of
Egypt. To the lower corners of the pectoral rings were also attached,
and again at the joining, in front, of the bands with the ephod, while
a violet-colored fillet passed through the two on the right, and tied,
and another similarly through the two on the left. The directions
(Exod. xxviii. 13, 14, 23, 25) are so explicit as to give evidence
that we have here some departure from the well-known arrangements with
which the Israelites were familiar.
We must now consider the question of the urim and thummim, celebrated
for its inextricable difficulties; but as no authoritative document
has as yet given the solution of this problem, it is impossible to
explain it with certainty. It would be useless to take up the reader’s
time with all the opinions of the learned upon this subject,
especially as they are for the most part as unsatisfactory as they are
diverse. The hypothesis advanced by the Abbé Ancessi appears to rest
upon the most reasonable foundation. We give it in his own words:
“Without entering into lengthy philological discussions, it
is easy to show that the word _urim_ must have originally
signified _light_. This is the sense of _aor_, to sparkle,
to shine; it is the sense of _iara_, which has a
relationship with _iara_ to see, and with the analogous root
of the Indo-Germanic languages from which come _ordo_,
_orior_, _Iris_, _Jour_, _Giorno_, etc., etc. In Egyptian we
also find this radical in the name of _Horus_, the Shining
One, the Morning Sun. With this root again is connected
_iara_, the river, the sparkling, and in Hebrew _nahar_,[72]
which has the same sense.
“Besides, the meaning of the word _urim_ is scarcely
contested, and it is generally admitted that its original
signification is _lights_, or _beams_.
“The word thummim has been less easy to interpret.
“The Egyptian radical _tum_ signifies to be shut up, veiled,
hidden, dark, obscure. This meaning reappears in the
triliterate form of the Semitic _Tamam_.[73]
“As from the radical _aor_ the Egyptians had made the god of
_light_, so from the radical _tum_ they made the name of the
hidden god, the god veiled in darkness and obscurity, who
had not manifested himself in the bright vesture of
creation――the god Tum, hidden in the silence and darkness of
eternity, in opposition or contrast to Horus, the god of the
morning of creation, shining in the sunbeams, and glittering
in the bright gems of the midnight skies.
“Thus, according to the etymology of these words, we have in
the _urim_ the lights, beams, or rays, and in the _thummim_
the obscurities and shadows, which doubtless passed over the
face of the pectoral.… The high-priest grouped the luminous
signs according to a system which remained one of the
mysteries of the tabernacle. This key alone could give the
interpretation of the will of JEHOVAH, and this may explain
the curious episode in the time of the Judges to which
allusion has already been made, when we find one of the
tribes of Israel hire a Levite to place the ephod and
interpret its oracles.”
What rule was followed in interpreting the answers――whether it was
formed by grouping all the luminous letters, or only that one which
was brightest in the name of each tribe――we know not. We do not even
know whether the foregoing explanation is the true one, although we
may safely allow that it answers to all the requirements of the
Scriptural texts, as well as to the indications of tradition. It is
thus that Josephus explains the manner in which the oracles were given
by the “rational of judgment,” and well-nigh the whole of Jewish and
Christian tradition follows in his steps.
Some have found a difficulty in the thirtieth verse of Exodus xxviii.:
“Thou shalt place on the pectoral of judgment the urim and the
thummim,[74] which shall be upon the heart of Aaron when he shall come
before the Eternal.” But this text opposes no serious difficulty, as
it is evident that Moses here speaks of the twelve stones. Besides, he
is merely returning upon his subject at the end of a description (as
is so frequently the case in the Pentateuch), as if to give a short
summary of what he had previously been saying.
We have now, as briefly as may be, to consider the remaining
“ornaments of glory” exclusively appropriated to the high-priest. The
_tiara_, which Moses calls _Menizophet_, is evidently too well known
to those whom he is addressing to need description. We, however, have
unfortunately no means of forming from this word any precise idea of
its form, and are able only to indicate some of its adjuncts.
The Israelites were familiar with the symbols and rich ornaments which
in Egypt characterized the head-dress of the deities and kings; each
god and goddess wearing on the head a particular sign indicative of
his or her attributes or functions, and consecrated by a long
tradition. Among these symbols that of most frequent occurrence is the
serpent _Uræus_, which encircles with its coils the heads of kings,
raising broad, inflated chest over the middle of the forehead. The
Uræus, by some capricious association, signified the only true and
eternal king, of whom all earthly monarchs are but the image and
representative incarnation. At the time the Hebrews were in Egypt the
form of this serpent had been gradually modified into that of the
_fleur-de-lys_, which we so often find carved on the brow of kings and
sphinxes, springing from a fillet at the border of the head-attire.
Instead of passing round the head, this fillet is only visible on the
forehead, disappearing over the ears in the folds of a kind of veil.
Now, Moses is directed to place upon the forehead of Aaron a band of
gold engraven with the name of the Most Holy.
He gives to the high-priest not only an ornament analogous to that
worn by the Egyptian kings――that is to say, the chiefs of the
priesthood and the representatives of the Deity――but he preserves also
the same symbolical idea which it had for the people of Egypt.
No created thing could either represent or even symbolize JEHOVAH;
nothing but the most holy name itself could remind them of the
uncreated Essence, who, being pure spirit, has no form. Hence the
great importance of the name of Jehovah――or, more exactly, YAHVEH――in
the history of Israel. The name of Him who dwelt in the most holy
place, whose glory shone above the mercy-seat――this name alone, with
the ascription of sanctity, was engraven on the golden fillet on the
brow of his high-priest.[75]
“And the band shall be always upon his forehead, that the Lord may be
well pleased with him.”
This idea of the abiding of God on the head of the pontiff-kings was
one very familiar to the Egyptians, and has been expressed by them in
a variety of ways. For example, we find the “_divine Horus_” forming
with his wings a graceful ornament on the head-attire of some of the
statues of the Pharaos, or again spreading his wings upon them to
communicate the divine life.
The sign of the God of Israel was placed on the forehead of the
high-priest, as if to overshadow him with his majesty, and to give
merit and value to his offerings; supplying what was lacking to the
perfection of the sacrifice by enveloping him who offered it with his
own glory.
Under the ephod was worn the long _tunic_, called in Hebrew _Mehil_,
the most noticeable part of which is its fringe, composed of little
bells of gold alternating with colored pomegranates. The description
given by Moses (Exod. xxviii. 31, 34) is very simple: “And thou shalt
make the tunic of the ephod all of violet; in the midst whereof above
shall be a hole for the head, and a border round about it woven, as is
wont to be made in the outmost part of garments, that it may not
easily be broken. And beneath, at the feet of the same tunic, round
about, thou shalt make as it were pomegranates, of violet, and purple,
and scarlet twice-dyed, with little bells between: so that there shall
be a golden bell and a pomegranate, and again a golden bell and a
pomegranate.”
The _Mehil_ was not only the counterpart of an Egyptian vestment worn
by the Pharaos, and which we see represented with a broad hem round
the neck, but we find upon it the same ornaments as those mentioned in
Exodus――namely, acorns or tassels of colored threads alternating with
pendants of gold.[76] There are in the Louvre some pomegranates of
enamelled porcelain, furnished with a ring by which to hang, and which
have evidently formed part of the border of a garment or a very large
necklace. We find there blue, yellow, red, and white ones, of a shape
that might have been run in the very mould of those which adorned the
vestments of Aaron. Others, again, are made in the form of an olive,
encased in a sort of network of colored threads. Nor are the little
golden bells wanting. Some of those which have come down to us are of
very pleasing and varied design.
It must not be forgotten that there was, in the ornamentation of the
period we are considering, a singular admixture of Assyrian with
Egyptian forms. Assyrian garments were also bordered with heavy
fringes, the tassels of which sometimes take the form of pomegranates.
Moses must have seen at the palace of the Pharaos, as ambassadors, as
tributaries, or as captives, some of those Eastern princes whose
majestic countenances and kingly garments long ages have preserved to
us on the sculptured blocks of the palaces of Babylon and Ninive.
In a fragment of a Coptic translation of the _Acts of the Council of
Nicæa_, which has lately been discovered by M. Revillout among the
Oriental MSS. of the Museum of Turin, the fathers of the holy council
give the following advice to a young man just entering into life: “My
son, avoid a woman who loves gay clothing; for _displays of rings and
little bells_[77] are but her signals of wantonness.”[78] The piety of
the middle ages brought back these ornaments to their ancient and
sacred uses. The memory of Aaron’s vestments gave the idea of
fastening long borders of little bells to the edges of sacerdotal
garments.[79]
Claude Quitton, librarian of Clairvaux, passing by the Château de
Larrey in Burgundy, the 5th and 6th of September, 1744, saw there
certain rich vestments, among others a chasuble, closed everywhere,
save at the top to pass the head through, and having little bells
(_grelots_) hanging all round its lower edge or border.
Thus through a long series of ages this custom of adorning vestments
with bells has come, almost without a break, down to these latter
centuries.
The other vestments of the high-priest were common also to the
Levites, and, as well as the striking analogies between the Egyptian
and Mosaic manner of offering sacrifice, may furnish matter for
consideration at some future time. Meanwhile, we will close the
present notice with the appropriate words of St. John Chrysostom:
“Deus ad errantium salutem his se coli passus est quibus dœmonas
gentiles colebant aliquantulum ilia in melius inflectens”――“God, for
the salvation of the erring, suffered himself to be honored in those
things which had served in the worship of idols, modifying them in
some measure for the better.” And, continues this great doctor, God,
by thus introducing into his temple all that was richest in the
vestments of the Egyptians, all that was most solemn in their
sanctuaries, most elevated in their symbolism, and most impressive in
their ceremonies, willed that his people should feel no regret, and
experience no want or void, in their worship of him, when, amid the
new ceremonial, they should call to mind that which they had seen in
Egypt: “Ne unquam postea Ægyptiorum aut eorum quæ apud Ægyptios
fuerant experti cupiditate tangerentur.” It was not only fitting but
also necessary that the worship of the Lord JEHOVAH should not in any
point appear inferior to that of idols; for the unspiritually-minded
nation of whom Moses was the leader was incapable of appreciating the
greatness and majesty of God, except in some proportion to the
splendor of his worship.
[46] _L’Egypte et Moïse._ Première Partie. Par l’Abbé Victor
Ancessi. Paris: Leroux, Editeur, 28 Rue Bonaparte.
[47] The secret of this art was only recovered by the
engravers of Damascus in the time of the caliphs.
[48] The name given by the Egyptians to their tombs.
[49] See Prov. vii. 16: “Intexui funibus lectulum meum,
stravi tapetibus pictis ex Ægypto”; Ezech. xxvii. 7; Pliny,
_Nat. Hist._, xix. 2.
[50] Euseb., _Evang. Prep._, 1. vii. c. viii.; _Pat. Grec._,
1. xxi. p. 530.
[51] “The Hebrews have so much affinity with the rites,
sacrifices, ceremonies, and sacred customs of the Egyptians
that I am fully persuaded we have before us either
Hebraizing Egyptians or Egyptizing Hebrews.”
[52] Exod. xii.
[53] The Apis of gold, worshipped by the Israelites in the
desert.
[54] Acts vii. 22.
[55] See in Sir J. G. Wilkinson’s work, _A Popular Account
of the Ancient Egyptians_, vol. i. pp. 267 and 270, two
arks, covered with the symbols of divinity. The long wings
of the genii are there represented as veiling the face of
Ammon Ra and Ra Keper――the _Creator-God_ and the _Hidden
God_. The two genii are face to face, and veil the divine
mystery with their wings, like the cherubim over the Ark of
the Covenant.
[56] The following episode in the life of David shows the
importance and purpose of the ephod in Israel: “Now when
David understood that Saul secretly prepared evil against
him, he said to Abiathar the priest: Bring hither the ephod.
And David said: O Lord God of Israel, thy servant hath heard
a report that Saul designeth to come to Ceila, to destroy
the city for my sake: will the men of Ceila deliver me into
his hands? and will Saul come down as thy servant hath
heard? O Lord God of Israel, tell thy servant. And the Lord
said: He will come down. And David said: Will the men of
Ceila deliver me, and my men, into the hands of Saul? And
the Lord said: They will deliver thee up.”――1 Kings xxiii.
9. See also 1 Kings xxx. 7, 8. Thus God answered by the
ephod.
[57] We find the following, for example, in Suidas, under
the word _ephod_: “_Ephod_ signifies in Hebrew _science_ and
_redemption_. In the middle of this vestment there was, as
it were, a star of gold, and on its sides two emeralds;
between the two emeralds a _diamond_. The priest consulted
God by these stones. If Jehovah were favorable to the
projects of Israel, the diamond flashed forth light; if they
were displeasing to him, it remained in its natural state;
and if he were about to strike his people by war, it became
the color of blood; or by pestilence, it turned black.”
(Suidas is here commenting upon Josephus.) _Ant. Jud._ i.
iii. c. 8, n. 9.
[58] Exod. xxviii. 6: “And they shall make the ephod of
gold, and violet, and purple, and scarlet twice-dyed, and
fine twisted linen, embroidered with divers colors.”
[59] Exod. xxxix. 3: “And he cut thin plates of gold, and
drew them small into threads, that they might be twisted
with the woof of the aforesaid color.” (Douai).
[60] Neither St. Jerome nor the LXX. are successful in
conveying any clear idea of the vestment.
[61] “In utroque humero, singuli sardonyches, auro inclusi,
_fibularum vice_ epomidem adnectunt”――_Antiq._, lib. iii. c.
vii.
[62] Calmet, Commentary upon Exodus, chap. xxviii. v. 11,
Edit. of Mansi.
[63] The exquisite chain of gold found in the tomb of Queen
Aa Hotep is terminated by two hooks shaped like the head of
the asp. Many very similar ones are to be seen among the
Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre and in the British
Museum. The eyes of the serpent, enamelled in blue and
black, have a striking effect.
[64] Exod. xxviii. 9-12.
[65] Glass case No. 4, in the _Salle Historique du Musée
Egyptien_ at the Louvre, contains jewels found in the tomb
of an Apis, and dedicated by a powerful prince. Some of the
most beautiful objects in the collection are contemporary
with Moses. See _Notice du Musée Egyptien_, by M. Rougé, p.
64.
[66] _Ant. Jud._, lib. iii. c. 7, n. 5.
[67] Exod. xxviii. 15-22, 29.
[68] Elian. _Hist. Div._, lib. xiv. c. 34.
[69] Diod. Sic., lib. i. c. 75.
[70] “The workmanship of this little gem,” says M. Mariette,
“is exceptionally admirable. The ground of the figures is
cut in open-work. The figures themselves are designed in
gold outlines, into which are introduced small cuttings of
precious stones; carnelian, turquois, lapis lazuli,
something resembling green feldspar, are introduced so as to
form a sort of mosaic, in which each color is separated from
its surrounding ones by a bright thread of gold; the effect
of the whole being exceedingly rich and harmonious.” The
fineness and precision of the work on the back of this
pectoral is as remarkable as that on the front.――_Notice sur
les principaux monuments du Musée de Boulaq_, par M.
Mariette, p. 262.
[71] A traditional symbolism attached the greatest
importance to this division of the twelve tribes and the
twelve stones into two unequal numbers. The prophecy of
Jacob is divided into two parts by the exclamation into
which he breaks forth after the name of the seventh
patriarch: “I will look for thy salvation, O LORD” (Gen.
xlix. 14). Ezechiel also, in the last chapter of his
prophecy, interrupts his narrative after the mention of the
seventh tribe by the description of the temple, and then
resumes his enumeration of the territories.
[72] With regard to the N pre-formative, see M. Ancessi’s
_Etudes sur la Grammaire comparée des Langues de Sem et de
Cham_――the S causative, and the subject N. Paris:
Maisonneuve.
[73] On the formation of trihterate radicals see, in the
above _Etudes_, “the fundamental law of the triliterate
formation.”
[74] In the Douai version translated “doctrine and truth.”
[75] “Thou shalt make a plate of purest gold, wherein thou
shalt grave with engraver’s work, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Thou
shalt tie it with a violet fillet, and it shall be upon the
borders of the mitre, over the forehead of the
high-priest.”――Exod. xxviii. 36-38. The description given by
Josephus of the crown of the high priest would lead to the
supposition that the fillet of Aaron did not always preserve
its primitive simplicity. Speaking of a section of a diadem
ornamented with the cups of flowers, which passed round the
back of the head and reached to the temples, he adds,
however, that in front there was only the golden band
engraven with the name of Jehovah. The course of ages,
broken by captivity and troubles, as well as successive
influences, first Assyrian and afterwards Greek, may have
occasioned some modification in the form of the sacred
vestments of the Temple; and thus it is not surprising that
the descriptions of Josephus sometimes vary from the Mosaic
texts.
[76] See Wilkinson, vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 32.
[77] _Holk et Schiikil._
[78] _Concile de Nicée d’après les textes Coptes._ Par E.
Revillout. _Journal Asiatique_, Fev.-Mars, 1873.
[79] In a valuable MS. preserved in the library of Tournus
we read: “In aurifedo sancti Filiberti sunt xlix.
tintinnabula: inter stolam nigram et manipulum, xxi.; inter
stolam rubram et manipulum, xx.; in candida vero cum
manipulo, xxviii.; manipulus unus restat, ubi sunt tredecim
baltei cum quinquaginta tintinnabulis.”
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
ORLEANS, Feb. 15, 1868.
Dear, sweet Kate, I have seen Sainte-Croix again, and now I write to
you. The general installation has scarcely begun; great agitation and
noise in all directions. Everybody is surprised to see me so soon
settled down and quiet, but Marianne and Antoine are of a fairy-like
agility. René is busy; Marcella still asleep, having watched till very
late by her little Anna, who was rather feverish.
Thérèse and Madeleine will regularly attend catechism at Sainte-Croix
during some weeks, unless their mother consents to their speedy
departure. This good and amiable Berthe has promised the superior of
―――― to send her daughters to her for a year at the time of their
First Communion; now she hesitates, and none of us, to say the truth,
persuades her to send them――they are so gentle and sweet, so truly two
in one.
This is but a sign of life, dear sister. Good-by for the present.
FEBRUARY 17.
My good paralytic showed much pleasure at seeing me again. It is
arranged that Marcella and I are to go to her by turns, and Gertrude,
who ardently desires some active occupation, claims her share of
_presents of poor_. Not a minute is wasted here, dear Kate. We are
keeping the twins, not wishing to place them under any external
influence; and although Arthur has entered at the Jesuits’, the good
_abbé_ has consented to remain _permanently_ the guest of Mme. de
T――――, as preceptor to these lovable children, whom he finds so
attractive. Marcella is giving them lessons in Italian. How _learned_
they are already! Every month, in accordance with Adrien’s decision,
there are solemn examinations. The delicate little Anna studies with
zeal, finding herself very ignorant by the side of the twins.
I have knelt again before Notre Dame des Miracles, and have done the
honors of Recouvrance to our fair Roman. Did I tell you that Margaret
is a little jealous? “Keep me at least a tiny little corner in your
heart, which I see invaded from so many quarters.” Her happiness has
undergone no alteration; she is expecting and wishing for me.…
Read _Emilia Paula_, a story of the Catacombs. Mgr. La Carrière,
formerly Bishop of Guadaloupe, will preach the Lent, and Mgr.
Dupanloup will speak in the _réunions_ of the Christian Mothers. It is
also said, though it is not very likely, that the great bishop will
this year deliver the panegyric of Joan of Arc.
Marcella is in a state of enthusiasm. Her heart opens out in the warm
atmosphere created for her by our friendship. Anna is well――still a
little shy; the delicate temperament of the dear orphan having for so
long kept her at a distance from anything like noisy play. Marguérite
and Alix teach her her lessons. What pretty subjects for my brush!
We all communicated this morning, the anniversary of Mme. de T――――’s
marriage. O my God! what can the soul render to thee to whom thou
givest thyself? Oh! how I pity those who know thee not, who never
receive thee as their Guest, who never weep at thy feet like Magdalen,
who return not to thee like the prodigal, who lean not upon thy heart
like St. John. Oh! with the divine and fiery beams of thy bright dawn
illuminate this earth, wherein the evil fights against the good.
Still more deaths, dear Kate. See what Isa writes to me: “My
grandfather suffers continually more and more from fearful pain and
extreme weakness. His patience and resignation are admirable. We pray
together; I read him the _Imitation_; the _Sick Man’s Day_, by Ozanam,
which Lizzy has translated for me, since your friendly kindness made
me acquainted with Eugénie de Guérin; also a book most effectually
consoling, and to which my grandfather listens with tears. We make
Novenas. He has received the ‘Bread of the strong,’ and the help of
Heaven cannot fail this manly soul, who has passed through life so
nobly.” Jenny has lost her sister-in-law――another house disorganized
and without its soul. The little nephew is given to the two sisters,
who are going to bring him up and educate him; and Jenny, who had a
horror of Latin, is going to learn it in order to lessen its
difficulties to the pretty darling.
Mother St. André is in heaven. It makes my heart bleed to think of the
grief of Mother St. Maurice. It is so cruel a sorrow to lose one’s
mother, and _such_ a mother――an exceptionally holy soul, friend of the
saintly foundress, destined by Providence to such great things; who
has known the brightest joys and the most deadly sorrows, seeing her
children die after she had given them up to God. What holy joy
gladdened her soul on that day when, herself a religious, she beheld
her two daughters clothed in the livery of Christ, and her son, her
third treasure, the third pearl in her maternal crown, a priest! What
a family of chosen ones, and what sorrows! Oh! when this mother, at
the same time austere and tender, was called upon to close her
children’s eyes, were there not, side by side with the feelings of the
Christian and the saint, those also of the wife and mother? Dear Kate,
I can understand that a religious loves more deeply than other women.
The love of God, sanctifying her affections and rendering them almost
divine, communicates to them something of the infinite, which is not
broken without indescribable suffering.
I am writing to Mother St. Maurice. How much I pray God that He may
console her――he, the Comforter above all others, who alone touches our
wounds without wounding us still more!
René is sending you a volume. The affection of all those who love you
would fill many. May all good angels of holy affections protect you,
dear Kate!
FEBRUARY 26, 1868.
Behold me with ashes on my brow――ashes placed there by the great
bishop. “_Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris._”
But, O my soul! it is but the envelope of flesh and clay which must
return to dust. The immaterial being escapes the corruption of the
grave; my soul, come from God, must ascend again to him.
Yesterday the dressed-up figures going about the streets were anything
but attractive, but there were others elsewhere at which the angels
would smile. M. l’Abbé Baunard, director of the _catéchisme_ of
Sainte-Croix, a few days ago organized a lottery, with the produce of
which some little girls, disguised as scullions, gave yesterday an
excellent dinner to the old people of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
This feast of charity was a charming idea, bringing together under the
eye and the blessing of God smiling and happy childhood with suffering
and afflicted decrepitude――poverty and riches, two sisters in the
great Catholic communion. And the twins were not there! Our good
_curé_ in Brittany requested _as a favor_ that they might make their
First Communion in his church. The good _abbé_ is preparing them for
it, and the ceremony is fixed for the 2d of July, the Feast of the
_Magnificat_.
We are all in deep mourning for my Aunt de K――――, and neither visit
nor receive company this winter; thus we shall have more leisure for
our different works. Adrien and Raoul were present at the funeral. My
mother feels this death very much.
Bought a pamphlet by the great bishop. It is admirable――worthy of
Bossuet. What a portrait of the Christian Frenchwoman! What vehement
and sublime indignation against those who would make this noble type
disappear from _our_ France! What nobility of soul! Oh! if all
fathers, if all mothers, heard these accents, which proceed from a
more than paternal heart, how they would reflect upon themselves, and
long to become worthy of the mission entrusted to them by Providence.
Poor France! what will become of her? I was glad to hear one of the
_vicaires_ of Sainte-Croix, M. Berthaud, in speaking of the horoscope
of the impious against religion, say: “Prophecy for prophecy. I prefer
to believe the words of the Count de Maistre, the noble genius who saw
so deeply and so far into the events of the present time, and who said
fifty years ago: ‘In a hundred years France will be wholly Christian,
Germany will be Catholic, England will be Catholic; all the peoples of
Europe will go into the basilica of St. Sophia at Constantinople to
sing a _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving.’” God grant it may be so! Lizzy
announces to me the mourning of Isa, who is not well enough to write
to me. “There is a yoke upon all the children of Adam.” These words of
Holy Scripture often come into my mind as I see all around me darkened
by mourning. _Spes unica!_ Hope remains, and the love of God shows
heaven open. Dear sister of my life, this letter, begun yesterday, is
to contain yet a third funereal announcement: Nelly has been suddenly
summoned from this world. I know how much you loved her. Thus this
time of penitence opens for us. Dead!――Nelly, in her spring-time, her
grace, her youth; dead, after a long and holy prayer, which had
preceded a walk with Madame D――――.
Imagine the distress of this poor mother, roused from her sleep by the
cry: “Mother, I think I am dying!” Mme. D―――― rushes, terrified, into
Nelly’s room; her child embraces her with only these words: “Adieu――on
high――heaven!…” and expires.
The whole town is in consternation. Margaret is inconsolable; all our
friends are weeping. What a death! God has spared her all suffering.
Let us pray for her, or rather for her unhappy mother; for I cannot
believe that Nelly is not in heaven. Do you recollect that she used to
be called _the Angel in prayer_?
René wishes me to stop here. Adieu, dear Kate.
MARCH 5, 1868.
I have been rather ill, dear Kate, and to-day I am beginning to get
up. The doctor forbids me emotion, but as soon might he forbid me to
live. Marcella has nursed me like a sister. Anna is growing stronger.
How pretty she was, playing with her doll near my bed, silently and
gravely, without any demonstrative gayety, but often raising her
beautiful eyes to look at me!
I have thus missed the two first Lenten sermons. René has never left
me a moment. Dear, kind René! how thoughtful he is, even about the
smallest details.
A letter from Isa: still in bed; weak, very weak, but wishing to live,
that she may be a comfort to her much-tried family. “Aunt D―――― finds
no peace but when she is with me. Oh! I can truly say with St.
Augustine that the Christian’s life is a cross and martyrdom!”
Hear what René was reading to me this morning: “Every Christian,” says
Mgr. de Ségur, “receives in baptism the all-powerful lever of faith
and love, capable of moving more than the world. Its fulcrum is
heaven; it is Jesus Christ himself, the King of Heaven, whose love
brings him down into the heart of each one of his faithful. The
prospect of eternity keeps us from fainting. How everything there will
change its aspect! Tears will be turned into joy――a joy divine,
eternal, infinite, ineffable, of which none can deprive us for ever.”
May God guard you, dear Kate, and may he guard our Ireland, her
cradles and her tombs!
MARCH 8, 1868.
Beautiful sunshine; your Georgina in the drawing-room; René at the
piano, making the children sing a quartette. This harmony penetrates
my heart. All these deaths had overwhelmed me; I have now recovered my
balance of mind. Oh! it is undeniably sad to see so many sister-souls
disappear; but they go to God. Each day brings us nearer to the
eternal reunion; and your Georgina says, with Mme. Swetchine, that
“life is fair and happy, and yet more and more happy, fair, and full
of interest.”
Yesterday Monsignor preached at Saint-Euverte; I wished very much to
go, but the wish was not reasonable. I must wait until Saturday for my
ecstasy. Heard a strange bishop this evening. “I will give thee every
good thing.” “The eye of man hath not seen, nor his ear heard, nor his
heart conceived what God hath prepared for them that love him.” The
preacher employed a profusion of words, thoughts, and images which
interfered with his principal idea; and it was only with the greatest
difficulty that one could keep hold of it under this overflow, this
torrent, this avalanche of expressions, which, although rich and well
chosen, were far too superabundant. Monsignor was there. How well he
would have treated this fruitful subject! With what genius would he
have depicted the immense suffering of man, who, being made for
heaven, finds happiness nowhere upon earth, is never satisfied, whilst
everything around him is at rest. “Without being Newton, every man is
his brother, and, in proceeding along the paths of science, he can
repeat that we are crushed beneath the weight of the things of which
we are ignorant.”
Lamartine describes this when he says:
“Mon âme est un rayon de lumière et d’amour,
Qui du flambeau divin détaché pour un jour,
De désirs dévorants loin de Dieu consumée
Brûle de remonter à sa source enflammée!”[80]
Dear, sweet Kate, all the lovable little singing party salutes you.
God be with you!
MARCH 11, 1868.
Dear Kate, again there are separations and adieux!
George and Amaury are entering La Trappe!――an unmistakable vocation, I
assure you. Adrien and Gertrude are so far above nature since they
have seen Pius IX. and suffered for him, that they gave their consent
at once. _Grandmother_ clasps her hands and utters the _fiat_ of Job.
Brothers and sisters wonder and admire. Happy family! All three
chosen, all three marked with the seal of God! I should regret them,
if I were their mother――so young, so handsome, rich in every gift of
heart and understanding. O life of mothers!――Calvary and Thabor!
I knew nothing of it; they feared I should feel it too much. We all
went to Communion this morning, and this evening they leave us.
What! have I not yet spoken to you about Benoni, who says my name so
prettily, and who is growing superb? It is an unpardonable
forgetfulness on my part. It was a pleasure to see this baby again,
and his parents also, so sincere in their gratitude for the little
that a kind Providence has allowed me to do for them!
_Evening._――They are gone. Adrien accompanies them; and Gertrude, whom
I have just been to see, said to me simply: “Dear Georgina, now I can
say _Nunc dimittis_. Will you thank God with me?” I knelt down by her
side, breathless with admiration. O this scene of the adieux! Those
two noble heads bent down to receive their grandmother’s blessing; the
assembled family; the emotion of all; the last pure kisses――all this
may be felt, but cannot be described. I know, I understand, how the
Christian cannot render too much to God, who has given him all; but my
heart is struck by the contrast between La Trappe and the world. On
the one side austerities, silence, anticipated death, manual labor,
and forgetfulness of earth; on the other a great name, a large
fortune, easy access to any position, renown, and glory. Oh! how well
they have chosen.
How I love you, dear Kate! How I love Ireland! I speak of it to the
children, and love to hear them say to me, as the multitudes of
Ireland said to our great O’Connell: “Yes, we love it; we love
Ireland!”
MARCH 14, 1868.
Before going to rest, my beloved sister, I want to tell you that I was
this morning at Saint-Euverte, and that I have heard the great bishop.
Marcella was with me, especially happy, she said, because of the joy
which she read in my looks. I sent back the horses, and we came home
by _the longest way_, as the charming Picciola says, under a bright
sun, which illuminated our bodily eyes, whilst the sunshine of the
holy and noble words we had just heard illuminated the vision of our
souls and opened out to us vistas of beauty. Dear sister of my life,
sister unspeakably beloved, I found you on re-entering――a whole packet
of letters, in which at first I saw only your dear handwriting. How
truly it is yourself! I gave your beautiful pages to Gertrude: she
will tell you herself what effect they have produced. Then Madame
D―――― with a photograph of the departed child――of Nelly dead! How well
I recognized her! This image of death moved me with pity for the poor
mother, but I felt nothing like fear. Why should death make me afraid?
Would the exiled son returning to his father fear the rapid crossing
which would restore him to his country, his affections, and his
happiness? And where is our country, where are our affections and
happiness to be found, except in heaven, in God, who alone can satisfy
our desires? Mother St. Maurice only sends me a few words, but so kind
and tender. Margaret writes me the sweetest things; she complains of
my silence, and informs me that the little cradle she is adorning with
so much care and love will soon receive its expected guest. Karl is
coming to us; reasons of fitness and of affection have detained him,
but his desire is more ardent than ever. Oh! to think of seeing him
without Ellen. Kate, what is life?
I am going to sleep, but first I wish to ascertain whether Anna is
free from fever. Marcella was uneasy this evening.
They are both asleep, beautiful enough to charm the angels. The little
one’s breathing is calm and gentle. I prayed by her, placing myself
also under the sheltering wing of the invisible Guardian.
I salute yours, and embrace you, dearest Kate.
MARCH 16, 1868.
“As on high, so also here below, to love and to be loved――this is
happiness.” Oh! how truly he speaks, and how I realize it every day!
Your tender affection, dearest Kate, that of René, and of all the kind
hearts around me――this is heaven, or, at least, that which leads one
thither.
Mid-Lent, and the Feast of St. Joseph――this sweet and great saint, so
powerful in heaven. O most glorious patriarch, who didst behold, and
bear in thy arms the Messias desired by thy fathers, foretold by thine
ancestor David and all the prophets, how favored wert thou of the
Lord! Marcella said to me: “I have a particular devotion for St.
Joseph, and a boundless confidence in him; I have often thought that
he must have known a multitude of things about our Lord which no one
has ever known.” O St. Joseph! remember those who invoke you in exile.
What an admirable existence! What a long poem from the day when the
rod of the carpenter blossomed in the Temple to that when Joseph
expires in the arms of Jesus and Mary, the two whom every Christian
would wish to have by him when on his death-bed! Never did any man
receive a mission more divine than was entrusted by the Almighty to
St. Joseph. I love to picture him to myself, grave, recollected,
seraphic, accompanying Mary, that sweet young flower whom the angels
loved to contemplate, leading her over the mountains to Hebron, to the
abode of Elizabeth, then to Bethlehem and the Crib, then into Egypt――a
long and painful journey through the desert. Did those who met the
Patriarch, the humble and holy Virgin, and her dear Treasure suppose
that it was the Salvation of the world who was passing by?
_Evening._――Karl is here, dear Kate, more grave and saintly than ever;
his feet on earth, his heart in heaven! He gives us a week. Adrien
arrived at the same time――two souls formed to understand one another.
Letters from Ireland, where Karl’s departure is causing general
regret. We spoke of Ellen――an inexhaustible subject. Karl was moved as
he listened to me; there are so many memories of my childhood to which
those of Ellen are united, making them doubly sweet.
Marcella, René, and Karl are wanting this letter to send to the post.
Good-night, dear sister.
MARCH 21, 1868.
Dear Kate, I send you my notes, freshly made; you will kindly return
them to me, that I may send them off to Margaret. We are visiting the
churches with Karl. Anna and all the dear little people salute Mme.
Kate. God guard you from all harm, dear sister!
MARCH 25, 1868.
Dearest Kate, what will you think of your Georgina getting the
_Conférences aux Femmes du Monde_[81] into a religious house? But my
Kate understands me; that is enough for me. _O amica mea, gaudium meum
et corona mea!_ The beautiful Saturday did not end at Saint-Euverte:
splendid festival at Sainte-Croix, the fiftieth anniversary of the
priesthood of the good _curé_. It was magnificent, and the music
also――like the hymns of heaven. To-day the Annunciation, the
commencement of the Redemption. What a feast! How I should like, as in
our childhood, to spend the day in prayer!
O sweetest Virgin, what a most fair memory in your glory! Gabriel, one
of the seven archangels continually at the feet of the Eternal,
spreads his wings, and from the heights of the everlasting hills
descends into the valleys of Judea. Celestial messenger, you doubtless
cast a glance of pity on the abodes of opulence and the vanities of
the world; or rather, you saw them not. Absorbed in your admiration at
the mercy of the Almighty, you adored and gave thanks. And now a
Virgin of Nazareth, in the tranquillity of prayer and love, is
suddenly dazzled by an unknown light, and the archangel salutes her in
the sublime words which will be repeated by Catholic hearts to all
generations: “_Ave, gratia plena!_” O Mary! from this day forth you
are our Mother, the Mother of our Salvation. O Handmaid of the Lord,
humble and sweet Mother! obtain for my soul humility and love.
Hail to the spring, the swallows, the periwinkles, all the renewal of
nature! How good is God, to have made our exile so fair! Oh! how I
enjoy everything, dear Kate.
Presented Karl with the portrait of Ellen, painted from memory. His
silent tears expressed his thanks. I have made him also sit for his
likeness; it will be a precious remembrance of this true friend. Who
knows whether we shall ever meet again in this world? Thus the days
pass away, shared between regret and hope.
The good _abbé_ is delighted with the progress of his pupils. Anna
grows visibly stronger. I am reading Dante with René. Ah! dearest, how
magnificent it is. Marcella speaks Greek and Latin, and wishes me to
read Homer and Virgil in the original. Wish me good success, dear. A
long walk; met a little beggar, whom Picciola fraternally embraced.
What a pretty scene, and how I afterwards kissed my dear pet!
Love me always, dear Kate.
MARCH 28, 1868.
Darling Kate, I send you my notes without adding anything, because we
have Karl with us for only one more day. O these departures! _Laus
Deo_ always, nevertheless.
MARCH 30, 1868.
Dear sister, Karl is gone! I am not sorry; I shall see him again, and
he will then be nearer to God. How happy it is to feel that God is the
bond of our souls! Yesterday, Sunday, his last in the life of the
world, we went together to Sainte-Croix, where we heard a long sermon,
a veritable encyclopædia: Godfrey de Bouillon at Jerusalem; Maria
Theresa in Hungary, with the shout of the magnates in French and in
Latin; the proud Sicambre listening to the Bishop Remy; St. Elizabeth
on the throne, and then in penury; St. Thomas writing sublime pages
before his crucifix; St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata; St.
Bernard; St. Catherine of Genoa; the Crusaders; Magdalen at the foot
of the cross; Veronica wiping the face of our Saviour, etc., etc.,
appearing in it by turns. A day of unspeakable serenity. Karl sang the
_Lætatus_ for his adieu. Dearest sister, how happy Ellen must be!
You will see Karl. Tell me if you do not find him transfigured. We
read, during his too short stay with us, the life of Mme. St. Notburg,
by M. de Beauchesne――another saint in Protestant Germany, a French
saint, though her tomb is there. I have asked Karl to take you this
book; read, and see how excellent it is!
And so the month of St. Joseph is ended! O protector of temporal
things! guard well all whom I love.
Marcella, my winning Marcella, is a poet; I ought to have told you
this. I gave her a surprise: her most feeling lines have been printed
in a newspaper, which I managed to put before her eyes. She blushed
and grew pale――the first emotion of authorship. Poor heart! for so
long severed from love, and which so soon lost that whereon it leaned.
“O Madonna mia! how good God is,” she often repeats with ecstasy in
admiring her beautiful little Anna, who grows wonderfully. I think
this child was too much kept in a hot-house, when she had need of air,
space, and movement. I can understand how her mother may well doat on
her: she has a way of looking at you, kissing you, and of bending her
forehead to be kissed, quite irresistible. _Carissima_, how I love
her, and how fondly I love my Kate!
René is writing to you; everybody would like to do the same.
APRIL 3, 1868.
Feast of the Compassion. _Stabat Mater Dolorosa!_ Have I mentioned to
you the new frescoes of Recouvrance, dear Kate?――the birth and
espousals of the Blessed Virgin. The first does not impress me; but
the second! The high-priest is admirable; his purple robe gleams like
silk. Mary is not so beautiful as in Raphael’s pictures. I have
undertaken a painting on ivory which I wish to send to the amiable
Châtelaine in Brittany, whom I think you cannot have forgotten. I am
making Anna sit for her portrait, she looks so sweet.
Mgr. de Ségur, author of the poem of _St. Francis_, has just written a
tragic poem, _St. Cecilia_. What a fine subject, and how well the
writer has been inspired! Isa must read it. You see whether my life is
occupied or not. God, the poor, the family, friendship, study――my mind
is full!
The language of Homer no longer appears to me so difficult as at
first. But Latin――oh! this is charming, and I delight in it; in the
first place, because I am still at _rosa_ and _rosarium_. What a head
Marcella has! She has learnt everything, and sings like Nilsson. If
only you could hear her in _La Juive_! This is profane music; but we
have pious also, and Marcella enjoys _Hermann_.
This note will be slipped into the envelope destined for Karl. Lizzy
announces to me her visit. Good-night, _carissima sorella_.
APRIL 5, 1868.
And so we are in Holy Week, my sister. I have here a blessed palm,
sweet and gracious souvenir of the Saviour’s entry into Jerusalem. O
King of Peace! bring peace to souls. Have pity upon us; assemble
together at thy holy table both the prodigal sons and the faithful;
grant peace to thy church! To all troubled hearts, to all those who
suffer, to those who are oppressed and persecuted, give the hope of
heaven――of that eternal dwelling where all tears will be wiped away,
where all lips will drink of the stream of delights, and where every
heart will receive the fulfilment of its desires. Why does Lent come
to an end? I could listen for ever to the lovely chants of the
_Miserere_, the _Attende_, the _Stabat Mater_, and the _Parce Domine_.
No sermon, to my mind, equals the _Stabat Mater_, sung alternately by
the choir-boys, with their pure, melodious, aërial voices, and the men
who fill the nave, and who, varying in their social position, fortune,
and a thousand things besides, are one in the same faith, the same
hope, and the same charity.
Dear Kate, I shall send you on the day of _Alleluias_ my journal of
the week. Thanks for having allowed me to come to you as usual during
this Lent; to read you and talk to you is a part of my life.
A thousand kisses, my very dearest.
APRIL 6, 1868.
My sweet sister, I have just come in with René from Mass. We
communicated side by side, like the martyrs of the catacombs. As we
came out, and while still under the deep impression of the presence of
God, René proposed to me a sacrifice――that of not speaking to each
other, at any rate without absolute necessity, during this week. My
heart felt rather full――it will cost me so much; but how could I help
consenting? Oh! but how love longs to speak to the object loved. I
shall have to throw myself into a whirl of things, and absorb myself
in them, that I may not find this privation quite insupportable.
7th.――Yesterday evening, at Sainte-Croix, Monsignor spoke for about
twenty-five minutes. I was too far off to hear, but I was none the
less happy. I am reading Mgr. de Ségur; his teaching is gentle and
loving, even when he speaks of self-renunciation and sacrifice.
Nothing is more comforting than his little work, _Jesus Living in Us_.
I remarked this thought of Origen’s: “Thou art heaven, and thou wilt
go to heaven!”――Confession. How well the good father was inspired!
What wise directions! I came out strengthened and courageous; but
alas! alas! poor, sorrowful me, on coming in I found a letter awaiting
me――a letter from Margaret. Lizzy is greatly indisposed, and obliged
to give up her journey. This made me shed tears, and, as René did not
ask the cause of my pain, I repented for a moment that I had
undertaken so hard a sacrifice. Dear Kate, it was very wrong, and your
Georgina is always the same.
8th.――Letter from Sarah, full of joy; her sister Betsy is to be
married on the 22d, and wishes for me to be at her wedding. Kind
friend! God grant that she may be happy! Until this present time, with
the exception of the terrible strokes of death which have fallen not
far from her on the friends of her childhood, her life has been calm
and happy, almost privileged. She has never left her mother.
Marcella, Lucy, and I are preparing an Easter-tree for all the
darlings. I have been studying very much lately; _Marcella mia_
assures me that I make wonderful progress.
Benoni does not expect to share in the festivity, but he must; and how
joyfully he will clap his hands at the sight of the playthings hung
there for him!
My paralytic told me yesterday that she would like to make her Easter
Communion next Thursday――that is, to-morrow. Gertrude and I must rise
with the dawn to make an escort for the gentle Jesus, the Comforter of
the infirm and poor. Ah! dear Kate, how much I should dislike the life
of a Chartreux. To see René and not be able to speak to him, when I
feel such a want to pour out my thoughts to him, is a martyrdom. So
far, thanks to our good angels, we have not been found out, and we
have not said a single word to each other.
9th.――What emotions! My poor and venerable paralytic has just died in
my arms. I return to pass the night by her. Gertrude undertook to
obtain René’s permission. She communicated this morning in ecstasy,
and blessed us afterwards. As I observed something unusual about her,
I begged Marianne to go several times. A long walk to the different
_sepulchres_ in the churches with our train of little angels, and
without René, who avoids me, from which we returned home at six
o’clock. I found a line from Marianne, entreating me to join her as
soon as possible; so I hurried away with Gertrude. The dear sufferer
had scarcely a breath of life left. “I was waiting for you that I
might die.… Thanks!… May God reward you!” Dear Kate, I was ready to
drop from fatigue, but I know not what exciting power sustains me.
10th.――O Christ Jesus! who saidst: “When I shall be lifted up from the
earth, I will draw all unto me,” draw all hearts for ever unto
thyself. René passed the night by the lowly couch with me, and we came
home together, still without speaking. This evening, at Sainte-Croix,
heard Mgr. Dupanloup. The force and authority of his language make a
deep impression upon his hearers. “There is in Christianity everything
which can naturally go to the heart of man.” How he speaks of the Crib
and of Calvary; of the Mother whom we find with the Holy Child at
Bethlehem, and again with him upon the cross! When the clock struck
eight, he stopped. How eloquent he is! He quoted our Lord’s words, “He
who shall say Lord, Lord, will not, for that reason only, enter into
the kingdom of heaven, but he that shall do the will of my Father who
is in heaven”; “The same shall be to me as a brother, a sister, a
mother”; and this thought of Rousseau’s: “There is in Christianity
something so divine, so intensely inimitable, that God alone could
have been its author. If any man had been able to invent such a
doctrine, he would be greater than any hero.”
Mgr. la Carrière preached an hour and a half. Remarked this passage:
“Pilate washes his hands. Oh! there is blood upon those hands. Were
the waters of the Deluge to pass over them, still would they keep the
stain of blood!” This reminds me of Macbeth, where, looking on his
murderous hands, he says:
“What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
11th.――Was present at the funeral of this saintly friend, whom God had
given me through Hélène. Looked through Marcella’s manuscript books,
in one of which she wrote a year ago: “Cymodoceus said: ‘When shall I
find again my bed of roses, and the light of day, so dear to mortals?’
And all this harmonious page put in his mouth by Chateaubriand. And I,
for my part, say: When shall I again find heaven, from whence I feel
that I came? When shall I find the happiness of which I dream, and
which I know too well there is no possibility of finding here below?
When shall I find eternal beauty, eternal light, eternal life? But
before that hour grant, O Lord! that in this world I may find, in the
shadow of thy cross, that peace which thou hast promised to men of
good-will; grant that, for myself and my child, I may find a little
rest after the storm! Give us the heavenly manna; overshadow us with
the bright cloud; grant us, above all, to be beloved by thee!”
St. Teresa used to say: “The soul ought to think that there is nothing
in the world but God and herself.” René must have meditated on that.
12th.――_Alleluia!_ dear Kate, _Alleluia!_ No more penance, no more of
this torturing silence which so resembles death; but now talking to
each other without ceasing, songs, letters, walks――and always prayers.
What will you think of my week, _carissima_? Oh! I could not have
borne it longer; I found René too holy for my unworthiness. Not a
word, not a look. It was like the visible presence of my guardian
angel. How delightful it is to hear his voice again!
Went to the Mass for the general communion of the men; no spectacle on
earth can be more admirable or more touching. This scene was worth far
more than a sermon――this multitude of men, so perfectly attentive and
earnest, singing heartily the sweet hymns they all had sung on the day
of their First Communion! And what joy to see in this Christian
assembly those to whom I am bound by affection, and to feel myself
united in the grand fraternity of the faith to all these happy guests
at the Lord’s table!
The benediction was all that can be imagined of religious and
magnificent. What singing, what alleluias, making one think of those
of the angels! Why do such days ever end? O risen Saviour! grant that
we may rise with thee.
Benoni was out of himself with joy. The meditative Anna jumped about
in her delight. The festivity was perfect, and, to crown it, news
arrived which I will send you as my adieu. Margaret is at the summit
of happiness, the
_Doux berceau qu’une main jalouse
Orne et visite à chaque instant,
Charme des songes d’épouse
Doux nid, où l’espérance attend_.[82]
has received the little stranger sent by Heaven. Let us bless God,
dear Kate! _Alleluia!_ Christ is risen! Happy they who live and die in
his love! Alleluia!
APRIL 16, 1868.
Thanks, dear sister! I have translated Mgr. Dupanloup at Saint-Euverte
for Isa. Lizzy is better; they had been too much alarmed about her,
but they are expecting us there. Lord William sends us the most
pressing and affectionate appeals. Sarah also writes to me, gravely
this time: “My sister’s marriage will separate her from us. Two
sisters will henceforth be wanting to this family group; the one, and
that the happiest, enkindled with love for the Best-Beloved of her
soul, left the world for God and his poor, and, shortly afterwards,
the poor for eternity; the other is going into Spain.”
Imagine Margaret’s joy! Dear, sweet friend, how, with her, I bless
God! “No baptism without Georgina.” Oh! how I long to embrace the dear
little creature, to whom I send my guardian angel a hundred times a
day. I am so anxious he should live!
Walk in the country, alone with René, who read me some letters from
Karl, George, and Amaury; the latter will write to their uncles no
more. What detachment! René read to me also this beautiful passage
from Madame Swetchine from the notes of Hélène: “The day of the Lord
is not of those days which pass away. Wait for it without impatience;
wait, that God may bless the desires which lead you toward a better
life, more meritorious and less perilous; wait, that he may give
abundant work to your hands from henceforth laborious, for the
opportunity of labor is also a grace by which the good-will of the
laborer is recompensed. Let not your delays and miseries trouble you;
wait, learn how to wait. Efforts and will, means and end――submit all
to God.”
It is not Monsignor who will preach the panegyric. The great bishop
waits until next year. It appears that various beatifications are
about to be taken under consideration, amongst others those of
Christopher Columbus and Joan of Arc. The first discovered a world,
the second saved France by delivering it from a foreign yoke――living
as a saint and dying as a martyr; the former, a marvellous genius, was
tried and persecuted, like everything which is specially marked with
the seal of God in this world. I have seen persons smile when any one
spoke before them of the possibility of the canonization of Joan of
Arc. What life, however, was more extraordinary and more miraculous?
Would this shepherdess of sixteen years old, so humble, gentle, and
pious, have quitted her hamlet and her family for the stormy life of
camps, without the express will of God, manifested to her by the
_voices_? Poor Joan! How often have I pictured her to myself, after
the saving of the _gentil dauphin_ who had trusted in her words,
weeping because the king insisted on her remaining. From that moment
her life was a preparation for martyrdom. She knew that shortly she
should die.
Adrien has given me the history of Christopher Columbus in English.
You are aware that this son of Genoa, this heroic discoverer, wore the
tunic and girdle of the Third Order when he landed on that shore, so
long dreamed of, which gave a new world to the church of God. It is
said that this great man had at times ecstasies of faith and love.
What glory for the family of the patriarch of Assisi! Edouard assured
me yesterday that Raphael and Michael Angelo were also of the Third
Order. This austerity appears naturally to suit the painter of the
_Last Judgment_, but I cannot picture to myself the young, brilliant,
and magnificent Sanzio in a serge habit. What centuries were those, my
sister, when power and greatness and splendor sought after humility as
a safeguard, and followed in the footsteps of the chosen one of God,
who, in the lofty words of Dante, had espoused on Mount Alverna noble
Poverty, who had had no spouse since Jesus Christ had died on Calvary!
Poetry was not wanting to the crown of the Seraph of Assisi, himself
so admirable a poet. Lopez de Vega was also of the Third Order.
Adrien says that our age has had its Francis of Assisi in the heavenly
Curé d’Ars, who is perhaps the greatest marvel in this epoch, fertile
as it is in miracles. How much we regret not having seen him,
especially as we passed so near!
Picciola has the measles. This pretty child is attacked by a violent
fever; it is sad to see her, but she will not suffer herself to be
pitied. “Our Lord suffered much more,” she says. “What is this?” You
see, sister, that hereabouts the _children of the saints_ have not
degenerated.
Anna, who had the measles last year, faithfully keeps the sick child
company. I overheard them talking just now. “Would you like to get
well quickly?” asked the _Italiana_. “Oh! no, I am not sorry to suffer
a little to prepare for my First Communion.” “For my part, though, I
pray with all my heart that you may soon get up; it is too sad to see
you so red under your curtains, whilst the sun is shining out there.”
“Listen to me, dear: ask the good God to help me to suffer well,
without my mother being troubled about it. We are not to enjoy
ourselves in this world, as M. l’Abbé says, but to merit heaven.” I
slipped away, lest my tears should betray me: I am afraid that
Picciola may also leave us.
Pray for your Georgina, dear Kate.
APRIL 22, 1868.
The wish of this little angel has been granted: her measles torture
her; there are very large spots which greatly perplex the doctor. She
is as if on fire, but always smiling and thoughtful, and so grateful
for the least thing done for her! What an admirable disposition she
has! Last night the _femme de chambre_, whose duty it was to watch by
her, went to sleep, and the poor little one was for six hours without
drinking; the doctor having ordered her to take a few spoonfuls of
tisane every quarter of an hour. It was the _sleeper_ who told us of
this; and when I gently scolded the darling Picciola, she whispered to
me: “Dear aunt, I heard you mention what the good gentleman said who
founded the company of St. Sulpice: ‘A Christian is another Jesus
Christ on earth.’ Let me, then, suffer a little in union with our
Lord.”
What do you say to this heavenly science, this perfect love, in a
child of twelve years old? O my God! is she too pure for this world?
They assure me that there is no danger, but my heart is in anguish.
Kate, I do so love this child!
It is to-day that Betsy becomes _madame_. What a day for her!
Yesterday she was still a young girl, to-morrow will begin her life as
a wife; she will begin it by sacrifice. Oh! why must we quit the soft
nests which have witnessed our childhood and our happiness? Why comes
there an hour when we must bid adieu to those who, with their love and
care, protected our first years? Poor mothers! you lose your
much-loved treasures; they will some day belong to others.
Père Gratry was received at the Academy on the 26th of March. On his
reception he made a magnificent discourse. He was presented by Mgr.
Dupanloup.
“Gentlemen,” said the father on beginning his address, “it is not my
humble person, it is the clergy of France, the memories of the
Sorbonne and the Oratory, which you have intended to honor in deigning
to call me to the seat occupied by Massillon.
“Voltaire, gentlemen, who occupied the same, thus finds himself, in
your annals, between two priests of the Oratory, and his derision of
mankind is enclosed between two prayers for the world, as his century
itself will also be, one day in our history, enclosed between the
great seventeenth century and the age of luminous faith which will
love God and man in spirit and in truth.”
Kate, dearest, _amica mia_, pray for us.
APRIL 26, 1868.
She is better; the ninth day was good. God be praised! Last night,
while watching by the sweet child, I turned over Marcella’s
manuscript. How the thorns have wounded her! Oh! it is a nameless
grief, at the age of twenty years, when the soul is overflowing with
life and love, to be forced to shrink within one’s self, to hide one’s
sufferings and joys, and repress all the ardor of youth which is
longing to break forth. Everywhere in these rapidly-written pages I
find this prayer: “Lord, grant me the love of the cross; give me the
science of salvation! St. Bonaventure used to say that he had learnt
everything at the foot of the crucifix; St. Thomas, when he did not
understand, was wont to go and lean his powerful head against the side
of the tabernacle; and Suarez, who devoted eight hours a day to study
and eight to prayer, loved to say that he would give all his learning
for the merit of a single _Ave Maria_. My God, my God! will the
desires which thou hast implanted within me never be realized? Must I
lead always a wandering and isolated existence, beneath distant skies,
mourning my country and my mother, and seeing around me nothing which
could in some little measure replace these two blessings? Must the
sensitiveness of my thoughts and feelings be hourly wounded? Lord, thy
will be done! And if this is to be my cross, then give me strength to
bear it lovingly, even to the end, until the blessed time when thy
merciful Providence shall reunite me to my mother!”
My beloved Kate, René is writing to you, and I send this sheet with
his. Whenever I read anything beautiful, I long to show it to you.
God guard you, my second mother!
APRIL 30, 1868.
Complete and prosperous convalescence――_laus Deo!_ I sent you a few
words only, dear Kate, on the morning of the 26th. This was a most
happy day. Heard three Masses; received, with deep joy, him who is the
Supreme Good. It was the Feast of the Adoration. The cathedral was
splendid. Sermon by M. Berthaud on the Real Presence. It contained
some admirable passages, especially on Luther and the Mass of the
Greeks.
On the 27th was at the Benediction. Heard a _Quid Retribuant_ and
_Regina Cœli_ which carried one away. In the evening René read with me
a page of Hélène’s journal; I should like to _enshrine_ all the
thoughts of this exquisite soul. Last year, at Paris, she wrote the
following:
“Was present this morning at the profession of Louise de C――――. Sermon
by the Père G――――. I was much moved when the sisters sang the _De
Profundis_ whilst Sister St. Paul, prostrate under the funeral pall,
consecrated to God for ever her being and her life; then the priest
said aloud: ‘Arise, thou who art dead! Go forth from among the dead!’
Happy death! Henceforth Louise lives no more for the world; it is no
longer anything to her. She is here below as if alone with God, and
with God alone. Happy, says Pope, the spotless virgin who, ‘the world
forgetting,’ is ‘by the world forgot.’ O religious life! how admirable
and divine. I remember that a few years ago, in the youthful and
poetic ardor of my enthusiastic soul, I wondered that the world was
not an immense convent, that all hearts did not burn with the love of
Jesus, and thought it strange that any should affiance themselves to
man instead of to Christ. What disappointments and misery are in all
terrestrial unions! Even in such as are sanctified and blessed is
there not the _shadow_ which, on one side or another, darkens all the
horizon of this world? No union could be ever more perfect than that
of Alexandrine and Albert, and Alexandrine had _ten days_ of perfect
happiness, of unmixed felicity――ten days; and afterwards, how many
tears for this admirable wife by her suffering Albert, and, later,
over his tomb! O joys of this world! do you deserve the name?
“My family has been greatly privileged hitherto, so united, so happy!
But I am going away, mixing wormwood with the honey in my mother’s
cup. How Aunt Georgina will also suffer! O grief to cause so many
griefs! This evening I went to Ernestine’s with mamma. The mother and
two daughters were magnificent――just ready to go to the ball. What a
contrast! This morning the Virgin of the Lord, this evening the world
and its pomps. Mme. de V―――― looked like a queen; my two friends were
in clouds of tulle. May all the angels protect them! Are there angels
at a ball? Oh! it is there above all that we need to be guarded.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!”
Dear Kate, you can understand how such reading as this consoles
Gertrude. Oh! how good God is.
We are going to have great festivities. The _Concours Régional_[83]
begins on the 2d; the emperor and empress will be here on the 10th. On
the 12th René and I are going to see you, dear Kate, while all the
rest of the family take flight into Brittany. Then, after the best and
happiest day of the twins, in July, we shall, I hope, go all together
to see “merry England” and our dear Ireland.
Good-night, dear Kate; I have studied so much to-day that my head
feels heavy. Adieu, my dear heart, as Madame Louise used to say.
MAY 3, 1868.
The month dear to poets, and still dearer to pious hearts, is come.
Three Masses, visits, a walk on the Mall, a family concert after the
month of Mary――this, dearest, is my day. Yesterday René set out at
dawn on an excursion with Adrien. They have a passion for these long
walks through the woods. While waiting until Marcella could receive
me, I plunged into the _History of St. Paula_, which my mother-in-law
has given me. This beautiful book is written by M. l’Abbé Lagrange. A
disciple of the great bishop is easily recognizable in these
magnificent pages. St. Jerome, whom M. de Montalembert calls the lion
of Christian polemics, is there fully portrayed. “This ardent soul
which breathes of the desert.” Remarked this passage in the
introduction: “God has not bestowed all gifts upon them” (women), “nor
spared them all weaknesses; but it is the privilege of their delicate
and sensitive natures that the faith, when it has penetrated them, not
only enlightens but enkindles them――it burns; and this sacred gift of
passion and enthusiasm carries them on to wondrous heights of virtue.”
And elsewhere: “Will not the accents of St. Jerome, filled as they
are, according to the expression of an illustrious writer, with the
tears of his time, wonderfully impress souls wearied by the spectacles
with which we are surrounded, and which have within them, as the poet
says, the _tears of all things_? For those who have other sadnesses
and other tears, inward sorrows, hidden wounds, some of those sorrows
of which life is full――these, at least, will not weary of
contemplating a saint who has herself suffered so much, and who was
transfigured in her sufferings because she had the secret of knowing
how to suffer, which is knowing how to love.”
Do you not seem to hear Mgr. Dupanloup in this? “There are times when
a struggle is necessary, and when, in spite of its bitterness and
dangers, we must plunge into it, cost what it may. No doubt that, as
far as happiness is concerned, tranquillity and repose would be far
preferable――repose, allowable for timid hearts incapable of defending
a cause and holding a flag, or of comprehending a wide range of view,
or the generosity of militant souls; but we ought to know how to
respect and honor those who engage in the combat――often at the price
of unspeakable inward sorrows, and even at times giving evidence of
weakness and human passion――in the cause of truth and justice.”
How fine it is! I want to read this book with René. Reading is a
delightful relaxation. I sometimes read to my mother, who finds
herself more solitary since I became so studious, and since the house
is changed into an _academy_. Highly educated herself, she takes much
interest in our studies, but is quickly fatigued. What pleasure it is
to sit at her feet on a footstool which her kind hands have worked for
me, whilst she leans back her fine, intellectual head in her large
easy-chair; to listen to her narratives, and to revisit the past with
her! How truly she is a mother to me! Marcella has an enthusiastic
veneration for her, and calls her by the same name that we do. Was not
our meeting at Hyères providential, dear Kate?
Picciola is pressing me to go out. Good-by, dearest.
MAY 8, 1868.
What splendid festivities, dear sister! Sumptuous carpets and hangings
of velvet have been sent from the crown wardrobe. The cathedral
resembled the vestibule of heaven; and yet I prefer the austere
grandeur of the bare columns to all this pomp. It was a beautiful
sight, nevertheless, with the paintings, the banners, the escutcheons.
It was imposing, but the presence of the Creator was forgotten in the
vanities of earth; people were talking and laughing in this cathedral,
usually full of subdued light and of silence.
The panegyric was equal to the occasion. I was delighted. What
eloquence! It was the Abbé Baunard, the gentle author of the _Book of
the First Communion_ and of the _Perseverance_, who pronounced it.
This quiet city is in a state of agitation not to be imagined; the
streets are encumbered with strangers, and there is noise enough to
split one’s head. Last year there was a general emulation to point out
to me the minutest details of the _fête_; to-day Marcella was the
heroine. I like to see her, radiant, enchanted, eager, while the
delicate Anna clings to my arm, her large eyes sparkling with
pleasure. We are so numerous that we divide, in order to avoid in some
degree the looks of curiosity. My dear Italians are much disputed for.
The twins care no more to be here. Brittany has for them an invincible
attraction. Happy souls, who are about to live their fairest day! Pray
for them and for us, dear Kate!
MAY 10, 1868.
Dearest, the sovereigns are come and gone. Did I tell you about the
_Concours Régional_? Every day I take the little people thither; there
is a superb flower-show, orange-trees worthy of Campania, etc.
M. Bougaud pronounced a discourse upon agriculture, and with admirable
fitness quoted our Lamartine:
“Objets inanimés, avez-vous donc une âme,
Qui s’attache à notre âme et la force d’aimer?”[84]
But I shall see you soon――a happiness worth all the rest, dear Kate.
Shall I own to you that I regret Orleans because of Sainte-Croix,
Notre Dame des Miracles, and our poor, besides so many things one
feels but cannot express in words?
Benoni cries as soon as he hears us speak of going away. I observed in
the _Annales_ the following gloomy words by M. Bougaud: “Gratitude is
in great souls, but not in the vulgar; and as the soul of human nature
is vulgar, it is only allowable in childhood to reckon upon the
gratitude of men; but when we have had a nearer view of them, we place
our hopes higher, since only God is grateful.” May God preserve me
from learning this truth by experience! Hitherto I have found none but
good hearts, the poor of Paradise!
Margaret presses me affectionately to make all diligence to go and
embrace her baby. Isa is looking for me “as for a sunbeam.” Lizzy also
unites her reiterated entreaties. Betsy is installed at Cordova, and
praises her new country so highly that I am longing to see it.
Dear Kate, the twins are just come to me as a deputation to say that I
am waited for, to go _in choir_ to the exhibition of the Society of
the Friends of Art at the Hôtel de Ville; it appears that there is no
one just now.…
_Later_ I will return to you.
I will not conclude without giving you another quotation from M.
Lagrange: “Great sacrifices, which touch all that is most delicate,
tender, and profound in the heart, even to the dividing asunder of the
soul, according to the words of Holy Scripture, possess a sternness
which cannot be measured or even suspected beforehand. There is a
strange difference between wishing to make a sacrifice and making it.
In vain we may be ready and resolute; the moment of accomplishment has
always something in it more poignant than we had thought; the stroke
which cuts away the last tie always gives an unexpected wrench. Every
great design of God here below would be impossible, if the souls whom
he chooses were always to let themselves be stopped by human
obstacles.” Kate, Hélène, Ellen, Karl, Georgina, have felt this!
Did I mention to you the impression made on me by a story in the
_Revue_, “Flaminia”? It is singularly beautiful, and quite in
agreement with my belief.
Would you believe that here there are Jews and a synagogue, and also
an “Evangelical Church”? They say that the minister is very agreeable,
and that he goes into society. Protestants inspire me with so much
compassion! A Protestant boarding-school was pointed out to me. What a
pity that one cannot snatch away these poor young girls from a
loveless worship!
Good-by, dear Kate, until the day after to-morrow. René sends all
sorts of kind messages.
MAY 25, 1868.
Our oasis is resplendent, dear sister. Your good angel Raphael has
sweetly protected us; not the smallest inconvenience; the delicious
sensation that our sister-souls are more united than ever. To be alone
with René, who is worth a thousand worlds――what delight! The air was
pure, the country bright with fresh verdure, the birds joyous.
Charming journey! At Tours a letter from Gertrude apprises me that all
the W―――― family is in _villeggiatura_ at X――――. We hasten thither,
and are received like welcome guests. What a happy meeting!――an
enchantment which lasted two days, at the end of which we bade a
tearful adieu. But the arrival here――oh! what heart-felt joy!
Everybody out to meet us, with flowers, shouts, and _vivats_. Dearest
Kate, earth is too fair!
Marcella is in love with Brittany, our coasts and wild country-places.
Everything around us is budding or singing; the children run about in
the fields of broom. We read, we play music; and our poor are not
forgotten. The twins are preparing themselves with great earnestness.
_M. l’Abbé_ gives them sermons, to which we all listen with much
profit. Kate, do you remember my First Communion? Good-by, _carissima_.
MAY 28, 1868.
René is gone away to see his farms. Why am I so earthly that a single
hour without him should be painful? Adrien was just now reading that
fine page of St. Augustine where he says: “Human life is full of
short-lived joys, prolonged sorrows, and attachments which are frail
and passing.”
When will heaven be ours, that the joys of meeting again may never
end? We are preparing some beautiful music for Sunday. Why are not you
to be there with your sweet voice, dear sister? My mother would have
liked to see you, but she made the sacrifice of not doing so that we
might have the pleasure of a _tête-à-tête_. What do you think of that!
Dear, kind mother! Do you know she had a charming and idolized
daughter, who died at the age of sixteen? She died here, where
everything speaks of her; and it is for this reason that Mme. de T――――
likes to return hither, and goes daily to the cemetery. I am told that
I resemble her, this soul ascended to heaven, and every one finds it
natural that there should be the perfect intimacy which exists between
my mother and myself.
Marcella and Greek are waiting for me. Long live old Homer, long live
Brittany, long live Kate!
_Evening._――It is ten o’clock, and René is not come in. Adrien and
Edouard are gone to wait for him, while I am dying of anxiety. Prayers
without him seemed to me so sad! My mother also is uneasy. Where is
he? Oh! where can he be?
29th.――The night has been a long one. Adrien and Edouard came back
after having sought for him in all the neighborhood. The servants were
sent out in different directions. I went in and out, listening to the
slightest noise.… Nobody! My mother sent every one away and was
praying. Impossible to remain in any one place. I was full of the most
terrible conjectures. At last, at four o’clock in the morning, I hear
a carriage. It is he! it is René――poor René, covered with dust, more
anxious than we, on account of our alarm. Would you like to know the
cause of this delay? It is like the parable of the Good Samaritan.
René met with a poor old man who had hurt himself in cutting wood, and
after binding up the wound with some herbs and a pocket-handkerchief,
he put him in the carriage and took him back to his cottage, which was
at a great distance off. There he found a dying woman, who asked for a
priest. To hasten to the nearest village and fetch the _curé_ was
René’s first thought. There was no sacristan, so René took the place
of one, and passed the whole night between the dying woman and the
wounded man. The good _curé_ had other sick to attend to, but at two
o’clock he arrived, and relieved _God’s sentinel_[85] (this is what
the sweet Picciola calls him), who started homewards at a gallop.
You may imagine whether I am not very happy at this history. And yet I
suffered very much; I feared everything, even death.
Love us, dear Kate.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[80] My soul is a ray of light and love, which, being
separated for a day from the torch of divinity, far from
God, is consumed by ardent aspirations, and burns to
reascend to its fiery source.
[81] Conferences for Women in the World.
[82] “Soft cradle which a jealous hand
Adorns and visits every hour,
Charm of the wife’s imaginings,
Soft nest, whereby hope waits.”
[83] Provincial Exhibition.
[84] Objects inanimate, have you, then, a soul which binds
itself to ours and forces it to love?
[85] _Le factionnaire du Bon Dieu._
HOW ROME STANDS TO-DAY.
Several articles have been published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD on the
subject of which this paper is to treat――the condition of the
Sovereign Pontiff consequent on the seizure of Rome, which thereby
became the capital of the kingdom of Italy. As these articles marked
the successive stages in the novel relations of the Head of the
church, they could not fail to excite the interest of our readers. We
look to a like interest, and invite it, for the present article,
because it tells of new phases, and of the logical results of the
schemes which their authors were bold enough to say were initiated “to
secure the spiritual independence and dignity of the Holy See.” With
this cry the attempts against Rome were begun, were carried on, and
their success finally secured. So familiar, in fact, is this
profession of zeal for the welfare of the Sovereign Pontiff, that we
do not stop to cite one of the thousand documents in which it
appeared, from the letter of Victor Emanuel, presented to Pius IX. by
Count Ponza di San Martino, down to the instructions of the ministers
to their subordinates or the after-dinner speeches of Italian
politicians. Nor need we persuade ourselves that no one believed such
an assertion any more than did those who first uttered it, nor than do
we, who know what a hollow pretext it was and what fruit it has
produced. Twenty years of revolution in Italy, and a vast ignorance of
political matters, of the relations between church and state, rendered
many in Italy and elsewhere ready dupes of the cunning devisers of
Italian independence and clerical subjugation. These went with the
current; and though not a few have had their eyes opened, and now
deplore the excesses against religion they are doomed to witness, they
are impotent to remedy what they aided in bringing about, and behold
their more determined and less scrupulous companions hurry onward with
the irresistible logic of facts. Now and then some voice even among
these latter is heard above the din, asking: _Dove andiamo?_――Whither
are we going? That is a question no one can answer. The so-called
directors of revolutionary movements often look with anxiety at the
effects of the raging passions they have let loose; but as for guiding
them permanently, that is out of the question, for they have a way of
their own. The skilful manipulators of revolution ride with the tide;
they now and then see a break by which the waters may be diverted, and
they succeed in making them take that course, but stop them they
cannot. They can only keep a sharp look-out for what comes next, and
trust to fortune to better matters for themselves or others. And so it
is just now with the state of Italy. Things are taking their logical
course, and every one who can lay claim to a little knowledge of
politics and a moderate share of common sense will say what Cavour, in
perhaps more favorable circumstances, remarked: “He is a wise
statesman who can see two weeks ahead.”
We are not going to dwell on the political and financial state of
Italy in itself; on the fact of its Chamber of Deputies representing
only the one hundredth part of its people; on the saying, now an
adage, as often in the mouths of liberals as in those of the clerical
party, “that there is a _legal_ Italy and a _real_ Italy,” the former
with the government and the deputies, the other with the _ancien
régime_ and the church; nor on the debt――immense for so impoverished a
land――the exhausting taxation, and the colossal expenditures for army,
navy, and public works that add every day to the debt, and weigh as an
incubus on the people, increasing to a fearful extent poverty and
crime, peculation, brigandage, suicide, and murder. This would of
itself require all the space at our disposal. Nor is it necessary,
when we have one of the most accredited liberal papers of Rome, the
_Libertà_ of Sept. 3, speaking of the trial of the Marchese
Mantegazza, who was accused of forging the signature of Victor Emanuel
to obtain money, that tells us: “Too truly and by many instances does
our society show that it is ailing, and it is needful that justice
take the matter in hand, and strive to stop the evil with speedy and
efficacious cure.”
We propose, therefore, to confine our remarks to the condition of the
Sovereign Pontiff at the present moment; to the consequent necessary
examination of the relation of the state with the church; and to a
look into the future, as far as events will justify us.
What is the condition of the Pope? Is he a prisoner or is he not? We
had better start out with establishing what the word _prisoner_ means;
otherwise some misunderstanding may arise. Webster gives us a triple
meaning of it. According to him, it means “a person confined in
prison; one taken by an enemy; or a person under arrest.” Ogilvie,
besides the above, adds as a meaning “one whose liberty is restrained,
as a bird in a cage.” Let us see if any of these meanings apply to the
condition of the Pope; for if any one of them do, then the Pope is a
prisoner.
The Holy Father, in his letter to the bishops immediately after Rome
was taken by the Italian army, declared himself to be _sub hostili
dominatione constitutus_――that is, subjected to a power hostile to
him. And this is the fact; for friendly powers do not come with an
army and cannon to batter down one’s gates and slay one’s faithful
defenders. Any one who is taken by a power that, like the Italian
government, did batter down walls and kill his defenders, it seems to
us, looking at the matter calmly, would be declared by thinking people
everywhere _sub hostili dominatione constitutus_――subjected to a
hostile power. After a course like this one might as well say that
Abdul Aziz was made to abdicate his throne, and put out of the
way――_suicided_, as the phrase goes――to farther his own interests, as
to assert that Pius IX. was dethroned and deprived of the free
exercise of the prerogatives he lays claim to in order to secure his
independence and protect his freedom of action. Under this title,
then, of “having been taken by an enemy,” Pius IX. is a prisoner.
But it is said Pius IX. is not in a prison; he is in the splendid
palace of the Vatican, with full liberty to come out when he will.
With due respect to the sincerity of many who say this, we beg leave
to remark, first, that there are prisoners who are not necessarily
confined in jail; and, secondly, that there are excellent reasons for
styling the residence of Pius IX. his prison. To illustrate the first
point, there are prisoners on parole; there are, or were under the
Crispi law, in Italy, men condemned to the _domicilio coatto_――to a
forced sojourn in some place other than that in which they habitually
dwelt before, just as the venerable Cardinal de Angelis was compelled
to leave his see, Fermo, and reside for years at Turin. It is plainly
not necessary, then, that, in order to be a prisoner, a man should be
obliged to live in a building erected for penal purposes. It is enough
that there should be powerful motives, such as honor, or conscientious
duties, or just fear of consequences, to prevent the free use of his
physical power of going from one place to another, to render him
really a prisoner. In the case of Pius IX. there do exist such
powerful motives in the highest degree. There exist powerful motives
of honor. Pius IX. is under oath not to give up, or do any detriment
to, the rights of the Roman Church and of the universal church. He
inherited vested rights from his predecessors, and, as far as depends
on him, he is bound to transmit them unimpaired to his successor. He
is a man of honor, pre-eminently so, and will not, cannot prove false
to his oath or fail in protecting the rights entrusted to his keeping.
The effect of Pius IX.’s leaving the Vatican and going about Rome, as
he did in former times, would be a persuasion in the minds of all that
he had accepted the situation created for him by the act of the
Italian government; that he was, in fact, coming to terms with the
revolution; that he no longer protested against the violations of the
divine and natural law embodied in the Italian code, which one of
Italy’s public men declared, a short time ago, to be made up of the
propositions condemned in the Syllabus. Talk about parole after such a
picture! Parole regards the personal honor only; but the motives of
Pius IX. not only regard honor, but the highest interests of mankind.
Again, a further effect of Pius IX.’s leaving the Vatican would be
trouble in the city. Had we not facts to prove this, there might be
many who would doubt it. On occasion of the _Te Deum_, on the
recurrence of the anniversary of his elevation and coronation, in
June, 1874, the Sovereign Pontiff, who had been present, unseen, in
the gallery above the portico of St. Peter’s, on reaching his
apartments chanced momentarily to look from the window at the immense
crowd in the piazza. His figure, clad in white, against the dark
ground of the room behind him, attracted the attention of some one
below and excited his enthusiasm. His cry of _Viva Pio Nono, Pontifice
e Re!_ had a magical effect. It was taken up by the thousands present,
whose waving handkerchiefs produced the effect, to use the words of a
young American poet present, of a foaming sea. In vain the agents of
the government scattered through the mass of people――_gend’armes_ and
_questurini_――did their best to stop the demonstration and silence a
cry guaranteed by law, but discordant to the liberal ear, and
significant of opposition to their views. They could not succeed. They
had recourse to the soldiery. A company of Bersaglieri was called from
the barracks near by, who, after giving with their trumpets the triple
intimation to disperse, charged with fixed bayonets, and drove the
people out of the piazza. The arrests of men and of ladies, and the
resulting trials, with condemnation of the former, but release of the
latter, are fresh in our memories. How, in the face of a fact like
this, could the Pope come out into the city?――especially when we
consider his position, the delicate regard due it, the danger, not
only of harm to those who favor him, but of injury to the respect in
which people of all classes hold him. Even those who would be the
first to turn such an act to their account at his expense cannot
withhold the respect his virtues, consistency, and courage exact.
These, however, are prepared for the first mistake; they are ready to
give him a mock triumph at the very first opportunity. But they have
to do with a man who knows them; who, being in good faith himself,
learnt his lesson in 1848, and understood what reliance is to be
placed on European revolutionists. We conclude, then, this portion of
our paper by saying that the condition created for the Pope by the
taking of Rome, added to considerations of the highest order, has kept
Pius IX. from putting his foot outside the Vatican since September 19,
1870, and that consequently “his liberty is restrained” and he is a
prisoner.
Having thus shown that Pius IX. is a prisoner, we can safely draw the
inference that the place in which circumstances oblige him to remain
is his prison――prisoner and prison being correlative terms. He is “a
prisoner in his own house,” though certainly we know that house was
not built for penal purposes. But we have more than inference, logical
as it is. We have facts to show that the same precautions were and
still are used that it is the custom to adopt with regard to ordinary
prisons. For example, it is well known that in the beginning of the
Italian occupation of Rome the utmost surveillance was kept up on all
going into or coming out from the Vatican. One met the Piedmontese
sentinel at the entrance, and by him the government police; people
were occasionally searched; and the guards had orders not to allow
persons to show themselves from the windows or balconies of the
palace. The lamented Mgr. de Merode, almoner to the Sovereign Pontiff,
a soldier by early education, could hardly give credit to the facts
that proved this. Full of indignation, he went himself to the spot,
and from the balcony looked down upon the street below where the
sentinel stood. He was at once saluted with the words, “Go back!”
Again the command was repeated, and then the levelled rifle admonished
the prelate that further refusal to obey was imprudent. The affair
made a good deal of noise at the time, and the guards were removed
from close proximity to the palace, remaining only a few hundred feet
away. All things, then, considered, Pius IX. is a prisoner and the
Vatican is his prison.
But not only is the liberty of the Sovereign Pontiff directly
interfered with in this way; he is trammelled also in purely spiritual
matters. The Pope, the rulers of Rome say, may talk as he pleases in
the Vatican, as we cannot prevent him, and he will not be put down;
nay, he may even promulgate his decrees, encyclicals, and
constitutions by putting them up as usual at the doors of the
basilicas of St. Peter and St. John Lateran; but any one who dares to
reprint them will do so at his peril; his paper will be sequestrated,
if the document published be judged by the authorities of the Italian
kingdom to contain objectionable matter, and he will be tried by due
course of law. This mode of proceeding has been put in practice; the
seizure of the issue of the _Unità Cattolica_ for publishing an
encyclical is well known, and was remarkable for an amusing feature.
The edition for the provinces escaped the vigilance of the fiscal
agents, and the Florentine liberal press, anxious to show how much
freedom was allowed the Pope, on getting the _Unità_, printed the
document. To their surprise, their issues were sequestrated. The
letter of instruction on the subject of papal documents, and of
surveillance, _by the police_, of the Catholic preachers, issued by
the late ministry, to our knowledge never was recalled, and is
therefore still in force; worse is contemplated, as we shall see later
on. This coercion of his freedom of action extends also to the Pope’s
jurisdiction in spirituals and in temporals.
The first instance of this is the exaction of the royal _exequatur_.
We cannot do better than cite the words of the able legal authority,
Sig. A. Caucino, of Turin, who has lately written a series of articles
on the law of guarantees, passed by the chambers and confirmed by the
king, of which we are speaking. On this subject of the _exequatur_ he
writes: “After the discourse of the avvocato Mancini, on the 3d of
May, 1875, and the ‘order of the day’ by the deputy Barazzuoli, no one
wonders that the nature of the application of the law of guarantees
has been changed, and that all the promises solemnly made when it was
necessary to forestall public opinion, and promising cost nothing,
have been broken. From that time to this the bishops named by the
Pontiff, but not approved of by the royal government, have been put in
the strangest and most unjust position in the world. It is hardly
needful to recall that the first and principal guarantee in the law of
May 13, 1871, was that by which the government renounced, throughout
the whole kingdom, the right of naming or presenting for the
conferring of the greater benefices (bishoprics, etc.) Well, after
May, 1875, the bishops who were without the _exequatur_ were treated
with two weights and two measures: they are not to be considered as
bishops with respect to the Civil Code and the code of civil
procedure, of equity――and logically; but they are to be looked on as
such with regard to the Penal Code, the code of criminal procedure,
and the whole arsenal of the fiscal laws of the Italian kingdom.”
Incredible, but true. Let us see the proofs.
Mgr. Pietro Carsana, named Bishop of Como, instituted a suit against
the Administration of the Demain to have acknowledged as exempt from
conversion into government bonds, and from the tax of thirty per
cent., a charitable foundation by the noble Crotta-Oltrocchi, assigned
to the Bishop of Como for the time being, that the revenues of it
might be used for missions to the people and for the spiritual retreat
or exercises of the clergy. The Demain raised the question as to
whether Mgr. Carsana had the character required for the prosecution of
such a cause before the tribunal. The tribunal of Como was for the
bishop; but the Court of Appeal of Milan decided in favor of the
Demain, for the following reasons, drawn up on June 28, 1875: “It
cannot be doubted but that the episcopal see of Como is to be held as
_still vacant_ as to its civil relations, since Mgr. Pietro Carsana,
named to that see by the supreme ecclesiastical authority, has not yet
received the royal _exequatur_, according to the requirements of the
sixteenth article of the laws of May 13, 1871.[86] If the act of the
supreme ecclesiastical authority”――we call attention to that word
_supreme_――“directed to providing an occupant for the first benefice
of the bishopric of Como, by the nomination of Mgr. Carsana, has not
obtained the royal _exequatur_, as peace between the parties requires,
this act before the civil law is _null and of no effect_, the
appointment to the said benefice _is to be looked on as not having
taken place_, and the episcopal see of Como is to be considered as
still vacant, and the legitimate representation of it, in all its
right, belongs to the vicar-capitular” (_Unità Cattol._, July 25,
1876). A like decision was given by the Court of Appeal of Palermo,
October 16, 1875. Thus, to use the words of this writer, “the Pope has
a right to name the bishops to exercise their episcopal functions,
but, as far as their office has a bearing affecting external matters
of civil nature, bishops without the _exequatur_ cannot exercise it.”
These external matters of a civil nature, which might be
misunderstood, be it said, are none other than the acts without which
the temporalities of a bishopric cannot be administered. The bishop
may say Mass, preach, and confirm, but not touch a dollar of the
revenues of his see.
It needs no great acumen to perceive how the Sovereign Pontiff is thus
hampered in his jurisdiction. His chief aids are his bishops; but they
are not free unless they subject themselves, against conscience, to
the civil power. Every _exequatur_ is an injustice to the church, no
matter whether exacted by concordat or no. The church may submit under
protest to the injustice, but the nature of the act of those requiring
such submission does not change on that account. Hence it is clear
that the Pope is at this moment most seriously hampered in the
exercise of his _spiritual_ jurisdiction. If to this fact of the
_exequatur_ we add the election of the parish priests by the people,
favored by the government, the case becomes still clearer. But of this
we shall speak fully at the end of the article.
To the impediments put in the way of the exercise of the Sovereign
Pontiff’s spiritual jurisdiction are to be added those of a material
nature, resulting from the heavy pecuniary burdens he, his bishops,
and his clergy are obliged to bear. The scanty incomes of the clergy
of the second order are in many cases reduced to two-thirds, while
living costs one-fifth more than it did before Rome was taken. The
very extensive suffering, from poverty, stagnation of business, the
necessity of supporting the schools of parishes and institutions
established to supply the place of those suppressed by the government,
or whose funds have gone into the abyss of public administration――all
have the effect of keeping the people from giving as largely to the
clergy as they used to give, although that source of revenue to them
was not very great, as nearly everything was provided for by
foundations. With reference to the bishops, and the Sovereign Pontiff
especially, the case is much more aggravating. Those prelates who have
not obtained the _exequatur_ have no means of support, as the
temporalities of their sees are withheld. Pius IX., whose trust in
Providence has been rewarded with wonderful abundance of offerings
from the faithful throughout the world, came to the assistance of
these persecuted successors of the apostles. Out of his own resources,
the gratuitous generosity of his flock everywhere, he gives to each
one of them five hundred francs a month. The drain on the papal
treasury by this and other necessary expenses forced upon him by the
taking of Rome, amounts in the gross, yearly, to $1,200,000, which, as
the Pope consistently refuses to take a sou of the $640,000 offered
him by the government, comes from the contributions of the faithful
given as Peter-pence. In this way are the Catholics of the whole world
taxed by the action of the Italian government.
Besides this direct action on the Head of the church and on her
pastors that interferes with their freedom, there are other modes of
proceeding which we hardly know whether we are justified in styling
indirect, so sure and fatal are their effects on the spiritual
jurisdiction and power of the Pope.
The first of these is the claim on the part of the state, enforced by
every means in its power, to direct the education of the young. No
education is recognized except that given by the state schools.
Without state education no one can hold office under the government,
no one can practise law or medicine, or any other liberal profession.
Moreover, every youth, boy or girl, must undergo an examination before
examiners deputed by the state. It stands to reason that no one can
teach unless he have a patent or certificate from the state. Now, what
does this mean? It means simply that the most powerful engine for
moulding the mind of man, poisoning it, prejudicing it, giving it the
bent one wants, is in the hands of the avowed enemies of the church;
moreover, that those who are so acted on by this mighty agency are the
spiritual subjects of Pius IX.; and that this is being done not only
in all Italy, but especially in Rome. The most strenuous efforts are
being made to remedy this evil, with a good deal of success; and the
success will be greater farther on. But in the meantime a vast harm is
done and a generation is perverted.
The next of these indirect means is the conscription, which seizes on
the young men even who have abandoned the world and embraced the
ecclesiastical life. At first sight one may be inclined to think the
damage done not so extensive, as only a certain percentage after all
will be taken. Even were this so, the injustice done to the persons
concerned, and the harm to the church, would not the less be real. The
fact is that this course of the government affects a comparatively
small number in time of peace; but in time of war the number remains
no longer small. Besides, the uncertainty of being able to pursue
their career must have a bad effect on young men, while the
associations which they are obliged to see around them, if they
undertake the year of voluntary service to escape the conscription,
must often have a result by no means beneficial to their vocation.
Facts are in our possession to show deliberate attempts to corrupt
them and make them lose the idea of becoming priests. What is more
weighty than these reasons is the fact of the diminishing number of
vocations for the priesthood in Italy. The army of the government is
swelling, while the army of Pius IX. in Italy is decreasing.
A late measure of the government has also a tendency to diminish the
fervor of attachment in the people to their religion, and that measure
is the prohibition of public manifestation of their belief outside the
churches. A circular letter from the Minister of the Interior to the
prefects of Italy forbids religious processions in the public streets.
This in a Catholic country is a severe and deeply-felt blow at the
piety of the people. Processions have always been one of the most
natural and favorite ways of professing attachment to principles, and
this is particularly true of religious processions. They have a
language of their own that goes straight to the heart of the people.
The discontinuance of them will have a dampening effect, on those
especially who are a little weak; while those who go to church as
seldom as possible, or rarely, will be deprived of a means of
instruction that constantly served to recall to their minds the truths
of religion; and instead of the enjoyment that came from beholding or
assisting at some splendid manifestation of their faith, and from the
accompanying festivities never wanting, will be substituted
forgetfulness of religion and religious duties, the dissipation of the
wine-shop and saloon, and those profane amusements, often of the most
questionable character, that are beginning to be so frequent on days
of obligation, offered to the masses at hours conflicting with those
of religious ceremonies. What has especially shocked every
unprejudiced person, even liberals and non-Catholics, is the
prohibition of the solemn accompaniment of the Blessed Sacrament.
Besides the ordinary carrying of the Viaticum to the sick, and
occasional communion to those unable to come to the church, some three
or four times a year the Blessed Sacrament was borne to the bedridden
with much solemnity, the most respectable people of the parish taking
part in the procession or sending those who represented them. It was
always an imposing and edifying spectacle to Catholics. This has been
put a stop to. In Frascati, where, after prohibition of public
processions had been notified to all, the Blessed Sacrament was
carried to the sick with only the _ordinary_ marks of respect, that
there might be no violation of the unjust and illegal order, there was
an exhibition of the animus of the authorities that almost exceeds
belief. The people, to honor the Blessed Sacrament, were present in
greater numbers than usual, and, as is the custom, prepared to follow
it to the houses of the sick persons. The government authorities
determined to prevent them. Hardly had the priest come out of the
church, with the sacred pix in his hands, when he was accosted by the
police officer, was laid hold of by him, and made to come from under
the canopy, which from time immemorial is used during the day for the
ordinary visits for the communion of the sick at Frascati. He was
permitted to go with some four or five assistants. The people
persisted in following, whereupon the troops were called and they
dispersed the crowd. The result was a spontaneous act of reparation to
the Blessed Sacrament in the form of a Triduum in the cathedral, at
which the first nobility of Rome, very numerous in the neighborhood of
this city, assisted, while the attendance in the church was so great,
including even liberals, that many had to kneel out on the steps and
in the piazza. The effect on good Catholics thus far, though painful,
has been beneficial; but the continuation of this course on the part
of the government, with the means of coercion at their disposal,
cannot but be hurtful to the cause of religion, and cannot but
diminish the respect and obedience of the people to their pastors. All
this, as a matter of course, has a decided effect on the power and
influence of the Pope himself. There are indeed Catholics to whom God
has vouchsafed so great an abundance of faith that, no matter what
happens, they rise under trial and show a sublimity of trust and
courage that extorts admiration even from their enemies; but,
unfortunately, these are not the majority. Faith is a gift of God, and
requires careful cultivation and fostering watchfulness; negligence,
and above all wilful exposure to the danger of losing it, ordinarily
weaken it much, and not unfrequently in these days bring about its
total loss. This is one reason, and the principal one, why the church
prays to be delivered from persecution, because, though some die
martyrs or glorify God by a noble confession and unshaken firmness,
many, very many, fall away in time of danger. History is full of
instances of this. The _lapsi_ in the early centuries were
unfortunately a large class, and in the persecutions of China and
Japan, in our day, we hear, indeed, of martyrs, but we hear, too, of
large numbers that fall away at the sight of torture or in the
presence of imminent peril.
Such is the state of things in Italy with respect to the Sovereign
Pontiff and the church over which he rules: persecution, oppression,
hate, are the portion of Catholics and their Head; protection,
favoritism, and aid, that of all who are adversaries of the church,
from the latest-come Protestant agents of the Bible societies of
England or America to the most avowed infidel and materialist of
Germany or France. A Renan and a Moleschott are listened to with
rapture; a Dupanloup or a Majunke are looked on as poor fanatics who
cling to a past age. We do not wish to weary our readers with further
instances of tyrannical action; though readily at hand, we may
dispense with them, for the matter cited above is enough for our
purpose, and certainly speaks for itself. We simply ask, What prospect
lies before us? What is the promise of the future? On such a
foundation can anything be built up that does not tell of sorrow, of
trouble, and of ruin? Of a truth no one who loves virtue and religion
can look upon the facts without concern; and that concern for an
earnest Catholic will increase a hundred-fold, if he take into
consideration the plans just now showing themselves for the warfare of
to-morrow. These prove the crisis to be approaching, and that far
greater evils are hanging over the Papacy than yet have threatened it,
demonstrating more evidently and luminously than words what a pope
subject of another king or people means.
Any one who is even a superficial observer of matters in Italy cannot
fail to see how closely Italian statesmen and politicians ape the
ideas and the measures of Germany, particularly against the church.
There, it is well known, strenuous efforts are being made to construct
_a national church_, and with partial success. The pseudo-bishops
Reinkens in the empire and Herzog in Switzerland are doing their
utmost to give form and constitution to the abortions they have
produced. The example is followed in Italy. The apostate Panelli, in
Naples, made an unsuccessful attempt to begin the _chiesa nazionale_;
but disagreement with his people caused him to be supplanted, though
he still styles himself national bishop. Agreeing with him in
sentiments are a certain number of ecclesiastics, insignificant if
compared with the clergy of the Catholic Church in Italy; yet to these
men, who certainly did not and do not enjoy the esteem of the _sanior
pars_, the wiser portion of the people, the government, holding power
under a constitution the first article of which declares that the
Roman Catholic and apostolic religion is the religion of the state,
show favor and lend aid and comfort. Let us listen for a moment to
their language and to that of their supporters.
Sig. Giuseppe Toscanelli is a deputy in the Italian parliament, and a
man of so-called liberal views, an old soldier of Italian
independence, and an old Freemason. He has the merit of seeing
something of the inconsistency and injustice of the action of the
authorities, in parliament and out of it, with regard to the church,
is a ready speaker, and has the courage to say what he thinks, thus
incurring the enmity of his fellow-Masons, some of whom, in 1864, in
the lodge at Pisa, declared him unworthy of their craft, and cast him
out of the synagogue. We are not aware that he troubles himself much
about the matter, nor that he looks on himself as any the less an
ardent supporter of united Italy. When the law of guarantees for the
Sovereign Pontiff was up for discussion, Toscanelli said: “Report has
it that in 1861 some public men of Lombardy conceived the idea of a
national church, which they made known to Count Cavour, and urged him
to bring it about; and that Count Cavour decidedly refused to do so.
In 1864 this idea showed itself again, and a bill in accordance with
it was presented in parliament. The civil constitution of the church
was most strongly maintained by the Hon. Bonghi. At present we see
papers, some most closely connected with the government, printing
articles professedly treating of a national church, even to the point
of going to the extremes Henry VIII. reached.”
But not only papers favor the project. We have heard lately of cabinet
ministers using the same language. The head of the late ministry, Sig.
Marco Minghetti, did so at Bologna in a public speech. Yet he was the
leader of the so-called _moderate_ party. It is therefore not
surprising that the recognized prince of Italian lawyers, Sig.
Stanislas Mancini, the Minister of Public Worship of the present
radical cabinet, should speak in the same style. We have a letter of
his to a notorious person, Prota Giurleo, President of the Society for
the Emancipation of the Clergy, vicar-general of the national church,
in the _Libertà Cattolica_ of August 2, 1876. It is worth translating:
“HONORED SIR: Hardly had I taken the direction of the
ministry of grace, justice, and worship, when you, in the
name of the society over which you preside, thought fit to
send me a copy of the memorandum of Nov. 9, 1873, which,
under the form of a petition, I had myself the honor of
presenting to the Chamber of Deputies, recalling to my mind
the words uttered by me at the meeting of Dec. 17 of that
year, when I asked and obtained that the urgency of the case
should be recognized, and demanded suitable provision.
“It is scarcely necessary for me to say that I remembered
very well the expressions used by me on that occasion,
because they give faithful utterance to an old, lively, and
deep feeling of my soul.
“As minister I maintain the ideas and the principles I
defended as deputy. Still, I did not conceal the fact that
the greatest and most effectual measures were to be obtained
only by way of legislation, without omitting to say,
however, that by way of executive action something might be
done. To-day, then, faithful to this order of ideas, I have
no difficulty in opening my mind on each of the questions
recapitulated in the memorandum.
“1st. The first demand of the worthy society over which you
preside was made to the Chamber of Deputies, in order that
steps might be taken to frame a new law to regulate
definitively the new relations between the state and the
church, in accordance with the changed condition of the
political power and of the ecclesiastical ministry. On this
point I am happy to assure you that this arduous problem
constitutes one of the most important cares, and will form
part of study and examination, to which the distinguished
and competent men called by me to compose the commission
charged with preparing the law reserved by the eighteenth
article of the law of May 13, 1871, for the rearrangement
and preservation of ecclesiastical property, will have to
attend.
“2d. In the second place, this memorandum asks the
revindication, for the clergy and people, of the right to
elect their own pastors in all the grades of the hierarchy.
You are not ignorant that such a proposition made by me in
parliament, during the discussion of the above-mentioned law
of May 13, 1871, relative to the nomination of bishops, did
not meet with success, nor would there be reasonable hope,
at present, of a different legislative decision. It results
from this, therefore, that efforts in this direction must be
limited to preparing by indirect ways the maturity of public
opinion, which is wont, sooner or later, to influence the
deliberations of parliament. The manifestation of the will
of the people in the choice of ministers and pastors, that
recalls the provident customs and traditions of the
primitive church, to which the most learned and pious
ecclesiastics of our day――it is enough to name
Rosmini――earnestly desire to return, must first be the
object of action to propagate the idea, in the order of
facts, by spontaneous impulse, and by the moral need of
pious and believing consciences; and afterward, when these
facts become frequent and general, it will be the duty of
the civil power to interfere to regulate them, and secure
the sincerity and independence of them, without prejudice to
the right of ecclesiastical institution.
“Already some symptoms have shown themselves, and some
examples have been had, in certain provinces of the kingdom,
and I deemed it my duty not to look on them with aversion
and distrust, but at the same time to reconcile with
existing discipline regarding benefices all such zeal and
the protection that could be given to the popular vote and
to ecclesiastics chosen by it, not only by providing for
these the means needed for the becoming exercise of their
ministry, but also to benefit at the same time the people by
works tending to their instruction and assistance. I will
not neglect opportunities of aiding by other indirect
measures the attainment of the same end. The future will
show whether this movement, a sign of the tendencies of the
day, may be able to exercise a sensible influence on
religious society and claim the attention of the legislator.
“3d. The same commission referred to above will be able to
examine how, by means of opportune expedients, some of the
dispositions of the forthcoming law on the administration of
the ecclesiastical fund may be made serve to relieve and
encourage the priests and laymen belonging to associations
the aim of which is to fulfil scrupulously at one and the
same time the duties of religion and of patriotism. Still,
despite the fact that the actual arrangement and the
accustomed destination of the revenues of vacant benefices
succeed with great difficulty in meeting the mass of
obligations that weigh upon them, I have earnestly sought
for the readiest and most available means to afford some
help and encouragement to the well-deserving society over
which you preside, especially to promote the diffusion of
the earnest and profound studies of history and
ecclesiastical literature; and I am only sorry that
insuperable obstacles have obliged me to keep within very
modest limits. I will not neglect to avail myself of every
favorable occasion to show the esteem and the satisfaction
of the government with respect to those ecclesiastics and
members of the association who join to gravity of conduct
the merit of dedicating themselves to good ecclesiastical
studies, and render useful service to their fellow-citizens.
“4th. In the fourth place, by this memorandum the demand is
presented that one of the many churches in Naples, once
conventual, be assigned to the society, endowing it with the
property acquired by the laws affecting the title to such
property of February 17, 1861, July 7, 1866, and August 15,
1867. On this point I have to say that many years ago there
was brought about a state of things which certainly is not
favorable to the granting of the demand; for the
twenty-fourth article of the law of February 17, 1861, was
interpreted in the sense that churches formerly conventual
should be subject, as regards jurisdiction, to the
archiepiscopal curia. Notwithstanding this, and although I
intend to have examined anew the interpretation given to
Article 24, seeing in the meantime that this state of things
be not in the least changed for the worse, I will
immediately put myself in relation with the prefect of the
province, to know whether, keeping in view the facts as
above, there be in your city a church we may dispose of that
presents all the conditions required, in order that it may
be given for the use of the society. It is hardly necessary
to speak of the absolute impossibility of assigning an
endowment from the property coming from the laws changing
the title to such property, because, even apart from any
other reason, the very laws themselves determine, in order,
the use to which the revenues obtained by the consequent
sale of the property are to be put.
“5th. Finally, as regards guaranteeing efficaciously,
against the arbitrary action of the episcopate, the lower
clergy who are loyal to the laws of the country and to the
dynasty, I do not deem it necessary to make any declarations
or give any assurances, because my principles and the first
acts of my administration are a pledge that, within the
bounds allowed me by law, and urging, if needful, the action
of the courts, in accordance with the law of May 13, 1871, I
shall not fail to show by deeds that the government of the
king is not disposed to tolerate that good ecclesiastics of
liberal creed should be subject to abuse on the part of
their ecclesiastical superiors, when the legal means are in
their power to prevent it.
“Be pleased to accept, honored sir, the expression of my
esteem and consideration.
“The Keeper of the Seals,
“MANCINI.”
We shall adduce only one other document as prefatory to what we are
going to say, and that is the letter of a certain Professor Sbarbaro,
who is a prominent writer of extreme views, possessing a frankness of
character that makes him attack the government at one time, even in
favor of the church, though through no love of it, at another launch
forth against it an amount of invective and false accusation that
would warrant us in looking on him as the crater of the revolutionary
volcano. This personage has written quite recently one of his
characteristic letters, in which he uses all his eloquence against the
church, recommending everywhere the establishment of Protestant
churches and schools; because, he says, this is the only way to
destroy the Catholic Church, the implacable enemy of the new order of
things. Every nerve must be strained to effect this. There can be no
peace till it be accomplished, and the edifice of Italian unity and
freedom tower over the ruins of ecclesiastical oppression.
With the express declaration of the deputy, Sig. Giuseppe Toscanelli,
the letter of his Excellency the Keeper of the Seals and that of
Professor Sbarbaro, before our eyes, we are prepared to see some fact
in accordance with the ideas and sentiments therein expressed. The
fact is at hand; it is a movement set on foot to obtain adhesion and
subscriptions to the scheme of electing, by the people, to their
positions ecclesiastics even of the highest grade. The Sovereign
Pontiff himself alluded to this in his discourse to the foreign
colleges, July 25, 1876, when he warned them that steps were taking to
prepare the way to a popular election, “_a tempo suo, anche al maggior
beneficio della chiesa_”――“at the proper time, to even the first
benefice of the church”――in other words, the Papacy. It is worth while
examining this question, because the agitation having begun, specious
arguments having been advanced, and illustrious names, such as that of
Rosmini――who, it is well known, retracted whatever by overzeal he had
written that incurred censure at Rome――having been brought forward to
support such views, it is not unlikely that elsewhere we may hear a
repetition of them. Say what people may, Rome is the centre of the
civilized world; the agitations that occur there, especially in the
speculative order, are like the waves produced by casting a stone in
the water: the ripples extend themselves from the centre to the
extreme circumference. So thence the agitations strike France and
Germany and Spain, extend to England, Russia, the East, and finally
reach us and the other extra-European nations.
The errors on this subject of popular election in the church, where
they are not affected, come from a confusion of ideas and a want of
knowledge of what the church is. Protestantism has had the greatest
part in misleading men; for it completely changed the essential idea
of this mystic body of Christ. Our Lord, when founding his church on
earth, spoke of it continually as his, as his kingdom, as his house,
as his vineyard. He told his disciples that to him all power had been
given in heaven and on earth. Nowhere do we see him giving to any one
a title that would make him a sharer in that power; the unity of
command signified by the idea of the kingdom, the absolute power of
imposing laws, is his, his alone, and is entrusted to those he
selected to continue his work. His words to his apostles were: “As the
Father hath sent me, I send you”――the fulness of power I have I bestow
upon you, that you may act in my name, in such a way that “he who
hears you hears me; and he who will not hear you, let him be to you as
the heathen and the publican.” He makes the distinction between those
who are to hear and those who are outside his church; he constitutes
in his kingdom, his church, those who are to command with his
authority and those who are to obey: the apostles and their
successors――the Sovereign Pontiff with the bishops――and the people or
the laity. The duty of the laity is to obey, not to command, not to
impose, not to exact, much less to name those who are to hold
positions in the church――an act proper of its nature only to those who
hold power of command, just as in a kingdom the naming to offices
resides with the king or with those he may depute for such purpose.
The duty of the laity is summed up in the words of the Prince of the
Apostles: _Obedite præpositis vestris_――Obey your prelates. Such is
the divine constitution of the church, and, like everything of divine
right, that constitution is unchangeable. Alongside of this fact,
however, we find another that apparently conflicts with it. We see the
people, even in the first period of the preaching of Christianity,
taking part in the election of those who were to hold places in the
church, and this at the instance of the apostles themselves. It is,
however, not the rule, but the exception, in the sacred text; for we
find the apostles acting directly, themselves selecting and bestowing
power of orders and jurisdiction; as, for example, when St. Paul
placed Timothy over the church of Ephesus, and Titus over those of
Crete. This is in accordance with what we might expect from the
constitution of the church. Had the election to such places been of
divine right, St. Paul would have violated that right in so naming
both Timothy and Titus. It follows, then, that this power of taking
part in the election of prelates, priests, and deacons was introduced
by the apostles and used in the early church as a matter of
expediency, the continuation or interruption of which would depend
upon circumstances. What was the meaning of it? Was it a conferring of
power, a naming to fill a place, or a presentation, a testimony of
worth of those thus selected, which the apostles and their successors
sought from the people? It was a testimony of worth only. This is
evident from the words of St. Peter to the one hundred and twenty
gathered with him for the nomination of St. Matthias. It is St. Peter
who regulates, orders what is to be done, and commands the brethren to
select one from their number. They could not agree on one; two were
nominated, and the prayer and choice by lot followed. This was, of
course, an extraordinary case, and we do not see this mode of election
afterwards resorted to, leaving the matter to be decided by the power
of God. What we do see here that is of interest to us is the act of
the Prince of the Apostles prescribing what was to be done; this shows
his supreme authority, and is the source of the legality of the
position of St. Matthias. The testimony of the people was required to
ascertain his worth and fitness. It was very natural that this
testimony of the people should be resorted to, especially in the early
church, in which affairs were administered and the work of the Gospel
carried on rather through the spirit of charity, “that hath no law,”
than by legal enactments; though we begin to see quite early traces of
these, as required by the nature of the case. This example of the
apostles continued in use in the church for centuries, the testimony
of the people to the worth of their bishops being required; for it has
always been an axiom in the conduct of affairs in the church that the
bishop must be acceptable to his people; nor is any great examination
needed to arrive at such a conclusion, for the office of a bishop
regards the spiritual interests of his flock, and such interests
cannot be furthered by one against whom his people have just cause of
complaint and dissatisfaction. To obtain such testimony, or to be able
to present an acceptable and worthy bishop to a flock, there is no one
essentially necessary way. Provided testimony beyond exception can be
had, it matters little by what channel it comes. In process of time,
when persecution, and persistent struggle with paganism for centuries
after persecution, ended, “the charity of many having grown cold,” the
strife that too often ensued in the choice of bishops, and the success
of designing men through bribery or intrigue, brought about the change
in the discipline of the church. We find the eighth general council
legislating with regard to elections to patriarchates, archbishoprics,
and bishoprics. We see that the powerful were making use of the means
at their command either to influence the people in the choice, where
this was possible, or by their own authority placing ecclesiastics in
possession of sees. The council was held in the year 869, and was
called on to act against Photius, the intruded patriarch of
Constantinople. It drew up and promulgated these two canons:
“CAN. XII. The apostolic and synodical canons wholly
forbidding promotion and consecration of bishops by the
power and command of princes, we concordantly define, and
also pronounce sentence, that, if any bishop have received
consecration to such dignity by intrigue or cunning of
princes, he is to be by all means deposed as having willed
and agreed to possess the house of the Lord, not by the will
of God and by ecclesiastical rite and decree, but by the
desire of carnal sense, from men and through men.
“CAN. XXII. This holy and universal synod, in accordance
with former councils, defines and decrees that the promotion
and consecration of bishops are to be done by the election
and decree of the college of bishops; and it rightly
proclaims that no lay prince or person possessed of power
shall interfere in the election of a patriarch, of a
metropolitan, or of any bishop whatsoever, lest there should
arise inordinate and incongruous confusion or strife,
especially as it is fitting that no prince or other layman
have any power in such matters” (Version of Anastasius).
In the Roman Church, however, while the active interference of secular
princes and nobles, despite the canons of the church, continued to be
the rule during the middle ages, to the great harm of religion and
dishonor of the See of Peter, to the intrusion even of unworthy
occupants who scandalized the faithful, the popes and the clergy
wished to have the people present as witnesses of the election, and
consenting to it, that in this way there might be a bar to calumny,
affecting the validity of it, and an obstacle to the ambition of the
surrounding princes. Still, the election proper belonged to the
clergy, the people consenting to receive the one so elected. Prior to
the pontificate of Nicholas II. the people, so often the willing
servants of the German emperors or of their allies, used not
unfrequently to impose their will on the clergy, or made Rome the
theatre of factional strife. To put a stop to this, Nicholas, having
called a council of one hundred and thirteen bishops at Rome,
published in it the following decree:
1. “God beholding us, it is first decreed that the election
of the Roman Pontiff shall be in the power of the cardinal
bishops; so that if any one be enthroned in the apostolic
chair without their previous concordant and canonical
election, and afterwards with the consent of the successive
religious orders, of the clergy, and of the laity, he is to
be held as no pope or apostolic man, but as an apostate.”
In the centuries of contention between the lay powers and the
ecclesiastical authorities, the discipline on the subject of election
to the higher benefices became more and more strict, till finally the
selection has, as a rule, come to be reserved to the Sovereign
Pontiff, to whom, even after election by chapter, the confirmation
belongs. The Council of Trent has been very explicit on this point. In
ch. iv. of sess. xxiii. we read:
“The holy synod, moreover, teaches that, in the ordination
of bishops, priests, and of the other grades, the consent,
or call, or authority neither of the people nor of any
secular power and magistracy is so required that without
this it be invalid; nay, it even decrees that those who
ascend to the exercise of this ministry, called and placed
in position only by the people or lay power and magistracy,
and who of their own rashness assume them, are all to be
held, not as ministers of the church, but as thieves and
robbers who have not come in by the door.”
Can. vii. of this session condemns those who teach otherwise.
We are, therefore, not surprised to find duly promulgated the
following document referring to the “Italian society for the
reassertion of the rights that belong to Christian people, and
especially to Roman citizens,” under whose auspices the movement for
election to ecclesiastical benefices by the people has been set on
foot. The _Sacra Penitentiaria_ is the tribunal to which cases of
conscience are submitted for decision, and its answers are given
according to the terms of the petition or case submitted. We give the
case as submitted, and the reply:
“MOST EMINENT AND REVEREND SIR: Some confessors in the city
of Rome humbly submit that, at the present moment, there is
in circulation in it a paper containing a printed programme,
with accompanying schedules of association, by which the
faithful are solicited to join a certain society,
established or to be established to the end that, on the
vacancy of the Apostolic See, the Roman people may take part
in the election of the Roman Pontiff. The name of the
society is: _Società Cattolica per la rivendicazione dei
diritti spettanti al popolo cristiano ed in ispecie al
popolo Romano_. Whoever gives his name to this society must
expressly declare, as results from the schedules, that he
agrees to the doctrines set forth in the programme, and
contracts the obligation, before two witnesses, of doing all
he can to further the propagation of these doctrines and the
increase of the society. Wherefore, the said confessors,
that they may properly absolve, when by the grace of God
they come to the sacrament of penance, those who have been
the promoters of this evil society, or have subscribed their
names thereto, and other adherents and aiders of it, send a
copy of the programme and schedules to be examined by the
Sacred Penitentiary, and ask an answer to the following
questions:
“1. Whether each and all, giving their names to this
society, or aiding it, or in any way abetting it, or
adhering to it, by the very fact incur the penalty of the
major excommunication?
“2. And if so, whether this excommunication be reserved to
the Sovereign Pontiff?”
“The Sacred Penitentiary, having considered all that has
been laid before it, and duly examined into the nature and
end of this society, having referred the foregoing to our
most holy lord, Pius IX., with his approbation, replies to
the proposed questions as follows:
“To the first, affirmatively.
“To the second: The excommunication is incurred by the very
fact, and is in a special manner reserved to the Roman
Pontiff.
“Given at Rome, in the Sacred Penitentiary, August 4, 1876.
“R. CARD. MONACO, _for the
Grand Penitentiary_.
“HIP. CANON PALOMBI, _S. P.
Secretary_.”
Such is the state of things we have to present to our readers as a
result of the triumph of Freemasonry in Italy and of the seizure of
Rome: the Pope a captive; his temporal power gone; his spiritual power
trammelled; his influence subject to daily attacks that aim at its
destruction; and, to crown all, looming up in the distance, a possible
schism, resulting from interference, patronized by the Italian
government, in the future election of the Head of two hundred millions
of Catholics throughout the world, whose most momentous interests are
at stake. Surely nothing could be of more weight to show how
impossible a thing a pope under the dominion of a sovereign is; nor
could we desire anything better adapted to show the necessity of the
restoration of his perfect independence in the temporal order. We
believe this will be; and, as things are, we can see no other way
possible than by the restoration of his temporal power; how, or when,
is in the hands of divine Providence.
[86] Art. XVI. “The disposition of the civil laws with
regard to the creation and the manner of existence of
ecclesiastical institutions, and the alienation of their
property, remains in force.” There is no mention of the
_exequatur_ being required for a bishop to plead before a
court; that is, to begin to act under the provisions of Art.
XVI.
A GLIMPSE OF THE ADIRONDACKS.
LAKE GEORGE, Sept. ――, 1876.
MY DEAR FRIEND: Not content with being told that we enjoyed our trip
immensely, you demand a description――of, at least, the chief part of
it. Now, an adequate description of any kind of scenery is by no means
an easy thing. I have read since my return those _Adventures of a
Phaeton_ which your high praises made me promise to try. And,
certainly, the author’s plan is admirably executed; his pages are
fragrant with rural freshness; but can you aver that your mind carries
away a single picture from his numerous descriptions? I have, as you
know, the advantage over you of having visited some of the places
through which he conducts the party, particularly Oxford and its
vicinity; but I assure you, had I not _seen_ old Iffley, for instance,
with its church and mill, the strokes of his pen would have given me
no idea of them.
Poets understand description better than other writers. Lord Byron is
the greatest master of the art in our language, and, I venture to say,
in any. What is their secret? To go into the least possible
detail――sketching but a few bold outlines, and leaving you to
contemplate, as they did. I shall make no apology, then, for following
in their wake.
Well, the time we spent in the woods proper――or mountains proper, if
you prefer it――was barely five days. It took us a whole day to voyage
down Lake George and part of Lake Champlain, and then stage (or
vehicle) it to a place with the euphonious name of Keene Flats. Lake
George looked as lovely as it always does under a clear morning sky;
and when the _Minnehaha_ had finished her course, we found――something
new to us――a railway station, and a train waiting to convey us to Lake
Champlain. I cannot deny that the unromantic train is an improvement
on the coach-ride of other days; for the old road was so absurdly bad,
one had to hold on to the coach like grim death to avoid being jolted
off.
The Champlain boats are all that can be desired. Besides other
accommodations, they serve you with a dinner which is well worth the
dollar you pay for it. The lake itself, though, makes a very poor show
after the beautiful George; and on this occasion what charms it had
were veiled by a thick smoke――from Canadian forests (we were told). We
had not more than time for a post-prandial cigar before we reached
Westport, our aquatic terminus. Landing, we found it no difficult
matter to discover the stage for Keene Flats. Two men, if not three,
vociferously greeted us with “Keene Flats!” “Stage for Keene Flats!”
The stage we had expected to meet was not there. It ran only Tuesdays
and Fridays, they said――or Mondays and Fridays, I forget which――and
this was Wednesday. So we took the only one to be had, and started on
a journey of some twenty-four miles, but which lasted over five hours.
The journey was broken by having to change vehicles at Elizabethtown――a
strikingly pretty place, and evidently popular. The drive thus far had
been through a continuous cloud of dust, and the thickest of its kind
I was ever in. The remaining fourteen miles were really delightful.
While evening fell softly from a cloudless sky, the scenery grew
bolder and wilder. The heights on either side took a deeper blue, the
woods a darker green. And presently the chill air made us wrap
ourselves against it. Very long seemed the drive, and weary; but many
a violet peak beguiled us with its beauty, and the large star drew our
thoughts from earth, till at last, as we descended into Keene Valley,
the moon rose to light us to our rest.
It was after nine o’clock when we alighted at Washbond’s. Mine host
had gone to bed, but was not slow to answer our summons; and then his
wife and daughter came down to get us supper. We did justice to the
repast, which was simple but well served, and in the meantime made
arrangements with Trumble, the guide, whom we were fortunate in
finding at home. Our beds were in a new house Washbond had just built.
Everything was clean and comfortable, and I need not say we slept.
Breakfasting about eight next morning, we made preparations for our
tramp through the woods. The guide was very useful to us in knowing
what provisions to get. His younger brother, too――himself training for
a guide――came along with us, for a consideration, to help carry our
load.
Taking one more meal at Washbond’s, we started in the heat of noon. A
couple of miles brought us to the woods proper. Here the character of
the road changed, of course, and the “pull” began. It was surprising
how cool the air of the woods was when we stopped to breathe and sat
down with our packs; whereas, wherever the sun got at us through the
trees, he “let us know he was there.” But had the fatigue of those
first miles through the woods been twice or ten times as great, it
would have been more than repaid when, suddenly, a turn in the road
brought us in view of the Lower Au Sable Lake.
One of our trio, whom we called Colonel (for we thought it wise to
travel _incog._――the second being Judge, and myself Doctor), had run
on ahead of the guides――a practice he kept up throughout the trip. We
heard him shout as he came upon the lake, and he told us afterwards
that he had taken off his hat and thanked God for having lived to see
that view. There lay the water in the light of afternoon, long,
narrow, and winding out of sight. To either shore sloped a mountain,
wooded, clear-cut, precipitous.
It was quite romantic to be told we had to navigate this lake. But
first there were the Rainbow Falls to see. Our end of the lake (not
included in the above view) was choked up with fallen timber. Crossing
on some trunks to the other shore, we had but a few minutes’ walk
before we came into a rocky hollow of wildest beauty, where, from a
cliff some hundred and fifty feet high, leapt the torrent――scarcely
“with delirious bound,” nor, of course, with the bulk it would have
had in winter, yet with terrible majesty――into a channel below us. It
did not wear the rainbow coronal, the time of day being too late. But
the glen was well worth a visit, and deliciously cool from the spray.
The boat we were to voyage in was the property of the guide――a light
craft, and rather too crank to be comfortable, particularly with a
load of five on board, to say nothing of the dog and the baggage; so
that, in fact, our passage along the lake and between the giant slopes
was not as pleasant as it might have been. After some difficult
navigation at the other end of the lake, the crew was safely landed
with the baggage, and the boat hidden in some bushes. Then a trudge
through the woods again for a couple of miles at least (distances, by
the bye, are peculiar in these regions), till we issued on the bank of
the Au Sable River where it leaves the Upper Lake. It was during this
march that the Colonel (who had brought his gun) got a shot at a
certain bird, and knocked too many feathers from her not to have
killed her, though neither he nor the dog could find her; and this
was, positively, the only game he sighted the whole trip through.
But here a second boat was found hidden and ready, and one a little
larger than the first. And now came _the_ scene of our excursion. We
seemed to have entered an enchanted land――to be floating on a
veritable fairy lake. The vision stole over us like a dream. Then,
too, it was “the heavenliest hour of heaven” for such a scene: the sun
set, and twilight just begun. The picture, as a whole, will ever
remain in my memory as, of its kind, the loveliest it has been my
happiness to see. But, my dear friend, it “beggars all description.” I
can only ask you to imagine it, while I jot down a few points of
detail.
The Upper Au Sable differs strikingly from the Lower, although, of
course, equally formed by, and a part of, the same river. It is less
long, but also less narrow; and while to the left, as you glide up it,
there stands but one mountain from shore to sky, to the right you
behold other majestic summits towering above the wooded slope. So,
again, on looking back, you see a gap of fantastic grandeur, and,
fronting you, is a wide opening, relieved by a single peak. This peak,
as we then saw it, wore the bewitching blue that distance and evening
combine to “lend”――a charm which I, for one (and surely all lovers of
nature), can never enough feast my eyes upon. The summits to the right
and behind us were also robed in various shades of “purple,” which
deepened with the twilight. The glassy water was covered here and
there with yellow-blossomed lilies. Even the green of the woods
partook with the sky
“That _clear obscure_,
So softly dark, and darkly pure.”
Along the right bank two campfires were burning brightly. Toward one
of these our guide was steering. He knew that his camp (constructed by
himself, and therefore his by every right) was occupied, but was bent
on turning the intruders out. We found a guide sitting calmly by the
fire, and awaiting the return of his party to supper. They had gone up
“Marcy,” he said, and two of them were ladies, and it would be very
hard for them to have to seek another camp after their day’s climb. He
had supposed our camp would not be wanted. There was one of his own on
the other side, just as good, and we could have that. Well, of course,
we three, when we heard of ladies, used our influence with Trumble,
who slowly relented, and then rowed us over to the other shore. Yes,
the camp was as good, and all about it; but we were on the wrong side
for seeing the moon rise, and felt not a little disappointed.
While the guide was making the fire the Colonel proposed that we
should row up the lake and look for deer. So we went; but not a sign
of any such quadruped could we see. Our view of the lake, though,
repaid us; and when we returned, we found a splendid fire and a savory
supper. These fires are kept up all night. They are close in front of
the camp. This species of “camp” is a hut or shed, built of logs and
securely roofed with birch bark. Sloping upward from behind, it stands
open to the air in front. The floor is strewed with spruce boughs, or
some other equally suitable; and when over this covering a “rubber
blanket” is placed, you have quite a comfortable bed. Did we sleep,
though? Very fairly for the first night out.
And here I am tempted to end this epistle; for no other day of our
whole trip brought anything to compare with the exquisite surprises of
this first day in the woods. But I know you will not be satisfied if I
fail to take you up Mt. Marcy and round through Indian Pass.
Well, then, we started for “Marcy” (as the guides call it) next
morning, right after breakfast. Our breakfast, by the way, was
unusually good for Friday. The Colonel and Trumble had risen early and
caught a nice string of brook trout. The brook was near the head of
the lake. We also supped on trout, which the Colonel and I got from
Marcy Brook, a mountain stream we reached about noon.
The ascent from the lake was decidedly a “pull,” the more so, no
doubt, from the reluctance with which we took leave of the lake. We
felt the climb that day more than any climb we had afterward. A mile,
too, of this kind seems equal, in point of distance, to three or four
miles on ordinary ground. Having rested by Marcy Brook for dinner, we
pushed on in the afternoon for Panther Gorge, where we found a good
camp unoccupied, which served us for the night. The Judge was very
eager to scale Marcy that evening, in order to get the view from it by
moonlight. We met a gentleman coming down, who said he had been on
Marcy the night before, and described the moonlight view as the finest
sight he had ever witnessed. We also met some ladies belonging to the
same party. Still, I think it was as well we did not go up that night;
for it would have sorely taxed our strength. I have recently been told
of persons who brought on disease, and died within a year or two
after, by rash exertion among these mountains. This sort of thing
seems to me consummate folly. More than that, it is a sin. We had come
on the excursion not only to see, but, equally, to gain vigor. Having,
then, plenty of time and ample provisions, there was no use in
straining ourselves to gratify vanity or anything else.
Panther Gorge must have taken its name from that truculent animal
having “infested” there (as Josh Billings would say). But the bounty
set on beasts of prey current in these woods seems to have made them
very scarce; for the only specimen we met with all the way was a dead
bear rotting in a trap. The gorge itself is wild, but not particularly
romantic. We got a view of it from a place called “The Notch,” near
the summit of Mt. Marcy, where we rested to dine. There is a sort of
camp at this spot, but a poor thing to pass a night in. There is also
a most convenient spring. Indeed, we had reason to be very grateful
for the springs and rills of delicious water which abounded all along
our line of march.
The ascent of Marcy is singularly easy for a mountain of such
height――one of the highest, indeed, this side of the Rocky range. I
confess I had rather dreaded the climb, from an experience of Black
Mountain, on Lake George. I was therefore quite agreeably surprised.
On the other hand, I was almost equally disappointed by the view from
the Cloud-splitter’s top. (Tahawus――_i.e._, Cloud-splitter――is the old
Indian name for the mountain. What a pity it was changed!――nearly as
barbarous as giving the name of one of Thackeray’s “Four Georges” to
the beautiful Lac du Saint-Sacrement. Far better to have restored the
Indian name――Horicon, _Holy_ Lake.) It is rarely, I suppose, that a
perfectly clear view is to be had from these mountains. _We_,
probably, saw little more than half the horizon commanded by the
height at which we stood. What we did see was worth seeing, certainly.
Still, I, at least, remembered an incomparably finer view from the
well-named Prospect Mountain at the head of Lake George.
Lake George we could not see, but only where it was. A number of small
lakes were pointed out to us by the guide, among them the “Tear of the
Clouds,” one of the reputed sources of the Hudson. This wretched
little pond――for such it proved when we passed it on our way towards
Lake Colden that afternoon――looked far from deserving of its poetical
name, even at a distance; for we could see that it was yellow, being,
in fact, a very shallow affair, and more like a stagnant marsh than a
crystalline tear. They might as well have given some sidereal
appellation to the sun-reflector which Mr. Colvin has erected on the
exact apex of Marcy――a few sheets of tin, some of which had been torn
off; for when, three days later, we were many miles away, we beheld
this apparatus glittering like a star in the rays of the setting sun.
But here let me moralize a moment. Those to whom “high mountains are a
feeling,” as they were to the “Pilgrim poet,” will not scale them
purely for the view they afford, much less for the sake of vaunting a
creditable feat. They will understand the longing so nobly expressed
by Keats:
“To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world and worldling meant.”
That is, they will feel at home on mountain-tops, because uplifted
from the transitory and the sordid, and reminded what it is to belong
to eternity. But then, on the other hand, unless, with Wordsworth,
they “have ears to hear”
“The still, sad music of humanity,”
they will miss the real lesson which the “wonder-works of God and
Nature’s hand” are meant to teach――to wit, the infinitely greater
worth and _beauty_ of a single human soul, even the lowest and most
degraded, as a world in which are wrought, or can be wrought, the
“wonder-works” of _grace_. The love of Nature never yet made a
misanthrope. The poet who could write
“To me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture,”
had been stung into misanthropy before he “fled” to Nature, and would
rather have found in Nature’s bosom a sublime and tender love of
mankind, had he not possessed (as some one has well said of him) “the
eagle’s _wing_ without the eagle’s _eye_,” so that “while he soared
above the world” he “could not gaze upon the sun of Truth.”
Such having been my cogitations as I stood on Mt. Marcy, you will not
think it pedantry that I record them here.
Descending, we returned to the camp at the Notch, where we had left
our baggage, then struck into the trail for the Iron-Works (of which
anon). This trail, though well worn, is very tiresome, owing to the
number of trees that have fallen across it, obliging you to crawl a
good deal. But we were glad to have seen the “Flumes” of the
“Opalescent”――another poetic name, which obviously means “beginning to
be opal,” or _resembling_ that hue. But, unfortunately, there are
various kinds of opal; and since the water had nothing of a milky
tinge, the bestower of the name must have meant the _brown_ opal, an
impure and inferior sort. I therefore deem the name infelicitous. The
only color-epithet for clear and shallow waters, whether running or
still, is _amber_. Witness Milton, in _Paradise Lost_:
“Where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her _amber_ stream.”
And again, in _Comus_:
“Sabrina fair!
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy _amber_-dropping hair!”
The “Flumes” are fine――too fine to be called flumes, according to the
dictionary sense of the term. They are chasms of considerable depth
and length. But I must hasten on, like the river by which we are
loitering.
Our camp that night was on the shore of Colden Lake――quite a pretty
little lake of its kind. But all lakes seemed (to me, at least)
apologies for lakes after the Upper Au Sable. From our camp we could
see where Lake Avalanche lay――not a mile, we were told, from Colden.
The Judge and Colonel made an agreement with the guide to visit Lake
Avalanche next morning early: but, when the time came, they found
slumber too sweet, as I had anticipated they would. _I_ had no
hankering to accompany them, because, for one thing, they would have
had to trudge through a regular swamp, the guide said――a kind of
walking I particularly dislike; while, for another thing, it was easy
to imagine the lake from the sloping cliffs that shut it in. These
reminded us of the Lower Au Sable, but, being bare and scarred, would
have evidently a very inferior effect. So Avalanche, like “Yarrow,”
went “unvisited.”
It was a matter of necessity now to push on to the Iron-Works. Our
provisions had run out; so we made the seven miles that Sunday
morning, and reached our destination in good time for dinner. The
trail was the best we had seen yet. We passed “Calamity Pond,” so
called from a Mr. Henderson, one of the owners of the Iron-Works,
having shot himself there accidentally. He laid his revolver on a rock
near the pond, and, on taking it up, discharged it into his side. On
this rock now stands a neat monument erected by filial affection.
As we entered the deserted village still called the Iron-Works (though
said works have been abandoned twenty years), a shower of rain
fell――the first we had met. (Such a run of fine weather as we had been
favored with is very rare in the Adirondacks.) The only occupied house
belongs to a Mr. M――――, who, while disclaiming to keep an inn or
public-house of any kind, accommodates passing tourists, and even
boarders. The table was good enough, especially after our frugal meals
in the woods; but I cannot say as much for the beds in comparison with
the camps. He had to put us for the night in another house belonging
to him, but which had not been used, he said, this year, and looked as
if it had not been used for several years. The bedsteads, too,
surprised us by not breaking down in the night; and two of us had to
occupy one bed. However, we contrived to sleep pretty well, and rose
next morning quite ready for “Indian Pass.” Fortunately, Mrs. M――――
was able to let us have enough provisions for the remainder of our
tramp; but when we came to “foot” the bill, it was unexpectedly
“steep.” People must “make,” you see, in a place like this.
Starting after breakfast that Monday morning, we took the shorter
route by way of Lake Henderson. We were not sorry to get a good view
of this lake, but our voyage on it was far from pleasant. A guide from
M――――’s came with us. He had two boats: one a sort of “scow” with a
paddle, the other a boat like Trumble’s, only lighter and smaller.
Trumble and brother, dog and baggage, went in the scow; we three in
the other, with the guide for oarsman. Our boat was loaded to within
three inches of the water’s edge, and, there being a slight breeze, it
was the greatest risk I ever ran of an upset. Had the breeze
increased, we must have gone over. All three of us could swim; but to
risk a drenching with its consequences, and under such circumstances,
seemed to me the most provoking stupidity. One of us might easily have
gone in the scow. The guide was to blame, for he knew the boat’s
capacity. However, through the favor of Our Lady and the angels, under
whose joint protection our excursion had been placed, we were safely
landed, and soon found ourselves in the woods once more, and on a
trail that seemed made for wild-cats.
But now our fears of rain were verified. The menacing west had not
hindered us from setting out; but we found the shelter of trees
inadequate, and, of course, they kept dripping upon us after the
shower had passed over. In short, we got wet enough to feel very
uncomfortable; and the sun could not penetrate to us satisfactorily.
We had hoped the rain was a mere thunder-shower; but when we saw more
clouds, dense and black, we made up our minds that we were “in for
it.” Trumble put forth the assurance that nobody ever caught cold in
the woods. But I, less contented with this than the others, resolved
to try the supernatural. I vowed Our Blessed Lady some Masses for the
souls in purgatory most devoted to her; and behold, as each succeeding
cloud came resolutely on, the sun broke through it triumphantly, till,
after an hour or two, all danger had disappeared, and we were left to
finish our journey under a cloudless sky. Of course this favorable
turn may have been due to purely natural causes; but I mention it as
what it seemed to me, because I know you believe in “special
providences,” and always rejoice in acknowledging Our Blessed Mother’s
goodness and power.
The trail became more perilous to eyes and ankles than any we had
followed yet. Indeed, it was a constant marvel that we met with no
sprain or fracture. Such an accident would have been extremely
awkward, remote as we were from the habitations of men, to say nothing
of surgical aid. But, of course, we took every care, and the prayers
of friends, together with our own, drew Heaven’s protection round us.
At last we came in sight of the gigantic cliff which forms the western
side of the pass――very grand, certainly, but not what we had
anticipated from the glowing accounts of brother-pilgrims. Then, too,
we saw but that one side; being _on_ the other ourselves, and not
between the two, as we had supposed we should be. When we reached
“Summit Rock,” we stopped for dinner. The view that met our
retrospection from this rock repaid our climb. In fact, it was this
view alone that made us think anything of “Indian Pass.” “Summit
Rock,” though, is not easy to scale; and I, having taken the wrong
track, in turning to descend had the narrowest escape from a very
serious fall. I shall always feel grateful for that preservation when
I recall our Adirondack experiences. How forcibly and consolingly the
words of the Psalmist came to me then, as they do now: “Quoniam
angelis suis mandavit de te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis. In
manibus portabunt te, ne forte offendas ad lapidem pedem tuum” (Ps.
xc. 11, 12.[87])
We camped that afternoon, and for the night, at a spot about “half
way”――that is, half way between the Iron-Works and North Elba (a
distance of eighteen miles); for the pass proper is of no great
length. The camp there is excellent. We reached it in time for the
Judge and myself to get a capital bath, while the Colonel caught a
string of trout, before supper. We did not cook all the fish for that
meal, but kept a supply for the morrow’s breakfast. The trout thus
reserved were hung upon a stump about fifteen yards from the camp, at
the risk of having them stolen in the night by some animal. And, sure
enough, some animal was after them in the night, for the dog got up
and growled, and went outside; but this scared the marauder away, for
we found the fish untouched in the morning.
Tuesday dawned serenely, and we lost no time after breakfast in
getting under way for Blinn’s Farm――our chosen destination in North
Elba County. The walk seemed interminably long, but was almost all
down-hill, and over ground covered with dried leaves. We lunched,
rather than dined, on the march; for we knew a good dinner was to be
had at the farm. The last difficult feat to be performed was crossing
our old friend the Au Sable, which flows between the hill we had
descended and the slope leading up to Blinn’s. We had to take boots
and socks off, and make our way over a few large stones, some of which
were awkwardly far apart. The others managed it all right. _I_ might
as well have kept boots and socks on; for just as I got to the last
stone but one, and where a jump was necessary, I slipped and came down
on my hands, sousing boots and socks under water. Even this, though,
was preferable to slipping ankle-deep into black mud, as I had done
again and again on the tramp; and when we gained the house and changed
our things, I was as well off as anybody.
Fortunately, they had room for us. Very pleasant people. And they got
us up a first-rate dinner, the most delectable feature whereof was (to
me, at least) some rashers of English bacon. This and the farm itself,
with its look of peace and honest toil, took me back to long ago――to
my first English home; for the pretty little parsonage where I was
born was close to two farmhouses. But farm, dinner, and all were
nothing to the view commanded by this spot――the most exquisite
panorama of mountains it had ever been my happiness to contemplate.
Facing us, as we turned to look back on the wilderness we had escaped
from, was Indian Pass, the true character of which is best seen from
this distance. To the left of us stood Marcy in majestic silence.
Between him and the pass were the “scarpèd cliffs” of Avalanche. From
south to west was a lower line of heights, apparelled in a thick blue
haze. And when, an hour later, we saw the sun set along this line, the
evening azure settled on the other peaks around us, and Marcy’s signal
gleamed and flashed like a red star.
And here I must bid you adieu, my dear friend. However poorly I have
complied with your request, it has been no small pleasure to me. I
hope you will catch a fair _glimpse_ of the Adirondacks, which is all
I pretend to give. But I must add that when we three travellers got
back to this dear old lake, we were unanimous in declaring that, after
all we had seen, there was nothing to surpass Lake George, nor
anything that would _wear_ so well. _Vale._
[87] “For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep
thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall _bear thee
up_, lest, perchance, thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
XV.
As the night wore away the bonfires lighted in the public places were
extinguished. Quiet and silence succeeded the tumult, the shouts,
dances, and the surging waves of an excited populace rushing wildly
through the streets of the capital. The ladies had deposited their
borrowed charms upon the ebony and ivory of their solitary and hidden
toilets. Themselves wrapped in slumber within the heavy curtains of
their luxurious couches, their brocade robes and precious jewels still
waited (hanging up or thrown here and there) the care of the active
and busy chambermaids. Of all the sensation, triumphs, and
irresistible charms there was left nothing but the wreck, disorder,
and faded flowers. And thus passes everything appertaining to man.
Beauty lives but a day; an hour even may behold it withered and cut
down.
The sun had scarcely risen when a number of carts, mounted by vigilant
upholsterers, were driven up, in order to remove the scaffolds, the
triumphal arches, and strip them of their soiled drapery and withered
garlands. The avenues of the palace were deserted, and not a courtier
had yet appeared. One man, however, all alone, slowly surveyed the
superb apartments of the Tower. He paused successively before each
panel of tapestry, examining them in all their details, or he took
from their places the large chairs with curved backs, that he might
inspect them more closely; he then consulted a great memorandum-book
he held in his hand.
“Ah! Master Cloth, you are not to be cheated. It is not possible that
Signor Ludovico Bonvisi has sold you this velvet at six angels the
piece; and six hundred pieces more, do you say? But I will show you I
am not so easily duped as you would think by the thieving merchants of
my good city. The rascals understand very well how to manage their
affairs; but we will also manage to clip some of their wings.”
And Henry VIII. gave a stroke with his penknife through the column he
wished to diminish; it was in this way he made his additions.
“The devil! This violet carpet covering the courtyard is enormously
dear.
“Mistress Anne, your reception here has ruined me. We must find some
means of making all this up. These women are full of whims, and of
very dear whims too. A wife is a most ruinous thing; everything is
ruinous. They cannot move without spending money. It has been
necessary to give enormous sums right and left――to doctors of
universities, to Parliament; and all that is an entire loss, for they
will clamor none the less loudly. There are men in Parliament who will
sell themselves, and yet they will ridicule me just as much as the
others, in order to appear independent. Verily, it is terror alone
that can be used to advantage; with one hand she replenishes the
purse, while with the other she at the same time executes my commands.
“This fringe is only an inch wide; it cannot weigh as much as they say
it does here. I counted on the rest of the cardinal’s money; but
nothing――he had not a penny, or at any rate he has been able to hide
his pieces from me, so that I could not find a trace of them.
“Northumberland has written me there was nothing at Cawood but a box,
where he found, carefully tied up in a little sack of red linen, a
hair shirt and a discipline, which have doubtless served our friend
Wolsey to expiate the sins I have made him commit.” And as these
reflections were passing through his mind, the king experienced a very
disagreeable sensation at the sight of a man dressed in black, who
approached him on tiptoe. Henry VIII. did not at all like being
surprised in his paroxysms of suspicion and avarice.
“What does that caterpillar want with me at this early hour?” he said,
looking at Cromwell, who was in full dress, frizzled, and in his
boots, as though he had not been to bed, and had not had so much to do
the day before.
The king endeavored to conceal the memorandum he held in his hand; but
who could hide anything from Cromwell? He was delighted to perceive
the embarrassment and vexation of his master, because it was one of
his principles that he held these great men in his power, when favor
began to abate, through the fear they felt of having their faults
publicly exposed by those who had known them intimately. He therefore
took a malicious pleasure in proving to the king that his precautions
had been useless, and that he knew perfectly well the nature of his
morning’s occupation, for which he feigned the greatest admiration.
“What method!” he exclaimed. “What vast intellect! How is your majesty
able to accomplish all that you undertake, passing from the grandest
projects to the most minute details, and that always with the same
facility, the same unerring judgment?”
Henry VIII. regarded Cromwell attentively, as if to be assured that
this eulogy was sincere; but he observed an indescribable expression
of hypocrisy hovering on the pinched lips of the courtier. He
contracted his brow, but resolved to carry on the deception.
“Yes,” he said, “I reproach myself with this extravagance. I should
have kept the furniture of my predecessors. There are so many poor to
relieve! I am overwhelmed with their demands; the treasury is empty, I
cannot afford it, and I have done very wrong in granting myself this
indulgence.”
“Come!” replied Cromwell, “think of your majesty reproaching yourself
for an outlay absolutely indispensable. Very soon, I suppose, you will
not permit yourself to buy a cloak or a doublet of Flanders wool,
while you leave in the enjoyment of their property these monks who
have never been favorable to your cause. The treasury is empty, you
say; give me a fortnight’s time and a commission, and I will replenish
it to overflowing.”
The king smiled. “Yes, yes, I know very well; you want me to appoint
you inspector of my monks. You would make them disgorge, you say.”
“A set of drones and idlers!”[88] cried Cromwell. “You have only to
drive them all out, take possession of their property, and put it in
the treasury; it will make an immense sum. They are to be found in
every corner. When you have dispossessed them, you will be able to
provide for them according to your own good pleasure, your own
necessities, and those of the truly poor. Give me the commission!”
Cromwell burned to have this commission, of which he had dreamed as
the only practicable means of enriching himself at his leisure, and
making some incalcuable depredations; because how could it possibly be
known exactly how much he would be able to extort by fear or by force?
Having the king to sustain him and for an accomplice, he had nothing
to fear. He had already spoken of it to him, but in a jesting manner,
apparently; it was his custom to sow thus in the mind of Henry VIII. a
long time in advance, and as if by chance, the seeds of evil from
which he hoped ultimately to gather the fruits.
At the moment this idea appeared very lucrative to the king; but a
sense of interior justice and the usage of government enlightened his
mind.
“This,” said he, “is your old habit of declaiming against the monks
and convents. As for idleness, methinks the life of the most indolent
one among them would be far from equalling that which yourself and the
gallants of my court lead every day in visits, balls, and other
dissipations. Verily, it cannot be denied that these religious live a
great deal less extravagantly than you, for the price of a single one
of your ruffs would be sufficient to clothe them for a whole year. All
these young people speak at random and through caprice, without having
the least idea of what they say. I love justice above all things. Had
you the slightest knowledge of politics and of government, you would
know that an association of men who enjoy their property in common
derive from it much greater advantages, because there are a greater
number to partake of it. These monks, who are lodged under the same
roof, lighted and warmed by the same fire, nursed, when they are sick,
by those who live thus together, find in that communion of all goods
an ease and comfort which it would be impossible to attain if they
were each apart and separated from the other. If, now, I should drive
them from their convents and take possession of their estates, what
would become of them? And who would be able so to increase in a moment
the revenues of the country as to procure each one individually that
which they enjoyed in common together? And, above all, these monks are
men like other men; they choose to live together and unite their
fortunes: I see not what right I have to deprive them of their
property, since it has been legally acquired by donations, natural
inheritance, or right of birth. ‘These church people monopolize
everything,’ say the crack-brained fools who swarm around me; and
where would they have me look for men who are good for something?
Among those who know not either how to read or write, save in so far
as needs to fabricate the most insignificant billet, or who in turn
spend a day in endeavoring to decipher it? I would like to see them,
these learned gentlemen, holding the office of lord chancellor and the
responsibility of the kingdom. They might be capable of signing a
treaty of commerce with France to buy their swords, and with Holland
to purchase their wines. These coxcombs, these lispers of the “Romance
of the Rose,” with their locks frizzled, their waists padded, and
their vain foolishness, know naught beyond the drawing of their swords
and slashing right and left. Or it would be necessary for me to bring
the bourgeois of the city, seat them on their sacks, declaring before
the judge that they do not know how to write, and sending to bring the
public scribe to announce to their grandfathers the arrival of the
newly born. Cromwell, you are very zealous in my service; I commend
you for it; but sometimes――and it is all very natural――you manifest
the narrow and contracted ideas of the obscure class from whence you
sprang, which render you incapable of judging of these things from the
height where I, prince and king, am placed.”
Cromwell felt deeply humiliated by the contempt Henry VIII.
continually mingled with his favor in recalling incessantly to his
recollection the fact of his being a _parvenu_, sustained in his
position only by his gracious favor and all-powerful will, and then
only while he was useful or agreeable. He hesitated a moment, not
knowing how to reply; but, like a serpent that unfolds his coils in
every way, and whose scales fall or rise at will at the same moment
and with the same facility, he said:
“Your Majesty says truly. I am only what you have deigned to make me;
I acknowledge it with joy, and I would rather owe all I am to you than
possess it by any natural right. I will be silent, if your majesty
bids me; though I would fain present a reflection that your remark has
suggested.”
“Speak,” said the king, with a smile of indulgence excited by this
adroit admission.
“I will first remark that your majesty still continues to sacrifice
yourself to the happiness and prosperity of your people; consequently,
it seems to me that they should be willing, in following the grand
designs of your majesty, to yield everything. Thus they would only
have to unite the small to the greater monasteries, and oblige them to
receive the monks whose property had been annexed to the crown. The
treasury would in this way be very thoroughly replenished, and no one
would have a right to complain or think himself wronged.”
“But,” said the king, “they are of different orders.”
However, he made this objection with less firmness; and it appeared to
Cromwell that his mind was becoming familiarized with this luminous
idea of possessing himself of a number of very rich and
well-cultivated ecclesiastical estates, which, sold at a high price,
would produce an enormous sum of money.
Cromwell, observing his success, feared to compromise himself and make
the king refuse if he urged the matter too persistently; promising
himself to return another time to the subject, he said nothing more,
and, adroitly changing the conversation, spoke of all that had
occurred the day before, and dwelt strongly on the enthusiasm of the
people.
“Oh!” said the king, “that enthusiasm affects me but little! The
people are like a flea-bitten horse, which we let go to right or left,
according to circumstances; and I place no reliance on these
demonstrations excited by the view of a flagon of beer or a fountain
of wine flowing at a corner of the street. There are, nevertheless,
germs of discord living and deeply rooted in the heart of this nation.
Appearances during a festival day are not sufficient, Cromwell. Listen
to me. It is essential that all should yield, all obey. I am not a
child to be amused with a toy!” And he regarded him with an expression
of wrath as sudden as it was singular.
“Think you,” he continued with gleaming eyes, “that I am happy, that I
believe I have taken the right direction? It is not that I would
retract or retrace my steps; so far from that, the more I feel
convinced that it is wrong, the more resolved am I to crush the
inspiration that would recall me. No! Henry VIII. neither deceives
himself nor turns back; and you, if ever you reveal the secret of my
woes, the violence and depth of your fall will make you understand the
strength of the arm you will have called down on your head.”
Cromwell felt astounded. How often he paid thus dearly for his vile
and rampant ambition! What craft must have been continually engendered
in that deformed soul, in order to prevent it from being turned from
its goal of riches and domination, always to put a constraint upon
himself, to sacrifice in order to obtain, to yield in order to govern,
to tremble in order to make himself feared!
“More,” he said in desperation.
“More!” replied the king. “That name makes me sick! Well, what of him
now?”
“Sire,” replied Cromwell vehemently, “you speak of discords and fears
for the future; I should be wanting in courage if I withheld the truth
from the king. More and Rochester――these are the men who censure and
injure you in the estimation of your people. There are proofs against
them, but they are moral proofs, and insufficient for rigid justice to
act upon. They refuse to take the oath, and it is impossible to
include them in the judgment against the Holy Maid of Kent. They would
be acquitted unanimously. However, you have heard it from her own
lips. You know that she is acquainted with them, has spoken to them;
this she has declared in presence of your majesty. They were in the
church; she had let them know she was to appear at that hour. Well, it
is impossible to prove anything against them; they will be justified,
elated, and triumphant. Parliament, reassured, encouraged by this
example of tenacity and rebellion, will recover from the first fright
with which the terror of your name had inspired them. They will raise
their heads; your authority will be despised; they will rise against
you; they will resist you on every side, and compel you to recall
Queen Catherine back to this palace, adorned by the presence of your
young wife. And then what shame, what humiliation for you, and what a
triumph for her! And this is why, sire, I have not been able to sleep
one moment last night, and why I am the first to enter the palace this
morning, where I expected to wait until your majesty awoke. But,” he
continued, “zeal for your glory carries me, perhaps, too far. Well
then you will punish me, and I shall not murmur.”
“Recall Catherine!” cried the king, who, after this name, had not
heard a syllable of Cromwell’s discourse; and he clenched his fists
with a contraction of inexpressible fury. “Recall Catherine, after
having driven her out in the face of all justice, of all honor! No, I
shall have to drink to the dregs this bitter cup I have poured out for
myself; and coming ages will for ever resound with the infamy of my
name. Though the earth should open, though the heavens should fall and
crush me, yet Thomas More shall die! Go, Cromwell,” he cried, his eyes
gleaming with fury; “let him swear or let him die! Go, worthy
messenger of a horrible crime; get thee from before my eyes. It is you
who have launched me upon this ocean, where I can sustain myself only
by blood. Cursed be the day when you first crossed my sight, infamous
favorite of the most cruel of masters! Go, go! and bring me the head
of my friend, of the only man I esteem, whom I still venerate, and let
there no longer remain aught but monsters in this place.”
Cromwell recoiled. “Infamous favorite!” he repeated to himself. “May I
but be able one day to avenge myself for the humiliations with which
you have loaded me, and may I see in my turn remorse tear your heart,
and the anger of God punish the crimes I have aided you in
committing!” He departed.
Henry VIII. was stifled with rage. He crushed under his foot the
upholsterer’s memorandum; he opened a window and walked out on the
balcony, from whence the view extended far beyond the limits of the
city. As he advanced, he was struck by the soft odor and freshness
which was exhaled by the morning breeze from a multitude of flowers
and plants placed there. He stooped down to examine them, then leaned
upon the heavy stone balustrade, polished and carved like lace, and
looked beyond in the distance.
The immense movement of an entire population began in every direction.
There was the market, whither flocked the dealers, the country people,
and the diligent and industrious housewives. Farther on was the wharf,
where the activity was not less; soldiers of the marine, cabin boys,
sailors, ship-builders, captains――all were hurrying thither. Troops of
workmen were going to their work on the docks, with tools in hand and
their bread under their arms. The windows of the rich alone remained
closed to the light of day, to the noise and the busy stir without.
There they rolled casks; here they transported rough stones, plaster,
and carpenter’s timber. Horses pulled, whips cracked――in a word, the
entire city was aroused; every minute the noise increased and the
activity redoubled.
“These men are like a swarm of bees in disorder,” said Henry VIII.;
“and yet they carry tranquil minds to their work, while their king is
suffering the keenest tortures in the midst of them; yet is there not
one of them who, in looking at this palace, does not set at the summit
of happiness him who reigns and commands here. ‘If I were king!’ say
this ignorant crowd when they wish to express the idea of happiness
and supreme enjoyment of the will. Do they know what it costs the king
to accomplish that will? Why do I not belong to their sphere? I should
at least spend my days in the same state of indifference in which they
sleep, live, and die. They are miserable, say they; what have they to
make them miserable? They are never sure of bread, they reply; but do
they know what it is to be satiated with abundance and devoured by
insatiable desires? Then death threatens us and ends everything――that
terrible judgment when kings will be set apart, to be interrogated and
punished more severely. More, the recollection of your words, your
counsel, has never ceased to live in my mind. Had I but taken your
advice, if I had sent Anne away, to-day I should have been free and
thought no more of her; while now, regarded with horror by the
universe, I hate the whole world. But let me drown these thoughts. I
want wine――drunkenness and oblivion.” And pronouncing these words, he
rushed suddenly from the balcony and disappeared.
In the depths of his narrow prison there was another also who had
sought to catch a breath of the exhilarating air with which the dawn
of a beautiful day had reanimated the universe. It was not upon a
balustrade of roses and perfumes that he leaned, but upon a miserable,
worm-eaten table, blackened by time, and discolored by the tears with
which for centuries it had been watered. It was not a powerful city, a
people rich, industrious, and submissive, that his eyes were fixed
upon, but the sombre bars of a small, grated window, whose solitary
pane he had opened.
He sat with his head bowed upon one of his hands. He seemed tranquil,
but plunged in profound melancholy; for God, in the language of holy
Scripture, had not yet descended into Joseph’s prison to console him,
nor sent his angel before him to fortify his servant. And yet, had any
one been able to compare the speechless rage, the frightful but vain
remorse, which corroded the king’s heart, with the deep but silent
sorrow that overwhelmed the soul of the just man, such a one would
have declared Sir Thomas More to be happy. And still his sufferings
were cruelly intense, for he thought of his children; he was in the
midst of them, and his heart had never left them.
“They know ere this,” he said to himself, “that I shall not return.
Margaret, my dear Margaret, will have told them all!” And he was not
there to console them. What would become of them without him,
abandoned to the fury of the king, ready, perhaps, to revenge himself
even upon them for the obstinacy with which he reproached their
father?
Whilst indulging in these harrowing reflections he heard the keys
cautiously turned in the triple locks of his prison; and soon a man
appeared, all breathless with fear and haste. It was Kingston, the
lieutenant of the Tower. He entered, and, gasping for breath, held the
door behind him.
“My dear Sir Thomas,” he cried, “blessed be God! you are acquitted,
your innocence is proclaimed. The council has been assembled all
night, and they have decided that you could not in any manner be
implicated in the prosecution. Oh! how glad I am. But the Holy Maid of
Kent has been condemned to be hanged at Tyburn. Judge now if this was
not a dangerous business! I have never doubted your innocence; but you
have some very furious and very powerful enemies. That Cromwell is a
most formidable man. My dear Sir Thomas, how rejoiced I am!”
A gleam of joy lighted the heart of Sir Thomas.
“Can it be?” he cried. “Say it again, Master Kingston. What! I shall
see my children again? I shall die in peace among them? No, I cannot
believe in so much happiness. But that poor girl――is she really
condemned?”
“Yes,” cried Kingston; “but here are you already thinking of this nun.
By my faith, I have thought of nobody but you. And the Bishop of
Rochester has also been acquitted.”
“He has, then, already been in the Tower?” cried More.
“Just above you――door to the left――No. 3,” replied Kingston briefly,
in the manner of his calling.
“What!” cried Sir Thomas, “is it he, then, I have heard walking above
my head? I knew not why, but I listened to those slow and measured
steps with a secret anxiety. I tried to imagine what might be the age
and appearance of this companion in misfortune; and it was my friend,
my dearest friend! O my dear Kingston! that I could see him. I beg of
you to let me go to him at once!”
“Of what are you thinking?” exclaimed Kingston――“without permission!
You do not know that I have come here secretly, and if they hear of it
I shall be greatly compromised. The order was to hold you in solitary
confinement; it has not been rescinded, and already I transgress it.”
“Ah! I cannot see him,” repeated Sir Thomas. “I am in solitary
confinement.” And his joy instantly faded before the reflection which
told him that the real crime of which he was accused had not been
expiated.
Penetrated by this sentiment, he took the keeper’s hand. “My dear
Kingston,” he said, “you are right――you would surely compromise
yourself; for my case is not entirely decided yet. As you say, I have
some very powerful enemies. However, they will be able to do naught
against me more than God permits them, and it is this thought alone
that animates and sustains my courage.”
“Nay, nay, you need not be uneasy,” replied Kingston; “they can do
nothing more against you. I have listened to everything they have
said, and have not lost a single word. You will be set at liberty
to-day, after you have taken an oath the formula of which they have
drawn up expressly for you, as I have been told by the secretary.”
“Ah! the oath,” cried Sir Thomas, penetrated with a feeling of the
keenest apprehension. “I know it well!”
“Fear naught, then, Sir Thomas,” replied Kingston, struck by the
alteration he observed in his countenance, a moment before so full of
hope and joy. “They have arranged this oath for you; they know your
scrupulous delicacy of conscience and your religious sentiments. This
is the one they will demand of the ecclesiastics, and you are the only
layman of whom they will exact it. You see there is no reason here why
you should be uneasy.”
“Oh!” said Sir Thomas, whose heart was pierced by every word of the
lieutenant, “you are greatly mistaken, my poor Kingston. It is to
condemn and not to save me they have done all this. The oath――yes; it
is that oath, like a ferocious beast, which they destine to devour me.
Ah! why did the hope of escaping it for a moment come to gladden my
heart? My Lord and my God, have mercy on me!”
Sir Thomas paused, overcome by his feelings, and was unable to utter
another word.
“My dear Sir Thomas,” said Kingston, amazed, “what means this? Even if
you refuse to take this oath they will doubtless set you at liberty.
Cromwell has said as much to the secretary. But what should prevent
you from taking it, if the priests do not refuse?”
“Dear Kingston,” replied Sir Thomas, “I cannot explain that to you
now, as it is one of the things I keep between God and myself. I know
right well, also, that these prison walls have ears, that they re-echo
all they hear, and that one cannot even sigh here without it being
reported.”
“You are dissatisfied, then, with being under my care!” exclaimed
Kingston, who was extremely narrow-minded, and whose habit of living,
and still more of commanding, in the Tower had brought him to regard
it as a habitation by no means devoid of attractions.
“You may very well believe, Sir Thomas,” he continued, “that I have
not forgotten the many favors and proofs of friendship I have received
from you; that I am entirely devoted to you; and what I most regret is
not having it in my power to treat you as I would wish in giving you
better fare at my table. Fear of the king’s anger alone prevents me,
and I at least would be glad to feel that you were satisfied with the
good-will I have shown.”
More smiled kindly: for the delicate sensibility and exquisite tact
which in an instant discovered to him how entirely it was wanting in
others never permitted from him other expressions than those of a
pleasantry as gentle as it was refined.
“In good sooth, my dear lieutenant, I am quite contented with you; you
are a good friend, and would most certainly like to treat me well. If,
then, I should ever happen to show any dissatisfaction with your
table, you must instantly turn me out of your house.” And he smiled at
the idea.
“You jest, Sir Thomas,” said Kingston.
“In truth, my dear friend, I have nevertheless but little inclination
to jest,” replied More.
“Well, all that I regret is not having it in my power to treat you as
I would wish,” continued Kingston in the same tone. “I should have
been so happy to have made you entirely comfortable here!”
“Come,” said Sir Thomas, “let us speak no more of that; I am very well
convinced of it, and I thank you for the attachment you have shown me
to-day. I only regret that I cannot be permitted to see the Bishop of
Rochester for a moment.”
“Impossible!” cried Kingston. “If it were discovered, I should lose my
place.”
“Then I no longer insist,” said Sir Thomas; “but let me, at least,
write him a few words.”
Kingston made no reply and looked very thoughtful. He hesitated.
“Carry the letter yourself,” said Sir Thomas, “and, unless you tell
it, no person will know it.”
“You think so?” said Kingston, embarrassed. “But then my Lord
Rochester must burn it immediately; for if they should find it in his
hands, they would try to find out how he received it; and, Sir Thomas,
I know not how it is done, but they know everything.”
“They will never be able to find this out. O Master Kingston!” said
More, “let me write him but one word.”
“Well, well, haste, then; for it is time I should go. If they came and
asked for me, and found me not, I would be lost.”
Sir Thomas, fearing he might retract, hastened immediately to write
the following words on a scrap of paper:
“What feelings were mine, dear friend, on learning that you
are imprisoned here so near me, you may imagine. What a
consolation it would be to clasp you in my arms! But that is
denied me; God so wills it. During the first doleful night I
spent in this prison my eyes never once closed in sleep. I
heard your footsteps; I listened, I counted them most
anxiously. I asked myself who this unfortunate creature
could be who, like myself, groaned in this place; if it were
long since he had seen the light of heaven, and why he was
imprisoned in this den of stone. Alas! and it was you. Now I
see you, I follow you everywhere. What anguish is mine to be
so near you, yet not be able to see or speak to you! Rap
from time to time on the floor in such a manner that I may
know you are speaking to me; my heart will understand thine.
It seems to me the voice of the stones will communicate your
words. I shall listen night and day for your signals, and
this will be a great consolation to me.”
“Hasten, Sir Thomas,” said Kingston. “I hear a noise in the yard; they
are searching for me.”
“Yes, yes,” replied Sir Thomas.
“My friend, they hurry me. Do you remember all you said to
me at Chelsea the night you urged me not to accept the
chancellorship? O my friend! how often I have thought of it.
And you――you also will be a victim, I fear. They hurry me,
and I have so many things to say to you since the time I saw
you last! I fear you suffer from cold in your cell. Ask
Kingston for covering; for my sake he will give it you.
Implore him to bring me your reply. A letter from you――what
happiness in my abandoned condition; for they will not
permit Margaret to visit me. I am in solitary confinement.
They will probably let me die slowly of misery, immured
within these four walls. They fear the publicity of a trial;
and men so quickly forget those who disappear from before
their eyes. God, however, will not forget us, and we are
ever in his keeping; for he says in holy Scripture: ‘I carry
you written in my hand, and a mother shall forget her child
before I forget the soul that seeks me in sincerity of
heart.’ Farewell, dear friend; let us pray for each other. I
love and cherish you in our Lord Jesus Christ, our precious
Saviour and our only Redeemer.
“THOMAS MORE.”
Meanwhile, Rumor, on her airy wing, in her indefatigable and rapid
course, had very soon circulated throughout the country reports of
Henry’s enormities. The great multitudes of people who prostrated
themselves before the cross, carried it with reverence in their hands,
and elevated it proudly above their heads, were astonished and
indignant at these recitals of crime. Princes trembled on their
thrones, and those who surrounded them lived in constant dread.
Thomas More, the model among men, the Bishop of Rochester, that among
the angels――these men cast into a gloomy prison, separated from all
that was most dear to them, scarcely clothed, and fed on the coarse
fare of criminals――such outrages men discussed among themselves, and
reported to the compassionate and generous hearts of their mothers and
sisters.
Will, then, no voice be raised in their defence? Will no one endeavor
to snatch them from the tortures to which they are about to be
delivered up? Are the English people dead and their intellects
stultified? Do relatives, friends, law, and honor no longer exist
among this people? Have they become but a race of bloodthirsty
executioners, a crowd of brutal slaves, who live on the grain the
earth produces, and drink from the rivers that water it? Such were the
thoughts which occupied them, circulating from mouth to mouth among
the tumultuous children of men.
But if this mass of human beings, always so indifferent and so
perfectly selfish, felt thus deeply moved, what must have been the
anguish of heart experienced by the faithful and sincere friend, what
terror must have seized him, when, seated by his own quiet fireside,
enjoying the retreat it afforded him, the voice of public indignation
came to announce that he was thus stricken in all his affections! For
he also, a native of a distant country, loved More. He had met him,
and immediately his heart went out toward him. Who will explain this
sublime mystery, this secret of God, this admirable and singular
sympathy, which reveals one soul to another, and requires neither
words nor sounds, neither language nor gestures, in order to make it
intelligible? “I had no sooner seen Pierre Gilles,” said More, “than I
loved him as devotedly as though I had always known and loved him.
Then I was at Antwerp, sent by the king to negotiate with the prince
of Spain; I waited from day to day the end of the negotiations, and
during the four months I was separated from my wife and children,
anxious as I was to return and embrace them, I could never be
reconciled to the thought of leaving him. His conversation, fluent and
interesting, beguiled most agreeably my hours of leisure; hours and
days spent near him seemed to me like moments, they passed so rapidly.
In the flower of his age, he already possessed a vast deal of
erudition; his soul above all――his soul so beautiful, superior to his
genius――inspired me with a devotion for him as deep as it was
inviolable. Candor, simplicity, gentleness, and a natural inclination
to be accommodating, a modesty seldom found, integrity above
temptation――all virtues in fact, that combine to form the worthy
citizen――were found united in him, and it would have been impossible
for me to have found in all the world a being more worthy of inspiring
friendship, or more capable of feeling and appreciating all its
charms.”
In this manner he spoke before his children, and related to Margaret
how painful he found the separation from his friend. Often during the
long winter nights, when the wind whistled without and heavy
snow-flakes filled the air, he would press his hand upon his forehead,
and his thoughts would speed across the sea. In imagination he would
be transported to Antwerp, would behold her immense harbor covered
with richly-laden vessels, her tall roofs and her long streets, and
the beautiful church of Notre Dame, with the court in front, where he
so often walked with his friend. Then he entered the mansion of Pierre
Gilles; he traversed the court, mounted the steps; he found him at
home in the midst of his family; it seemed to him that he heard him
speak, and he prepared to give himself up to the charms of his
conversation.
The cry of a child, the movement of a chair, came suddenly to blot out
this picture, dispel this sweet illusion, and recall him to the
reality of the distance which separated them. An expression of pain
and sorrow would pass over his features; and Margaret, from whom none
of her father’s thoughts escaped, would take his hand and say:
“Father, you are thinking about Pierre Gilles!”
A close correspondence had for a long time sweetened their mutual
exile; but since the divorce was set in motion the king had become so
suspicious that he had all letters intercepted, and one no longer
dared to write or communicate with any stranger. Thus they found
themselves deprived of this consolation.
Eager to obtain the slightest intelligence, questioning
indiscriminately all whom he met――merchants, strangers,
travellers――Pierre Gilles endeavored by all possible means to obtain
some intelligence of his friend Thomas More. Whenever a sail appeared
upon the horizon and a ship entered the port, this illustrious citizen
was seen immediately hastening to the pier, and patiently remaining
there until he had ascertained whether or not the vessel hailed from
England; or else he waited, mingling with a crowd of the most degraded
class, until the vessel landed. Alas! for several months all that he
could learn only increased his apprehensions, and he vainly endeavored
to quiet them. He had already announced to his family his intention of
making the voyage to England to see his friend, when the fatal
intelligence of More’s imprisonment was received.
Then he no longer listened to anything, but, taking all the gold his
coffers contained, he hastened to the port and took passage on the
first vessel he found.
“O my friend!” he cried, “if I shall only be able to tear you from
their hands. This gold, perhaps, will open your prison. Let them give
you to me, let my home become yours, and let my friends be your
friends. Forget your ungrateful country; mine will receive you with
rapturous joy.”
Such were his reflections, and for two days the vessel that bore him
sailed rapidly toward England; the wind was favorable, and a light
breeze seemed to make her fly over the surface of the waves. The sails
were unfurled, and the sailors were singing, delighted at the prospect
of a happy voyage, while Pierre Gilles, seated on the deck, his back
leaning against the mast, kept his eyes fixed on the north,
incessantly deceived by the illusion of the changing horizon and the
fantastic form of the blue clouds, which seemed to plunge into the
sea. He was continually calling out: “Captain, here is land!” But the
old pilot smiled as he guided the helm, and leaning over, like a man
accustomed to know what he said, slightly shrugged one shoulder and
replied: “Not yet, Sir Passenger.”
And soon, in fact, Pierre Gilles would see change their form or
disappear those fantastic rocks and sharp points which represented an
unattainable shore. Then it seemed to him that he would never arrive,
the island retreated constantly before him, and his feet would never
be permitted to rest upon the shores of England.
“Alas!” he would every moment say to himself, “they are trying him
now, perhaps. If I were there, I would run, I would beg, I would
implore his pardon. And his youthful daughter, whom they say is so
fair, so good――into what an agony she must be plunged! All this family
and those young children to be deprived of such a father!”
Pierre was unable to control himself for a moment; he arose, walked
forward on the vessel; he saw the foaming track formed by her rapid
passage through the water wiped out in an instant, effaced by the
winds, and yet it seemed to him that the vessel thus cutting the waves
remained motionless, and that he was not advancing a furlong. “An
hour’s delay,” he mentally repeated, “and perhaps it will be too late.
Let them banish him; I shall at least be able to find him!”
Already the night wind was blowing a gale and the sea grew turbulent;
a flock of birds flew around the masts, uttering the most mournful
cries, and seeming, as they braved the whirlwind which had arisen, to
be terrified.
“Comrades, furl the sails!” cried the steersman; “a waterspout
threatens us! Be quick,” he cried, “or we are lost.”
In the twinkling of an eye the sailors seized the ropes and climbed
into the rigging. Vain haste, useless dexterity; their efforts were
all too late.
A furious gust of wind groaned, roared, rent the mainmast in twain,
tore away the ropes, bent and broke the masts; a horrible crash was
heard throughout the ship.
“Cut away! Pull! Haul down! Hold there! Hoist away! Let go!” cried the
captain, who had rushed up from his cabin. “Bravo! Courage, there!
Stand firm!”
“Ay, ay!” cried the sailors. A loud clamor arose in the midst of the
horrible roaring of the winds. The sailor on watch had fallen into the
sea.
“Throw out the buoy! throw out the buoy!” cried the captain. “Knaves,
do you hear me?”
Impossible; the rope fluttered in the wind like a string, and the
tempest drove it against the sides of the vessel. They saw the
unfortunate sailor tossing in the sea, carried along like a black
point on the waves, which in a moment disappeared.
“All is over! He is lost!” cried the sailors. But the howling winds
stifled and drowned their lamentations.
In the meantime Pierre Gilles bound himself tightly as he could to a
mast; for the shaking of the vessel was so great that it seemed to him
an irresistible power was trying to tear him away and cast him
whirling into the yawning depths of the furious element.
“The mizzen-mast is breaking!” cried the sailors; and by a common
impulse they rushed toward the stern to avoid being dragged down and
crushed by its fall.
The gigantic beam fell with a fearful crash, catching in the ropes and
rigging.
“Cut away! Let her go!” cried the captain.
He himself was the first to rush forward, armed with a hatchet, and
they tried to cut aloose the mast and let it fall into the water.
But they were unable to succeed; the mast hung over the side of the
ship, which it struck with every wave, and threatened to capsize her.
Every moment the position of the crew became more dangerous. The
shocks were so violent that the men were no longer able to resist
them; they clung to everything they could lay hold of; they twined
their legs and arms in the hanging ropes. All efforts to control the
vessel had become useless, and, seeing no longer any hope of being
saved, the sailors began to utter cries of despair.
Pierre Gilles had fastened himself to the mainmast. “If this also
breaks,” he thought, “well, I shall die by the same stroke――die
without seeing him!” he cried, still entirely occupied with More. “He
will not know that I have tried to reach him, and will, perhaps,
believe that I have deserted him in the day of adversity. Oh! how
death is embittered by that thought. He will say that, happy in the
bosom of my family, I have left him alone in his prison, and he will
strive to forget even the recollection of my friendship. O More, More!
my friend, this tempest ought to carry to you my regrets.”
Looking around him, Pierre saw the miserable men tossing their arms in
despair; for the night was advancing, their strength nearly exhausted,
while the vessel, borne along on the crest of the waves, suddenly
pitched with a frightful plunge, and the water rushed in on every
side.
The captain had stationed himself near Pierre Gilles; he contemplated
the destruction of his ship with a mournful gaze.
“Here is this fine vessel lost――all my fortune, the labor of an entire
life of toil and care. My children now will be reduced to beggary!
Here is the fruit of thirty years of work,” he cried. “Sir,” he said
to Pierre Gilles, “I began life at twelve years; I have passed
successively up from cabin-boy, mariner, boatswain, lieutenant,
captain finally, and now――the sea. I shall have to begin anew!”
“Begin anew, sir?” said Pierre Gilles. “But is not death awaiting us
very speedily?”
“That remains to be seen,” answered the captain, folding his arms. “I
have been three times shipwrecked, and I am here still, sir. It is
true there is an end to everything; but the ocean and myself
understand each other. We shall come out of it, if we gain time. After
the storm, a calm; after the tempest, fine weather.” Here he
attentively scanned the heavens. “A few more swells of the sea, and,
if we escape, courage! All will be well.”
“Hold fast, my boys!” he cried; “another sea is coming.”
He had scarcely uttered the words when a frightful wave advanced like
a threatening mountain, and, raising the vessel violently, swept
entirely over her; but the ship still remained afloat. Other waves
succeeded, and the unfortunate sailors remained tossing about in that
condition until the next morning. However, as the day dawned, hope
revived in their hearts; the horizon seemed brightening; the wind
allayed by degrees. Pierre Gilles and his companions shook their
limbs, stiffened and benumbed by the cold and the water which had
drenched them, and thought they could at last perceive the land. They
succeeded in relieving the vessel a little by throwing the mast into
the sea. Every one took courage, and soon the coast appeared in sight.
There was no more doubt: it was the coast of England. There were the
pointed rocks, the whitened reefs. They were in their route; the
tempest had not diverted the ship from its course. On the fourth day
they entered the mouth of the Thames.
The poor vessel, five days before so elegant, so swift, so light, was
dragged with difficulty into that large and beautiful river. Badly
crippled, she moved slowly, and was an entire day in reaching London.
Pierre Gilles suffered cruelly on account of this delay, and would
have made them put him ashore, but that was impossible. Besides, he
wished to arrive more speedily at London, and that would not hasten
his journey. From a distance he perceived the English standard
floating above the Tower, and his heart swelled with sorrow. “Alas!
More is there,” he cried. “How shall I contrive to see him? how tear
him from that den?” Absorbed in these reflections, he reached at
length the landing-place. He knew not where to go nor whom to address
in that great city, where he had never before been, and where he was
entirely unacquainted. He looked at the faces of those who came and
went on the wharf, without feeling inclined to accost any of them.
Suddenly, however, he caught the terrible words, “His trial has
commenced”; and, uncertain whether it was the effect of his troubled
imagination or a real sound, he turned around and saw a group of women
carrying fish in wicker baskets, and talking together.
“At Lambeth Palace, I tell you. He is there; I have seen him.”
“Who?” said Pierre in good English, advancing in his Flemish costume,
which excited the curiosity and attention of all the women.
“Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor,” answered the first speaker.
“Thomas More!” cried Pierre Gilles, with a gesture of despair and
terror which nothing could express. “Who is trying him? Speak, good
woman, speak! Say who is trying him? Where are they trying him?
Conduct me to the place, and all my fortune is yours!”
The women looked at each other. “A foreigner!” they exclaimed.
“Yes,” he replied, “a stranger, but a friend, a friend. Leave your
fish――I will pay you for them――and show me where the trial of Sir
Thomas is going on.”
The fisherwoman, having observed the gold chain he wore around his
neck, his velvet robe, and his ruff of Ypres lace, judged that he was
some important personage, who would reward her liberally for her
trouble; she resolved to accompany him. She walked on before him, and
the other women took up their baskets, and followed at some distance
in the rear.
Meanwhile, Pierre Gilles and his conductress, having followed the quay
and walked the length of the Thames, crossed Westminster Bridge, and
he found himself at last in front of Lambeth Palace.
A considerable crowd of people, artisans, workmen, merchants, idlers,
began to scatter and disperse. Some stopped to talk, others left; they
saw that something had come to an end, that the spectacle was closed,
the excited curiosity was satisfied. The juggler’s carpet was gathered
up, the lottery drawn, the quarrel ended, the prince or the criminal
had passed; there was nothing more to see, and every one was anxious
to depart――careless crowd, restless and ignorant, which the barking of
a dog will arrest, and a great misfortune cannot detain!
“Here it is, sir,” said the woman, stopping; “this is Lambeth Palace
just in front of you, but I don’t believe you can get in.” And she
pointed to a large enclosure and a great door, before which was
walking up and down a yeoman armed with an arquebuse.
Standing close to one of the sections of the door was seen a beautiful
young girl, dressed in black, and wearing on her head a low velvet hat
worn by the women of that period. A gold chain formed of round beads,
from which was suspended a little gold medal ornamented with a pearl
pendant, hung around her neck, and passed under her chemisette of
plaited muslin bordered with narrow lace. She stood with her hands
clasped, her beautiful countenance pale as death, and her arms
stretched at full length before her, expressive of the deepest sorrow.
Near her was seated a handsome young man, who from time to time
addressed her.
Pierre Gilles approached these two persons.
“Margaret,” said Roper, “come.”
“No,” said the young girl, “I will not go; I shall remain here until
night. I will see him as he goes out; I will see him once more; I will
see that ignoble woollen covering they have given him for a cloak; I
will see his pale and weary face. He will say: ‘Margaret is standing
there!’ He will see me.”
“That will only give him pain,” replied Roper.
“Perhaps,” said the young girl. “Indeed, it is very probable!” And a
bitter smile played around her lips.
“If you love him,” replied Roper, “you should spare him this grief.”
“I love him, Roper; you have said well! I love him! What would you
wish? This is my father!”
Pierre Gilles, who had advanced, seeking some means of entering,
paused to look at the young girl, and was struck by the resemblance he
found between her features and those of her father, his friend, who
was still young when he knew him at Antwerp.
“Can this be Margaret?” murmured the stranger.
“Who has pronounced my name?” asked the young girl, turning haughtily
around.
Pierre Gilles stood in perfect amazement. “How much she resembles him!
Pardon me, damsel,” he said; “I have been trying to get into this
place to see my friend, Sir Thomas More.”
“Your friend!” replied Margaret, advancing immediately toward him.
Then a feeling of suspicion arrested her. She stepped back and fixed
her eyes on the stranger, whose Flemish costume attracted her
attention. “And who,” she said, “can you be? Oh! no; he is not here.
Sir Thomas More has no friends. You are mistaken, sir,” she continued;
“it is some one else you seek. My father――no, my father has no longer
any friends; has _any one_ when he is in irons, when the scaffold is
erected, the axe sharpened, and the executioner getting ready to do
his work?”
“What do you say?” cried the stranger, turning pale. “Is he, then,
already condemned?”
“He is going to be!”
“No, no, he shall not be! Pierre Gilles will demand, will beseech;
they will give him to him; he will pay for him with his gold, with his
life-blood, if necessary.”
“Pierre Gilles!” cried Margaret; and she threw herself on the neck of
the stranger, and clasped him in her arms.
“Pierre Gilles! Pierre Gilles! it is you who love my father. Ah!
listen to me. He is up there; this is the second time they have made
him appear before them. Alas! doubtless to-day will be the last; for
they are tired――tired of falsehoods, artifices, and base, vile
manœuvres; they are tired of offering him gold and silver――he who
wants only heaven and God; they are weary of urging, of tormenting
this saintly bishop and this upright man, in order to extort from them
an oath which no Christian can or ought to take. Then it will be
necessary for these iniquitous and purchased judges to wash out their
shame in blood. They must crush these witnesses to the truth, these
defenders of the faith! My father, child of the martyrs, will walk in
their footsteps, and die as they died; Rochester, successor of the
apostles, will give his life like them; but Margaret, poor Margaret,
she will be left! And it is I, yes, it is I, who am his daughter, and
who is named Margaret!” As she said these words, she clasped her hands
with an expression of anguish that nothing can describe.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[88] These words, which we find in the mouth of this
hypocrite, the impious Cromwell, have been the watchword
from all time of those who wished to attack the monks and
destroy them. Well-informed and educated persons know, by
the great number of works coming from their pens, whether
they were idlers, and the poor in all ages will be able to
say whether they have ever been selfish or uncharitable.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SERMONS ON THE SACRAMENTS. By Thomas Watson, Master of St. John’s
College, Cambridge, Dean of Durham, and the last Catholic Bishop
of Lincoln. First printed in 1558, and now reprinted in modern
spelling. With a Preface and Biographical Notice of the Author by
the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy
Redeemer. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
After Father Bridgett’s beautiful work, _Our Lady’s Dowry_, we may be
sure that whatever he puts forth, whether original or edited, will
repay perusal. He has a _penchant_ for forgotten treasures of
England’s Catholic past, and spares himself no pains to give us the
benefit of his researches. Not content with editing the present
volume, he has gone to the trouble of a biographical notice, and quite
a long one, of his author. We cannot do better than let him speak for
himself in the opening lines of his preface:
“Here is a volume of sermons, printed more than three centuries ago in
black-letter type and uncouth spelling, and the existence of which is
only known to a few antiquarians. Why, it will be asked, have I
reprinted it in modern guise and sought to rescue it from oblivion? I
have done so for its own sake and for the sake of its author. It is a
book that deserves not to perish, and which would not have been
forgotten, as it is, but for the misfortune of the time at which it
appeared. It was printed in the last year of Queen Mary, and the
change of religion under Elizabeth made it almost impossible to be
procured, and perilous to be preserved. The number of English Catholic
books is not so great that we can afford to lose one so excellent as
this.
“But even had it less intrinsic value, it is the memorial of a great
man, little known, indeed, because, through the iniquity of the times,
he lacked a biographer. I am confident that any one who will read the
following memoir, imperfect as it is, will acknowledge that I have not
been indulging an antiquarian fancy, but merely paying, as far as I
could, a debt of justice long due, in trying to revive the memory of
the last Catholic bishop of Lincoln.”
Father Bridgett further explains that these sermons belong to the
class which “are written that they may be preached by others.” Their
author undertook to write them as a “Manual of Catholic Doctrine on
the Sacraments,” and in compliance with the order of a council under
Cardinal Pole in December, 1555.
“Being intended for general preaching――or rather, public
reading――these sermons are, of course, impassioned and colorless. We
cannot judge from them of Bishop Watson’s own style of preaching. We
cannot gather from them, as from the sermons of Latimer and Leaver,
pictures of the manners and passions of the times. They scarcely ever
reflect Watson’s personal character, except by the very absence of
invective and the simple dignity which distinguishes them. As
specimens of old English before the great Elizabethan era, they will
be interesting to students of our language, especially as being the
work of one of the best classical scholars of the day” (Preface, p.
xii.).
Father Bridgett characterizes these sermons as “eminently patristic.”
“I have counted,” he says, “more than four hundred marginal references
to the fathers and ecclesiastical writers; and I may say that they are
in great measure woven out of the Scriptures and the fathers.” Then,
after remarking that, “with regard to their doctrine, it must be
remembered that they were published before the conclusion of the
Council of Trent,” he tells us: “I have added a few short theological
notes only; for the doctrine throughout these sermons is both clearly
stated and perfectly Catholic. As they certainly embody the
traditional teaching of the English Church before the Council of
Trent, they are an additional proof that Catholics of the present day
are faithful to the inheritance of their forefathers.”
From what we have had time to read of these pages, we have been struck
with at once the fulness and simplicity of the instructions they
contain. The style, too, in our eyes, has both unction and charm. We
thank Father Bridgett that he has “exactly reproduced the original,
with the exception of the spelling.” “No educated reader,” he says,
“will find much difficulty in the old idiom. The sentences, indeed,
are rather long, like those of a legal document; yet they are simple
in construction, and, when read aloud, they can be broken up by a
skilful reader without the addition of a word.” We will only add that,
perhaps, not the least attractive feature of these sermons (to the
modern reader) is their brevity.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By
Dr. H. von Holst, Professor at the University of Freiburg.
Translated from the German by John J. Lalor and Alfred B. Mason.
1750-1833. State Sovereignty and Slavery. Chicago: Callaghan & Co.
1876.
The efforts of Europeans to study and write upon the American
Constitution and the political life of our people, though partial and
somewhat prejudiced, have always been interesting and instructive. De
Tocqueville, in his _Democracy in America_, studied rather to teach us
than to learn from our theory of government and its practice, and this
from his transient observations as a tourist. Professor von Holst
resided in this country from 1867 to 1872, and thus may be supposed to
have studied more profoundly our system, and to have seen more
thoroughly our practice. No one, however, could rightly judge of our
political history or the system of our government who had not seen and
known us both before and after our civil war. De Tocqueville saw us
before, and Von Holst after, that great crisis in our history. Hence
we think that both authors should be read, in order to appreciate the
efforts of learned and distinguished foreigners to comment upon a
theme so difficult to any European. This is especially desirable now,
as in this case the Frenchman and the German are not admirers of each
other’s respective political systems. The present volume, however, is
able, spirited, and well written, and shows a remarkable acquaintance
with our history and institutions, and with the lives and characters
of our public men. The author is not in love with our government, and
yet is not without sympathy for it and for our people. He is, no
doubt, more in sympathy with our present than with our past. From his
vigorously-written pages Americans may learn something of their
virtues and of their faults. The _animus_ and style of the work might
be inferred from the title of the second chapter: “The Worship of the
Constitution, and its real Character.” We have often been accused of
making the Constitution our political _bible_, and Washington our
political patron saint. Such seems to be the impression of Professor
von Holst. But it must be said that his able and interesting work is
well calculated to promote the study of the American republican form
of government; for we are certainly a _terra incognita_ to most
Europeans. Having ably studied his subject, he has ably and learnedly
communicated his researches to his countrymen and to the world. His
work will appear in a series of volumes, of which we have now only the
first, and the English translation will hereafter appear in this
country simultaneously with the original German publications. The work
seems to deal exclusively with political questions, and handles them
ably. We commend its perusal to our readers.
ALICE LEIGHTON. A Tale of the Seventeenth Century. London: Burns &
Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This story of the wars between Roundhead and Cavalier will prove an
agreeable disappointment to the reader who contrives to wade through
its first few pages, which are rather silly. We tremble for the fate
of a story which in the very first page tells us of its youthful hero:
“His brow was, however, clouded, either with emotion or with sorrow,
_perchance with both_; and a _careful_ observer _might_ have marked a
tear in his soft dark eyes as he turned his gaze upon the fair view
before him.” In the second page the hero tells us, or rather nobody in
particular, that eighteen summers have at last passed over him,
whereupon he proceeds to deliver a page of an address to his “own dear
home,” in the course of which he remarks that “the _accents_ of a
dethroned monarch are _calling_ for assistance,” but “the
long-listened-to maxims” of his childhood hold him back from joining
the king. In the third page he encounters a mild sort of witch, who is
gifted with that very uncertain second sight that has been the
peculiar property of witches from time immemorial, and who prophesies
to him, in Scotch dialect, in the usual fashion of such prophets.
Nothing could be more inauspicious than such a beginning; and yet as
one reads on all this clap-trap disappears, and a very interesting
story, though by no means of the highest order, unfolds itself. There
is abundance of incident, battle, hair-breadth escape, varying
fortunes, misery, ending with the final happiness of those in whom we
are chiefly interested. Some of the characters are very well drawn,
and the author shows a competent knowledge of the scenes, events, and
period in which the story is laid. It affords a healthy and agreeable
contrast to the psychological puzzles generally given us nowadays as
novels. It looks to us as though the writer were a new hand. If so,
_Alice Leighton_ affords every promise of very much better work in a
too weak department of letters――Catholic fiction. If the writer will
only banish for ever that antiquated _deus_ or _dea ex machinâ_, the
witch, especially if she speak with a Scotch accent, give much more
care than is shown in the present volume to English, not _force_ fun
for fun’s sake, we shall hope soon to welcome a new volume from a
lively, pleasant, and powerful pen.
“MY OWN CHILD.” A Novel. By Florence Marryat. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. 1876.
Florence Marryat has become, and deservedly, quite a popular novelist.
She has, we understand, become something in our opinion very much
better――a Catholic. We see no reason why her faith should interfere
with the interest or power of her stories. On the contrary, it should
steady her hand, widen her vision, chasten her thought, give a new
meaning to very old scenes and types of character; and we have no
doubt at all that such will be the case. _My Own Child_ is neither her
best story nor her worst. It is a very sweet and pathetic one, simple
in construction and plot, yet full of sad interest throughout,
lightened here and there by bits of lively description or pictures of
quaint character. It is easy to recognize a practised hand in it. The
chief characters of the story are Catholics. We have only one fault to
find, but that a very serious one. It is too bad to make a young lady,
and so charming a young lady as May Power is represented to be, talk
slang. Where in the world did she learn it, this bright, beaming,
Irish, Catholic girl? Certainly not from her mother, for she never
indulges in it, and surely not from the good Sisters in Brussels by
whom she was educated. Yet she bounds out of the convent perfect
in――slang! For instance: “‘I’ll get some nice, jolly fellow to look
after it [her property] for us, mother.’ ‘You’ll never get another
Hugh!’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘Well, then, we’ll take the next best
fellow we can find,’ replied my darling.” The first “best fellow,” the
Hugh alluded to, happened to be the “darling’s” dead father. The same
darling, only just out of convent, is anxious to make her first
appearance “with a splash and a dash.” It is only natural that she
should discover her mother looking “rather peaky” when that lady is
threatened with an illness that endangers her life.
This is to be regretted. Young ladies are much more acceptable as
young _ladies_ than when indulging in language supposed to be
relegated to “fast” young women. Slang is bad enough in men’s mouths,
whether in or out of books; but, spoken by a woman, it at once places
her without the pale of all that is sweet and pure and calculated to
inspire that admiration and reverence in men which are the crown and
pride of a Christian woman’s life. Miss Marryat is clever enough to
dispense with such poor material. Meanwhile, what becomes of this
slangy young lady the reader will discover for himself.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 141.――DECEMBER, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
THE UNITARIAN CONFERENCE AT SARATOGA.[89]
The Unitarians in September last held at Saratoga their biennial
conference, and we have looked over the issues of the _Liberal
Christian_, a weekly publication of this city, for a full report of
its proceedings, and looked to no purpose. It has, however, printed in
its columns some of the speeches delivered in the conference, and
given _in extenso_ the opening sermon of the Rev. Edward E. Hale.
Before the conference took place the _Liberal Christian_ spoke of Rev.
Edward E. Hale “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and
widely-experienced men in their ranks.” This notice prepared us to
give special attention to the opening sermon, and to expect from it a
statement of Unitarian principles or beliefs which would at least
command the assent of a considerable portion of the Unitarian
denomination. More than this it would have been unreasonable to
anticipate; for so radical and extreme are their divergencies of
belief that it may be said Unitarians agree on no one common objective
truth; certainly not, if Mr. Frothingham and the section which the
latter gentleman represents are to be ranked within the pale of
Unitarianism.
The Rev. Edward E. Hale has not altogether disappointed our
anticipations, for he has given expression to some of the ideas most
prevalent among Unitarians; but before entering upon the consideration
of these there are certain preliminary statements which he makes
deserving some attention.
In the closing sentence of the first paragraph of his sermon Mr. Hale
gives us a noticeable piece of information. He says:
“We were taught long since by Macaulay, in fervent rhetoric,
that the republic of Venice is new in comparison with the
papacy, and that the Roman Church was in its vigor when
Augustine landed in Kent in the sixth century. So it was.
But earlier than all this, before there was a bishop in
Rome, there were independent Christian churches, liberal in
their habit and Unitarian in their creed, in Greece, in
Asia, and in Cyprus. Nay, before those churches existed there had
gathered a group of peasants around the Saviour of men, and he
had said to them: ‘Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s
good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ The Congregational Church
order, with the Unitarian theology, is the _oldest_ Christian
system known to history.”
What authentic history goes back of the account given in the New
Testament of the founding of the Catholic Church and her hierarchy by
Christ the Rev. Mr. Hale does not deign to inform us. When he does, it
will be time enough to pay attention to the assertion, “The
Congregational Church order is the oldest Christian system known to
history.” The church is in possession; the plaintiffs must make out
their case. Until then, “_quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur_”; for
an assertion without proof counts for nothing.
But he does attempt to prove his assertion about “Unitarian theology”
by what follows:
“I make no peculiar partisan claim or boast in this
statement. As to the statement of theology, I do but
condense in a few words the statement made by the Roman
Catholic writer in highest esteem among Englishmen to-day.
He says what I say, that he may argue from it that you
require the development of doctrine which only the perpetual
inspiration of a line of pontiffs gives you, unless you
choose to hold by the simple Unitarian creeds of the fathers
before Constantine.”
From which of the many volumes of the writings of Dr. Newman Mr. Hale
has ventured to condense his language we are not told; but we are led
to suppose that it was written by Dr. Newman since he became a
Catholic, for he speaks of him as “the Roman Catholic writer in the
highest esteem among Englishmen to-day.” As a Catholic, Dr. Newman
never used language which could be condensed by a “thoroughly-informed”
man to what Rev. Mr. Hale has made him say; and we have our doubts
whether before he was a Catholic he used it. It would not be amiss if
Mr. Hale had something of Dr. Newman’s clearness of thought and
accuracy of expression. If he had, of this we are sure: he would never
venture to utter in a public speech or put in print that any Catholic
writer who has any claim of being a theologian believed or maintained
“the perpetual _inspiration_ of a line of pontiffs.”
In the next paragraph Rev. Mr. Hale literally quotes a passage from
Dr. Newman’s writings to sustain his thesis, but he fails. Here is the
quotation:
“The creeds of that early day,” says Dr. Newman, “make no
mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity at all. They make mention, indeed, of a three, but
that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the three
are one, that they are co-equal, co-eternal, all increate,
all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and
never could be gathered from them.”
He fails, because he proceeds on the supposition that the Catholic
Church teaches that her creeds contain the whole body of truth of the
Christian faith. The Catholic Church at no time or nowhere taught
this. Her creeds never did contain explicitly the whole body of the
Christian faith, they do not even now; for such was not her intention
or purpose. Had it not been for the errors of Arius and his followers,
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity might not have been contained in
the creeds of the church explicitly, even down to our own day. The
supposition, however, that the mystery of the Trinity was not believed
in the church “before Constantine” is as absurd as to suppose that the
necessity of good works for salvation, or there being a purgatory, was
not believed and maintained in the Catholic Church before the time of
Charles V., or that Papal Infallibility was not believed and held in
the church before the time of William of Prussia, the German _kaiser_!
The discussions and definitions of the councils render Christian
truths more explicit and intelligible than they were before; this is a
matter of course, but who is so ignorant as to suppose that the
councils originated these truths?
That the creeds “before Constantine” implied the Trinity and intended
it Dr. Newman would have taught the Rev. Edward E. Hale, if he had
ingenuously quoted the two sentences which follow his extract. Dr.
Newman continues thus: “Of course we believe that they [the early
creeds] imply it [the Trinity]. God forbid we should do
otherwise!”[90] Rev. Edward E. Hale ought to know that the Catholic
Church repudiates with instinctive horror the idea of adding to, or
taking away from, or altering in the least, the body of the Christian
truth delivered once and for all to her keeping by her divine Founder
when upon earth. The mistakes he makes on these points arise from his
viewing the church solely as an assembly, overlooking that she is also
a corporated body, informed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the
constitution given to her by Christ includes the commission to “teach
all things whatsoever he commanded.”
Following what has gone before, the Rev. Mr. Hale makes another
surprising statement. He says:
“It was not to be expected――nor, in fact, did anybody
expect――that a religion so simple and so radical should
sweep the world without contaminating its own simplicity and
blunting the edge of its own radicalism in the first and
second contact, nay, in the contact of centuries. Least of
all did Jesus Christ himself expect this. Nobody so definite
as he in the statement of the obscurities and defilements
which would surround his simple doctrine of ‘Love God and
love men.’”
In all deference to Mr. Hale, this is precisely what everybody did
expect from the church of Christ――to teach the truth with purity and
unswerving fidelity, “without contamination in the contact,” for all
“centuries.” For this is what the promises of Christ led them
precisely to expect when he founded his church. He promised that “_the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it_.”[91] He promised also
that he would be with his church through all ages: “Behold, I am with
you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”[92] Does Mr.
Hale read the Holy Scriptures and believe what he reads? Listen,
again, to St. Paul’s description of the church. After saying that
“Christ is the head of the church,” and “the church is subject to
Christ,” he adds: “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself
up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of
water in the word of life; that he might present it to himself a
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing.”[93]
Now, although the Rev. E. E. Hale has thrown overboard the belief in
the divinity of Christ and the supernatural inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures, nevertheless the words of Christ and his apostle, measured
only by the standard of personal holiness and learning, ought to be
esteemed, when speaking of God’s church, of equal authority, at least,
to his statement, even though he ranks “as one of the few
thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men” among Unitarians.
But how did the church of Christ become “contaminated”? This is an
important point, and here is the Rev. E. E. Hale’s reply to it:
“And, in truth, so soon as the church met with the world, it
borrowed while it lent, it took while it gave. So, in the
face of learned Egypt, it Egyptianized its simple Trinity;
in the face of powerful Rome it heathenized its nascent
ritual; in the face of wordy Greece it Hellenized its
dogmatics and theology; and by way of holding well with
Israel it took up a rabbin’s reverence even for the jots and
tittles of its Bible. What history calls ‘Christianity,’
therefore, is a man-adorned system, of which the methods can
be traced to convenience, or even to heathen wisdom, if we
except that one majestic method by which every true disciple
is himself ordained a king and a priest, and receives the
charge that in his daily life he shall proclaim glad tidings
to every creature.”
The common error of the class of men to whom the Rev. E. E. Hale
belongs, who see the church, if at all, only on the outside, is to
“put the cart before the horse.” It is not the Egyptians, the Greeks,
the Romans, who teach the church of Christ, but the church of Christ
which teaches the truth to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
Christ came to teach all nations, not to be taught by them. Hence, in
communicating his mission to his church, he said: “All power is given
to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all
nations.”[94] The church, in fulfilling this divine commission of
teaching all nations, utilizes their gifts in bringing out the great
truths committed to her care by her divine Founder. It is in this
cooperation with the work of the church that the different nations and
races of men find the inspiration of their genius, the noblest
employment of their highest faculties, and the realization of their
providential mission upon earth. For the scattered rays of religious
truth which were held by the different nations and races of men under
paganism were derived from primitive revelation, and it is only when
these are brought within the focus of the light of universal truth
that their complete significance is appreciated, and they are seen in
all their original splendor. The Catholic Church, in this aspect, is
the reintegration of natural religion with the truths contained in
primitive revelation and their perfect fulfilment. Moreover, there is
no truth contained in any of the ancient religions before the coming
of Christ, or affirmed by any of the heresies since that event, or
that may be hereafter affirmed, which is not contained, in all its
integrity, in Catholicity. This is only saying, in other words, The
Catholic Church is catholic.
But these men do not see the church, and they appear to regard
Christianity as still an unorganized mass, and they are possessed with
the idea that the task is imposed upon them to organize the Christian
Church; and this work occupied and perplexed them not a little in
their Unitarian biennial conference held in the town of Saratoga, in
the United States of North America, in the month of September, in the
year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-six!
“Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrest
To find the path which Christ has blest,
Tracked by his saintly throng;
Each claims to trust his own weak will――
Blind idol!――so ye languish still,
All wranglers, and all wrong.”[95]
Were the veil taken from their spiritual eyes, and did they behold the
church as she is, they would easily comprehend that her unbroken
existence for nineteen centuries alone, saying nothing of what glory
is in store for her in the future, is a more evident and conclusive
proof to us of the divinity of her Founder than the miracle of his
raising Lazarus from the dead was to those who were actual witnesses
to it. For, in raising Lazarus from the dead, he had but to deal with
passive matter, and that for only an instant; whereas in founding his
church he had to exert his power and counteract all the attacks of the
gates of hell, combined with the persecutions of the world and the
perversities of men, during successive centuries until the end of all
time. None but the living God could be the author of so potent,
comprehensive, and indestructible a body as the Catholic Church. Of
all the unanswerable testimonies of the divinity of Christ, there is
none so forcible as that of the perpetual existence of the one, holy,
Roman Catholic Church. She is the standing miracle of Christ.
The reverse sense of the statement of the Rev. Edward E. Hale on this
point contains the truth. The Catholic Church welcomes all nations and
races to her fold, and reintegrates the scattered truths contained in
every religious system, not by way of reunion or composition, but by
simplicity and unity in a divine synthesis; and as the ancient
Egyptians, and the Greeks, and the Romans, so also the modern Franks
and Celts, have served by their characteristic gifts to the
development and progress of Christian truth. In like manner the
Saxons, with their peculiar genius and instincts, will serve, to their
own greater glory, in due season, in the same great cause, perhaps, by
giving a greater development and a more scientific expression to the
mystic life of the church, and by completing, viewed from intrinsic
grounds, the demonstration of the truth of her divine mission.
Leaving aside other misstatements and errors contained in the first
part of this sermon from want of space, we pass on to what may be
termed its pith. Mr. Hale starts with the hazardous question, “What is
the Unitarian Church for?” As far as we can make out from repeated
reading of the main portion of the sermon――for there reigns a great
confusion and incoherence in his ideas――the Unitarian Church has for
its mission to certify anew and proclaim the truth that “God is in
man.” “God in man,” he says, “is in itself the basis of the whole
Gospel.” Undoubtedly “God is in man,” and God is in the brute, and God
is in every grain of sand, and God is in all things. God is in all
things by his immensity――that is, by his essence, and power, and
presence. But this is a truth known by the light of human reason, and
taught by all sound philosophers, heathen and Christian. There was no
need of the Gospel, nor of that “fearlessness” which, he tells us,
“was in the Puritan blood,” nor of the Unitarian Church, to teach this
evident and common truth to mankind.
The Gospel message means more than that, and the Rev. Mr. Hale has
some idea that it does mean more. He adds: “Every man is God’s child,
and God’s Spirit is in every life.” Again: “Men are the children of
God really and not figuratively”; “The life of God is their life by
real inheritance.” After having made these statements, he attempts to
give the basis and genesis of this relation of God as father to man as
child, as follows:
“That the force which moves all nature is one force, and not
many, appears to all men, as they study it, more and more.
That this force is conscious of its own existence, that it
is conscious of its own work, that it is therefore what men
call spirit, that this spirit has inspired and still
inspires us, that we are therefore not creatures of dumb
power, but children of a Father’s love――this is the
certainty which unfolds itself or reveals itself, or is
unfolded or is revealed, as higher and higher man ascends in
his knowledge of what IS.”
That man, by the light of his reason, can, by the study of nature,
attain to this idea of God and his principal attributes, as Spirit, as
Creator, upholder of the universe, and as Providence, is no doubt
true; but that, by the study of “the force which moves all nature,”
our own consciousness included, we can learn that we are the “children
of a Father’s love,” does not follow, and is quite another thing. It
is precisely here that Unitarianism as a consistent, intelligible
religious system crumbles into pieces. Nor can Unitarians afford to
follow the Rev. Edward E. Hale in his attempt to escape this
difficulty by concealing his head, ostrich-like, under the sand of a
spurious mysticism, and virtually repudiating the rational element in
religion by saying: “The mystic knows that God is here now. He has no
chain of posts between child and Father. He relies on no long, logical
system of communication,” etc. The genuine mystic, indeed, “knows God
is here,” but he knows also that God is not the author of confusion,
and to approach God he does not require of man to put out the light of
his reason. He will tell us that the relation of God to all things as
created being, and the relation of God to man as rational being, and
the relation of God to man as father to child, are not one and the
same thing, and ought not, therefore, to be confounded. The true
mystic will further inform us that the first relation, by way of
immanence, is common to all created things, man included; the second,
by way of rationality, is common to the human race; the third, by way
of filiation, is common to those who are united to God through the
grace of Christ. The first and second are communicated to man by the
creative act of God, and are therefore ours by right of natural
inheritance through Adam. The third relation is communicated to us by
way of adoption through the grace of the new Adam, Christ, who is “the
only-begotten Son of God.” This relation is not, therefore, ours by
inheritance. We “have received from Christ,” says St. Paul to the
Romans, “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Abba, Father.”[96]
“By whom also we have access through faith into this grace, wherein we
stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.”[97] It
is proper to remark here that it is an error very common among
radicals, rationalists, and a certain class of Unitarians to suppose
that the relation of the soul to God by way of filiation, due to
Christ, is intended as a substitute for our natural relations to God
by way of immanence and rationality; whereas Christianity presupposes
these, reaffirms, continues, completes, and perfects them, by this
very gift of filiation with God. For it is a maxim common to all
Catholic theologians that _gratia supponit et perficit naturam_.
Our intelligent mystic would not stop here. Proceeding further, he
would say that to be really and truly children of God by inheritance
implies our being born with the same identical nature as God. For the
nature of a child is not a resemblance to, or an image of, that of his
father, but consists in his possessing the same identical essence and
nature as his father. If the son is equal to his father by nature,
then he is also equal to his father in his capacities as such. Now, if
every man, by nature, has the right to call God father, as the Rev.
Mr. Hale and his co-religionists pretend, then all men by nature are
equal to God, both in essence and attributes! Is this what Unitarians
mean by “the divinity of human nature”? The Rev. E. E. Hale appears to
say so when he tells us: “What we are struggling for, and what, if
words did not fail us, we would fain express, is what Dr. James Walker
called ‘the identity of essence of all spiritual being and all
spiritual life.’” All, then, that the believers in the divinity of
Christ claim exclusively for him is claimed by Unitarians equally for
every individual of the human race. But the belief in the divinity of
Christ is “the latest and least objectionable form of idolatry”――so
the Rev. H. W. Bellows informs us in his volume entitled _Phases of
Faith_. The Unitarian cure, then, for the evil of idolatry is by
substituting an indefinite multitude of idols for one single object of
idolatrous worship.
There is one class of Unitarians, to whom the author of this sermon
seems to belong, who accept boldly the consequences of their premise,
and maintain without disguise that all men are by nature the equals of
Christ, and that there is no reason why they should not, by greater
fidelity, surpass Christ. Up to this period of time, however, they
have not afforded to the world any very notable specimen of the truth
of their assertion. Another class attempt to get over the difficulty
by a critical exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, denying the
authenticity or the meaning of those parts which relate to the
miraculous conception of Christ, his miracles, and his divinity. A
representative of the extreme wing on the right of Unitarianism
replied, when this point was presented to him: “Oh! we Unitarians
reject the idea of the Trinity as represented by Calvinists and other
Protestants, for they make it a tritheism; but we accept the doctrine
as holy mother Church teaches it”; while a leader of the extreme left
admitted the difficulty, and in speaking of Dr. Channing, who
championed the idea of the filiation of man to God, he said: “No
intelligent Unitarian of to-day would attempt to defend the
Unitarianism of Dr. Channing.” He was right; for no Unitarian, on the
basis of his belief, can say consistently the Lord’s Prayer; for the
Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation is a rigorous necessity to any
one who admits the infinite and the finite, and the necessity of a
union of love between them which authorizes the finite to call the
Infinite Father! One may bestow sympathy upon the pious feelings of
that class of Unitarians of which Dr. Channing is the representative,
but the less said about their theological science the better.
Our genuine mystic would not stop here. He would continue and show
that the denial of the Incarnation involves the denial of the Trinity,
and the denial of the Trinity reduces the idea of God to a mere
abstraction. For all conception of real life is complex. Intellectual
life in its simplest elements, in its last analysis, will be found to
consist of three factors: Man as the thinker, one factor; the thing
thought, the second factor; and their relation, the third factor――or
the lover, the beloved, and their relation; again, the actor, the
thing acted upon, and their relation. Man cannot think, love, or act
where there is nothing to think, to love, or to act upon. Place man in
an absolute vacuum, where there is nothing except himself, and you
have man _in posse_, but not man as being, as existing, as a living
man. You have a unit, an abstraction, nothing more. But pure
abstractions have no real existence. Our conception of life in
accordance with the law which governs our intelligence is comprised in
three terms――subject, object, and their relation.[98] There is no
possible way of bringing out of a mere unit, as our absolute starting
point of thought, an intellectual conception of life. But the
Unitarian idea of God is God reduced to a simple, absolute unit. Hence
the Unitarian idea of God is not the conception of the real, living
God, but an abstraction, a non-existing God.
Our genuine mystic would proceed still further; for infused light and
love from above do not suspend or stultify the natural action of our
faculties, but quicken, elevate, and transform their operations. He
would apply, by way of analogy, the same process of thought in
confirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. If there had
been a time, he would say, when there was no object before God, then
there would have been a period when God was not the real, living God,
but only God _in posse_, non-existing. But this is repugnant to the
real conception of God; therefore the true idea of God involves a
co-eternal object. If, however, this co-eternal object was not equal
to God in substance as well as in attributes, then there would have
been a period when God did not exist in all his fulness. Now, this
object, co-eternal and equal to God the Father, is what the Catholic
doctrine teaches concerning Christ, the only-begotten Son of the
Father, “begotten before all ages, consubstantial with the Father.”
But the Father and the Son being co-eternal and co-adequate, their
relations to each other must have been eternal and equal, outflowing
toward each other in love, commensurate with their whole nature. This
procession of mutual love between Father and Son is what the Catholic
doctrine teaches concerning the Holy Spirit. Thus we see, however
imperfectly, that the Catholic doctrine concerning the Trinity
presents to our minds nothing that is contrary to our reason, though
it contains an infinite abyss beyond the present scope of our reason,
but which we shall know when our reason is increased, as it will be,
by the gift of the light of glory. But every mystery of Christianity
has an intelligible side to our natural reason, and by the light of
faith it is the privilege and joy of a Christian while here upon earth
to penetrate more deeply into their hidden, divine truth.
Again, the Unitarian is mistaken when he supposes that Catholics, in
maintaining the Trinity, exclude the divine Unity. They include both
in one. Herein again is found in man an analogy. Man is one in
triplicity. Man is thought, love, and activity, and at the same time
man is one. He thinks, he loves, he acts; there are not three distinct
men, one who thinks, another who loves, and still another who acts.
There is, therefore, a sense in which man is one in three and three in
one. So there is in the Trinity. The Unitarians are right in affirming
the divine Unity; their error consists in excluding the divine
Trinity. All heresies are right in what they affirm, and wrong in what
they exclude or deny; which denial is the result of their breaking
away from that divine Unity in whose light alone every truth is seen
in its co-relation with all other truths.
Our true mystic would not be content to rest here, but, soaring up
upon the wings of divine light and love, and taking a more extended
view, he would strive to show that where the doctrine of the Trinity
is not held either explicitly or implicitly, there not only the theory
of our mental operations and the intellectual foundation of religion
dissolve into a baseless fabric of a vision; but that also the solid
basis of society, the true idea of the family, the right conception of
the state and its foundations, and the law of all genuine progress,
are wanting, and all human things tend towards dissolution and
backward to the reign of old chaos.
We give another characteristic statement of the Rev. Edward E. Hale’s
opening sermon which must have grated harshly on the ears of the more
staid and conservative portion of his audience; it is under the head
of “The immanent presence of God.” He says:
“The Roman Church will acknowledge it, and St. Francis and
St. Vincent and Fénelon will illustrate it. But, at the same
time, the Roman Church has much else on her hands. She has
to be contending for those seven sacraments, for this
temporal power, all this machinery of cardinals and bishops,
and bulls and interdicts, canon law and decretals, so that
in all this upholstery there is great risk that none of us
see the shrine. So of the poor little parodies of the Roman
Church, the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, and the
rest of them.”
Again:
“All our brethren in the other confessions plunge into their
infinite ocean with this hamper of corks and floats,
water-proof dresses lest they be wet, oil-cloth caps for
their hair, flannels for decency, a bathing-cart here, a
well-screened awning there――so much machinery before the
bath that one hardly wonders if some men refuse to swim! For
them there is this great apology, if they do not proclaim as
we must proclaim, God here and God now; nay, if they do not
live as we must live, in the sense of God here and God now.
For us, we have no excuse. We have stripped off every rag.
We have destroyed all the machinery.”
The Rev. Mr. Hale regards the seven sacraments, the hierarchy, the
canon law――briefly, the entire visible and practical side of the
church――as a “hamper,” “machinery,” “rags,” and thinks there “is great
risk that none of us see the shrine.” The difficulty here is not where
Mr. Hale places it.
“Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.”
The visible is not the prison of the invisible, as Plato dreamed, but
its vehicle, as St. Paul teaches. “For the invisible things of God,
from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.”[99]
The author of this sermon is at least consistent in his error; as he
believes in an abstract God, so he would reduce “the church of the
living God,” “the body of Christ,” to an abstract non-existence.
Suppose, for example, that the Rev. Edward E. Hale had reduced “all
the machinery” of his curiously-devised body to an abstraction before
the Unitarian biennial conference was held at Saratoga; the world
would have been deprived of the knowledge of that “simplicity which it
is the special duty of the Unitarian Church to proclaim.” Think of the
loss! For it was by means of the complex “machinery” of his concrete
body that the Rev. E. E. Hale came in contact with the “machinery” of
the Unitarian biennial organization at Saratoga, and, thus
“upholstered,” he publicly rants against all “machinery.”
There may be too complex an organization, and too many applications of
it, and too much made of these, owing to the necessities of our times,
in the Catholic Church, to suit the personal tastes and the stage of
growth of the Rev. Edward E. Hale. But the Catholic Church does not
exist solely for the benefit of Mr. Hale, or for any peculiar class of
men, or any one race alone. He has and should have, and they all have,
their own place and appropriate niche in her _all_-temple; for the
Catholic Church takes up in her scope every individual, and the human
race entire. But there are others, with no less integrity of spiritual
life and intelligence than he, who esteem those things of which he
speaks so unappreciatingly as heavenly gifts and straight pathways to
see more clearly the inner shrine and approach more nearly to the
divine Presence. Are the idiosyncrasies of one man, though “thoroughly
furnished and widely experienced,” to be the norm of all other men,
and of every race? Men and races differ greatly in these things, and
the church of God is not a sect or conventicle; she is Catholic,
universal, and in her bosom, and in her bosom alone, every soul finds
its own place and most suitable way, with personal liberty and in
accord with all other souls and the whole universe, to perfect union
with God.
The matter with the Rev. E. E. Hale is, he has missed his vocation.
His place evidently was not in the assembled conference at Saratoga;
for his calling is unmistakably to a hermit life. Let him hie to the
desert, and there, in a forlorn and naked hermitage, amid “frosts and
fasts, hard lodgings and thin weeds,” in an austere and unsociable
life, “unswathed and unclothed,” _in puris naturalibis_, “triumphantly
cease to be.” The Rev. E. E. Hale is one-sided, and seems to have no
idea that the Catholic Church is the organization of that perfect
communion of men with God and each other which Christ came to
communicate and to establish in its fulness upon earth, and is its
practical realization. God grant him, and others like him, this light
and knowledge!
But we would not have our readers think that all Unitarians agree with
the Rev. E. E. Hale in his estimate of the visible or practical side
of the church. We quote from a leading article in the _Liberal
Christian_ of August last, under the head of “Spirit and Form in
Religion,” the following passage:
“It seems painfully indicative of the still undeveloped
condition of our race that no truce or medium can be
approximated in which the two great factors of human nature
and society, the authority and supremacy of _spirit_ and the
necessity and usefulness of _form_, are reconciled and made
to serve each other or a common end. Must inward
spirituality, and outward expression of it in forms and
worship, be for ever in a state of unstable equilibrium?
Must they ever be hostile and at cross-purposes? Must all
progress be by a displacement in turn of each other――now an
era of honored forms, and then of only disembodied
spirituality? There is probably no entire escape from this
necessity. But, surely, he is the wisest man who can hold
this balance in the evenest hand; and that sect or school,
whether political, social, or religious, that pays the
finest justice and the most impartial respect to the two
factors in our nature, spirit and form, will hold the
steadiest place and do the most good for the longest time.
This is the real reason why Quakerism, with all its exalted
claims to respect, has such a feeble and diminishing
importance. It has oil in the lamp of the purest kind, but
almost no _wick_, and what wick it has is made up of its
_thee_-ing and _thou_-ing, and its straight coat and stiff
bonnet. These are steadily losing authority; and when they
are abandoned, visible Quakerism will disappear. On the
other hand, Roman Catholicism maintains its place against
the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited
doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency
in forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed
legibleness; but not without the unfailing aid and support
of a spirit of faith and worship which produces a devoted
priesthood and hosts of genuine saints. No form of
Christianity can boast of lovelier or more spiritual
disciples, or reaches higher up or lower down, including the
wisest and the most ignorant, the most delicate and the
coarsest adherents. It has the subtlest and the bluntest
weapons in its arsenal, and can pierce with a needle, or mow
with a scythe, or maul with a mattock.”
The same organ, in a later number, in speaking of the Saratoga
conference, says:
“The main characteristic of the meeting was a conscientious
and reverent endeavor to attain to something like a
scientific basis for our faith in absolute religion, and in
Christianity as a consistent and concrete expression of it,”
and adds that the opening sermon of the Rev. Mr. Hale “had the merit
of starting us calmly and unexcitedly on our course.” Our readers will
form their own judgment about what direction the course leads on which
the Rev. Edward E. Hale started the Unitarians assembled at Saratoga
in their seeking after a “scientific basis” for “absolute religion,
and Christianity as a concrete expression of it”!
[89] “A Free-born Church.” The sermon preached before the
National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian
Churches at Saratoga, Tuesday evening, Sept. 12. The
_Liberal Christian_, New York, Sept. 16, 1876.
[90] _An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine_, p.
14. Appleton, N. Y.
[91] Matt. xvi. 18.
[92] Matt. xxviii. 18.
[93] Eph. v. 25, 26, 27.
[94] St. Matt. xxviii. 18, 19.
[95] Dr. Newman.
[96] Rom. viii. 15.
[97] _Ibid._ v. 2.
[98] “Liquido tenendum est, quod omnia res, quamcumque
cognoscimus, congenerat in nobis notitiam sui. Ab utroque
enim notitia paritur, a cognoscente et cognito.”――St.
Augustine, _De Trinitate_, s. ix. c. xii.――Wherefore it must
be clearly held that everything whatsoever that we know
begets at the same time in us the knowledge of itself; for
knowledge is brought forth from both, from the knower and
from the thing known. Again, “Behold, then, there are three
things: he that loves, and that which is loved, and
love.”――s. viii. c. x., _ibid._
[99] Romans i. 20.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER VII.
AN UNEXPECTED PROPOSAL.
The next morning coffee was brought to the bed-rooms at the first peep
of dawn, and when the little party went out for their walk the sun had
only just begun to set the sea-line on fire.
They stepped for a moment into the Franciscan church next door, then
went down the road leading past it to the Campagna. Fresh and sweet
the morning air touched them as they sauntered along――not the morning
breeze of New England, simple in associations as the breath of a
newly-created being, but like the breath of one, immortally beautiful,
about whom Calliope, Clio, and Erato have circled in their stately
dance through the unfading centuries. Not only every spot of earth,
but every waft of air, was haunted.
Mr. Vane stopped them presently with a silent gesture, and pointed to
a near height, where a solitary cloud, softly resplendent in all its
beautiful undulations, was slowly and loathly detaching itself to
float upward and disappear in the sky, as if the door of a sapphire
palace had opened to receive it. “Is it Diana?” he whispered.
“The Jew has touched nature with a pen of fire,” the Signora said as
they walked on again; “but the pagan has dominated, and still in a
certain sense possesses that beautiful realm. If, as Milton sings,
‘the parting genius was with sighing rent’ from tree and grove at the
birth of Christ, its ghost still haunts the spot, and Milton himself
uses pagan language when he sings the beauties of nature. Why does not
some Christian Job dislodge these ‘mythic fancies,’ and make nature
live with a life that is something more than the rustling of a
garment? Job made the lightnings go and return at the command of God,
saying, ‘Here we are!’ and he speaks of the ‘store-houses of the
snow.’ The Christian poet seems to fear his imagination, to find it
tainted, and, instead of purifying it, and setting it flying, like a
bird or a butterfly, through the garden of the earth, he puts it in a
cage or under a glass along with the pagan images he only glances
askance at. Now and then one meets with a saint whose heart overflows
in that direction, like St. Francis of Assisi, calling the birds his
sisters. Blessed Fra Egidio made the flowers bear witness, as when he
proved the miraculous motherhood of the Virgin to the doubting
_Predicatore_. At each of the three strokes of his staff in the road,
following his three assertions of Our Lady’s purity, up sprang a
beautiful lily. Our Lord set the example in his reference to the
lilies of the field: they toiled not, neither did they spin, yet the
Creator had arrayed them as Solomon in all his glory was never
arrayed. Did he talk to his mother about the flowers, I wonder? When
the boat was tossed by a tempest, he spoke to the waves, as to living
creatures, saying, ‘Peace, be still!’ Do spirits troublesome and
troubled take shape, or, stretching their invisible hands, catch the
shapes of nature as weapons, and lash with foam or strike with
lightning? We cannot know, and we need not know; and we must not
assert. It is not, however, forbidden to fancy. Nature may serve as
the playground wherein our imagination and fancy shall exercise
themselves and prepare our minds for the wonders of the spiritual
life. Fancy and imagination are as really a part of ourselves, and as
truly and wisely given by God, as reason and will. They are the sweet
little enticements inviting us to fly off
‘From the dark edges of the sensual ground,’
as the bird-mother coaxes her young to try its wings in little flights
from twig to twig before it soars into the heavens. No, it is not
forbidden to the fancy to play around the mysterious life that makes
the bud swell into the flower and the seed grow into the lofty tree,
so long as we see all in God, and see in God the Trinity, and, in the
aspiring flame of created adoring spirits, behold Maria Santissima as
the white point that touches the foot of the throne.”
The Signora had been speaking slowly and dreamily, pausing now and
then; but at the last, growing earnest, had, as it were, waked
herself, and become aware that she was talking aloud and was listened
to.
Smiling, and blushing too a little, “_Scusino!_” she said. “I cannot
help it. I preach as the sparks fly upward.”
“I speak for a seat in your meeting-house for the rest of my life,”
Mr. Vane replied promptly.
“Apropos of meeting-houses,” she said, “what do you think of those for
spires?” pointing to four gigantic cypresses in the villa they were
passing.
This villa was a strange, deserted-looking place just above the
Campagna. Nothing in it flourished but the four cypresses, which rose
to a magnificent height, their huge cones sloping at the top to a
feather so slender that it was always tipped to one side. Stern, dark,
and drawn close together, they looked down on the place as if they had
cursed it and were waiting to see the consummation of its ruin. All
their shadows were full of a multitudinous grit of cicali voices that
sounded like the sharp grating together of teeth. At their feet stood
the house, half-alive, half-dead, hidden from the street by the walls
it was not high enough to overlook. It was like the upper part of a
house that the earth had half swallowed. At each side of the door
stood a statue dressed in some antique fashion, hat on head and sword
on thigh. They might have been two men who were petrified there long
before. At each side of the gate, inside, a stone dog, petrified too,
in the act of starting up with open jaws, crumbled in a blind rage, as
if a paralyzed life yet dwelt under the lichen-covered fragments, and
struggled to pour forth its arrested anger.
A little farther on was another decaying villa, where green moss and
grasses grew all over the steps, half hid the paving-stones of the
court, and choked the fountain dry. The house, once a gay and noble
mansion, had now got its shutters decently closed over the sightless
windows, and resigned itself to desolation. The long, dim avenues had
a damp, unhealthy breath, and not a flower was to be seen.
They went in and seated themselves on the steps, where the shadow of
the house, covering a verdant square in the midst of the sunshine,
looked like a block of verd-antique set in gold.
“It reminds me of the funeral we went to in St. Peter’s,” Mr. Vane
said, glancing about the sombre place, and over the walls into the
outside splendor. “The mournful pageant looked as small in that bright
temple as this villa in the landscape.”
The two girls gathered grasses and leaves and bits of moss, binding
them into tiny bouquets to keep as mementos, and Bianca made a sketch
of the two villas. They talked but little, and, in that silent and
quiescent mood, perceived far more clearly the character and influence
of the scene――the melancholy that was not without terror; the proud
beauty that survived neglect and decay, and might at any time burst
into a triumphant loveliness, if but some one should care to call
forth the power hidden there; the dainty graces that would not thrust
themselves forward, but waited to be sought. Yet it needed that summer
and sunshine should be all about to keep the sadness from being
oppressive. With those cheering influences so near and so dominantly
larger, the touch of melancholy became a luxury, like a scattering of
snow in wine.
Isabel came back to the steps from her ramble about the place, and
found her father and the Signora sitting there with no appearance of
having uttered a word since she left them.
“It is just the time to read something I found and brought with me
from Rome,” she said. “I tucked it into my note-book, see, and
something at this moment reminded me of it. Bianca was saying that if
the place should be sprinkled with holy water, she did not doubt that
flowers would immediately begin to grow again, and the track was not
long from her notion round to this poem. It had no name when I found
it, but I call it ‘At Benediction.’ The Signora told me that it was
rude and unfinished; but no matter.” She read:
AT BENEDICTION.
“Like a dam in which the restless tide
Has washed, till, grain by grain,
It has sapped the solid barrier
And swept it down again,
The patience I have built and buttressed
Like a fortress wall,
Fretted and undermined, gives way,
And shakes me in its fall.
“For I have vainly toiled to shun
The meaner ways of life,
With all their low and petty cares,
Their cold and cruel strife.
My brain is wild with tangled thoughts,
My heart is like to burst!
Baffled and foiled at every turn――
My God, I feel accursed!
“It was human help I sought for,
And human help alone;
Too weary I for straining
To a height above my own.
But thy world, with all its creatures, holds
Nor help nor hope for me;
I fly to sanctuary,
And cast myself on Thee!
* * * * *
“The priest is at the altar
Praying with lifted hands,
And, girdled round with living flame,
The veilèd Presence stands.
Wouldst thou kindle in our dying hearts
Some new and pure desire,
That thou com’st, my Lord, so wrapt about
In robes of waving fire?
“Hast thou come, indeed, for blessing,
O silent, awful Host?
Thou One with the Creator,
One with the Holy Ghost!
Hast thou come, indeed, for blessing,
O pitying Son of Man?
For if that thou wilt bless me,
Who is there that can ban?
“Hast thou come, indeed, for blessing,
Within whose knowledge rest
The labyrinthine ways of life,
The cares of every breast?
My doubting hope would fain outshake
Her pinions, if she durst;
For if truly thou wilt bless me,
I cannot feel accursed!
“The _Tantum Ergo_ rises
In a chorus glad and strong,
And, waking in their airy height,
The bells join in the song.
And priest, and bells, and people,
As one, in loud accord,
Are pouring forth their praises
Of the Sacramental Lord.
“’Tis as though, from out of sorrow stepping,
And a darksome way,
The singers’ eyes had caught the dawn
Of the celestial day.
’Tis as though, behind them casting off
Each clogging human load,
These happy creatures, singing, walked
The open heav’nly road.
“The hymn is stilled, and only
The bells ring on above.
Oh! bless me, God of mercy;
Have mercy, God of love!
For I have fought a cruel life,
And fallen in the fray.
Oh! bless me with a blessing
That shall sweep it all away!
* * * * *
“It is finished. From the altar
The priest is stepping down;
His incense-perfumed silver train
Brushes my sombre gown.
The mingled crowd of worshippers
Are going as they came;
And the altar-candles drop to darkness,
Tiny flame by flame.
“Silence and softly-breathing Peace
Float downward, hand in hand,
And either side the threshold,
As guardian angels stand.
I see their holy faces,
And fear no face of man;
For when my God has blessed me,
Who is there that can ban?”
The Signora rose rather hastily. “If we are going to Monte Compatri
this afternoon, we have no time to linger about reading rhymes,” she
said.
They went out into the sunshine, already burning hot, and stole along,
one by one, in the shadow of the high wall, walking over crowds of
little pale, pink morning-glories, that crept humbly on the ground,
not knowing themselves to be vines with a power to rise and climb to
the height of a man, any more than dear Hans Andersen’s ugly duck knew
that he was a swan, though at one point they might have seen, through
an opening in the stonework, better-instructed morning-glories
climbing hedge and shrub, and blowing out a rhythmic joy through their
great white trumpets far up in the air. The greatest pride or
aspiration these little creatures seemed capable of was when, now and
then, one grew, breath by breath, over some small obstacle in its
path, and bloomed with its pretty pink cheek against a gray bit of
stone. The whole ground blushed softly with their sweet humility.
They entered the shaded avenue that circles the lower part of the
town, and saw the beautiful city climbing on the one hand, and the
beautiful Campagna spread out on the other; passed the little wooden
_chalet_ where Garibaldi was holding his court――a wooden house is such
a wonder in Italy!――and the public garden, sweet with the infantine
breath and bright with the infantine hues of countless petunias, and
at length found refuge in Villa Torlonia.
Thick and dark, the lofty trees knit their branches over the seats
where the travellers sat and looked at the grand fountain-front, with
its stone eagle and rows of huge stone vases along the top, and its
beautiful cascade and basin in the centre. At either side this
cascade, in the ten or twelve niches, tall stone vases overflowed with
wild-flowers that had once overflowed with water, the masks above
still holding between their dry lips the pipes from which the sunny
streams had sprung. Far above could be seen, in the rich green gloom
of overarching trees, cascade after cascade dancing down the steep
slope, and, farther yet, the top of a great column of water that
marked the uppermost fountain.
“It is too late to go up now,” the Signora said; “but you can see the
way. It goes round in a circling avenue, or up the steps that are at
each side of the ten cascades. I think there are ten. But the steps at
the right are constantly wet with the spray, and covered with ferns
and moss. You go up at the left, which the sun sometimes touches, and
which is always dry. Below here, too, there are two ways of going up,
either by the parting avenues or by the little dark door you see
beside the cascade. That door leads through a dim passage, where the
walls are all a green tremble with maidenhair fern growing as thick as
feathers on a bird, and up a little dim winding stair that brings you
out beside the stone eagle there. I gathered one of those ferns once
that was half a yard long. You see they build palaces here for waters
as well as for princes.”
The day went by like a dream, steeped in dazzling light, embalmed with
the odors of flowers growing in a luxuriance and beauty new to their
northern eyes, sprinkled over with a ceaseless fountain-spray, sung
through by countless larks, and made magnificent by palace after
palace, and by constantly-recurring and incomparable views. For many a
year to come they would remember the honey-snow of the orange-trees
and the clustered flames of the pomegranates; they would compare their
rose-bushes with the tree which, in one of these gardens, held its
tea-roses nodding over their heads, nor love their own shyer gardens
the less, indeed; and in their trim walks, and loath and delicate
blooming, they would sometimes think with longing of the careless
profusion of the land where the best of nature and the best of art
dwelt together in the familiar and graceful intercourse of daily life.
An hour before sunset they were again in their carriage, and, after a
short drive, found themselves following the long loops of the road
that lead leisurely up the side of Monte Compatri, through the rich
woods, through the pure and exquisitely invigorating air, with all the
world unrolling itself again before their eyes in a view almost equal
to that of Tusculum.
They were obliged to alight in the piazza of the fountain; for the
steep and narrow streets did not admit of carriages. From this piazza
the streets straggled, climbing and twisting, breaking constantly into
little flights of stairs, and sometimes ending in a court or at a
door.
“Prepare to be stared at,” the Signora said, as they took their way up
the _Via Lunga_. “We are the only ladies in the town whose headgear is
not a handkerchief; and as for Mr. Vane, they are very likely to take
him for Prince Borghese. And, come to think of it,” she said, looking
at him attentively, “you are very much like the prince, Mr. Vane.”
The gentleman smiled quietly, without answering. He recollected what
the Signora had forgotten――that she had once expressed the greatest
admiration for Prince Borghese. He took the lady’s parasol and
travelling-bag from her hand, and offered his arm, which the steep way
and her fatigue made acceptable, and the two girls followed, searching
on every side with bright and curious eyes, and murmuring little
exclamations to each other. The irregular stone houses, so near each
other, face to face, that one could easily toss a ball from window to
window across the street, were quite vacant, except for pigeons that
flew in at the windows, or a cat that might be seen sleeping on a
chair or window-ledge, or, perhaps, for a few hens searching for
crumbs. The families were all out of doors. In one little corner
portico sat a handsome woman, with her dark hair beautifully plaited,
and a bright handkerchief laid over her massive shoulders. Her hands
were folded in her lap, and she sat smiling, chatting with a neighbor
now and then, and enjoying a conscious queenship of the place. At
either side of her was a young girl, slim, dark, and bright, a mere
slip of the mother. These girls kept their eyes cast down, and
appeared to think only of their knitting. On the next step was
Carlin’s group. Further on, a young mother steadied her year-old child
between her knees and a chair, while she darned a stocking. One
perceived that the whole and snowy-white stockings worn even by the
poorest were not kept in order without constant care and labor. Near
by, an old woman with a distaff spun flax, and entertained a company
of men with her lively talk. This antique goddess was, perhaps, the
wit of the place. She was, however, in no manner allied to the graces;
for the thin gray hair gathered tightly with a comb to the top of her
head, and entirely uncovered, and the white kerchief knotted round her
neck, instead of being draped in the becoming Italian fashion, showed
that she had long since ceased to hold by even the shadow of a
personal charm. Outside the door of a little _café_, the only one in
the place, half a dozen men sat at tables, drinking coffee and
smoking, while on the door-step a man with a furnace and rotary stove,
and a basket of charcoal beside him, roasted coffee to keep up the
supply, lazily turning the crank while he listened to the gossip going
on at the tables. On a neighboring step were gathered several women in
a little sewing-circle. To these came a woman up the street, bearing
on her head a tub covered over with nodding fern-leaves, which she set
down on the wide top of the balustrade. The circle suspended their
work while the woman displayed a sample of her wares――twelve frogs run
on to a stick. She was met with shrugs and exclamations of
disapproval.
“Poor frogs!” said Isabel. “They look like little white babies.”
They were very poor little babies indeed, thin and small as spiders.
The frog-merchant, nothing disconcerted, laid aside her first sample
and displayed another. “Oh! those are better,” the women cried, and
immediately began to chaffer about the price.
Children swarmed everywhere. The close little town was as full of them
as the shoe where the old woman we all know so well dwelt with her
tribe of young ones. It did not need a powerful imagination to picture
the place boiling over like a pot some day, with a many-colored froth
of _bambini_ down the mountain-side. It was out of the question that
there should be room for the rising generation to stay in the town
when they should have become a risen generation; for they were six or
seven in a family, and already the houses were full.
“Perhaps one of them will go to America, and set up on some sidewalk a
furnace for roasting chestnuts,” Bianca said. “And perhaps, some day,
ten or fifteen years hence, we may stop and ask such a person what
part of Italy he came from, and he will answer, ‘From Monte Compatri’;
and we will say, ‘Ah! we have been there, at such a time; and perhaps
it was you we saw playing in _Via Lunga_ or in the _piazza_?’ and he
will brighten an instant, and then, all at once, begin to cry. And
Isabel will almost cry for him, and will give him her best
handkerchief to wipe his tears away, perhaps wiping them for him; and
I will buy all his chestnuts, which will be cold by the time we get
home, and papa will slip some money into his hand, and ask him if he
wants work to do, and we will all tell him where we live, and to come
to us if he should get into trouble. And then we will go home and talk
for all the rest of the day about nothing but Italy, and that day we
went up Monte Compatri. And Isabel will insist that she recognizes the
fellow perfectly, and try to coax papa to take him for a gardener or
something.”
“And then,” resumed Mr. Vane, continuing the story, “we shall have the
lazy vagabond coming to us every day begging, and we shall miss things
out of the room where he is left alone a few minutes, and Isabel will
give him my clothes, till I shall have nothing left to wear.”
“Meantime, what will the Signora be doing?” that lady demanded,
finding herself left out. “Is she to have no part?”
She did not see the pleasant glance that fell on her from the eyes of
the gentleman at her side. She was looking down, a little hurt, she
hardly knew why. For was it not a matter understood that her home was
in Italy, and theirs in America?
“Why, you,” said Isabel――“you will be in _Casa Ottant’Otto_, thousands
of miles away, and we shall be writing you all about it.”
“Not so!” Mr. Vane said. “She will be with us at the time, I think,
and will correct all our mistakes, and reward all our well-doing with
her approbation.”
“There, that sounds comfortable,” the lady said, smiling. “I was
really feeling neglected and left out in the cold.”
They had come to the street that encircles the town, and on the
outside of which a row of houses hangs on the mountain-edge. In one of
these they were to spend the night, and, as she spoke, the Signora
looked up brightly, and beckoned some one in a window above to come
down and open the door for them.
Mr. Vane spoke rather hastily in answer to her remark, and apparently
for her ear alone. “If you should be outside, the cold will then be
inside the circle,” he said. “It is you who are to choose.”
“Oh! thank you,” she replied lightly. “And now mind the steps. They
are rather dark.”
The street from which they entered this house was so narrow, and the
houses so joined, that they seemed to be still in the heart of the
town; but when they had passed the dusky stairs, and entered the long,
low _sala_ at the head of them, they found the place like a nest in a
tree-top. The mountain-side dropped sheer from under the very windows,
and the view swept round from Rome and the sea to Palestrina and the
mountains.
In this _sala_ the whole family of the _padrone_ had assembled to
welcome and stare at the strangers before giving the room up to their
use. A dozen or so smiling faces, full of good-will and curiosity,
clustered about without the slightest sign of any thought that they
might be intruding, or that there was to be any limit to the free use
of their eyes. An old woman leaning on a cane muttered unintelligible
blessings and made innumerable little bows right and left, a hale
young matron talked and welcomed, a servant smiled unceasingly, a
young girl with a baby in her arms asked abrupt questions in a loud
voice, and children of all ages filled up the gaps.
The young ladies resigned their clothes to examination, and began
shyly petting the little ones, and the Signora gave orders for their
entertainment. While she was talking the servant and two of the boys
ran skurrying out of the room and presently returned with an air of
great pride, bearing in their hands beautiful white pigeons, which
they caressed while displaying.
The young ladies admired them and smoothed their snowy plumage,
without being in the least aware why they had been brought.
“They are for our dinner to-morrow,” the Signora remarked with great
composure.
There was a little duet of dismayed exclamations. “I thought they were
family pets!” Bianca said, recoiling.
“And so they are, my dear,” was the reply. “They pet them up to the
moment of killing them, and praise while they are eating them. Their
fondness never ceases. And now let us take off our bonnets and have
supper.”
The room was long, low, and paved with coarse red bricks. The ceiling,
crossed by several large beams, was papered in compartments
representing squares of blue sky with light clouds floating over, and
a bird or two here and there in the space, and the flowery walls were
nearly hidden by great presses holding linen, by sideboards laden with
dishes, and by the high backs of patriarchal old chairs, very
picturesque to look at and very penitential to sit in.
All the centre of this room was taken up by a long table, at one end
of which their supper was speedily prepared. There was bread, as good
as could be had in Rome, and such a salad as could scarcely be had in
any city, the oil as sweet as cream, and the lettuce so crisp and
delicate that it could be almost powdered between the hands. Just as
they sat down a large decanter of gold-colored wine, ice-cold from the
grotto, was placed before them. For in these little Italian towns,
however they may lack the necessities of life, they are never without
the luxuries.
They sat down merrily, only one of the family remaining to wait on
them, the others hovering about the door, and watching the faces of
their guests as they ate, to see how the food pleased them.
“Papa,” said Isabel, pointing to a plate before her, on which a small
onion shone like silver, “do you recognize that vegetable?”
“I recog_nose_ it,” replied Mr. Vane, who would sometimes play upon
words.
“Well, I propose that we agree to divide it in four parts, each a
little larger than the last, the largest for you, the smallest for
Bianca, and that we all eat our portions, and so find no fault with
each other.”
Bianca instantly declined the invitation, and blushed deeply when they
rallied her on her daintiness.
“These onions are very delicate and sweet,” the Signora said. “I used
to avoid them, till one day I received a call from a personage of the
most dignified position and unexceptionable manners, from whose breath
I perceived, in the course of the conversation, that he had been
eating these little onions. But the faint odor that reached me as he
spoke was as though a rose and an onion had been grafted together.
Since then I have eaten without scruple.”
But Bianca still declined, still blushing. Why? Was it that her
affection for the friend ever tenderly remembered had so consecrated
her to him that nothing but what was sweetest and purest must touch
where his image was enshrined, whether he were present or absent? She
was quite extreme enough in her sensitive delicacy for such a thought.
Supper over, they went out into a _loggia_ attached to their _sala_
and overhanging the steep mountainside, and watched the sun go down
over the sea. The globe of fire had already touched the water-line,
that by day showed only like a line of purple cloud, and kindled it to
an intense lustre; and, as they looked, there was half a sun above the
horizon, and another half visible as though seen through the
transparent edge of the world over which it disappeared; then, without
diminishing, it dropped out of sight, leaving an ineffable, silent
glory over the scene. The fire of the sea faded to a faint gold, the
rosy violet of the Campagna changed to a deep purple, and Earth,
raising her shadowy hands, put aside the curtaining light of day, and
looked out at the stars.
The sisters withdrew presently, and left the two elders to admire the
beauties of nature at their leisure. Isabel, screened off in one
corner of the _sala_, made voluminous notes of her experiences, and
planned a wonderful story, into which they should all be woven. Seated
on a footstool, with a brass lamp hanging to the back of a chair near
her, and her writing on her knees, she saw one character after another
emerge from the shades and take form and individuality before her
eyes, as if they grew there independent of her will. They spoke and
moved of themselves, and she only looked and listened. Now and then
some trait, some feature, some word, was such as she had seen in real
life, but these people were not portraits, though they might have such
resemblances, and even might have been suggested by persons she had
known. The shades grew more and more alive, gathering into substance.
Stone walls built themselves up silently and with a more than
Aladdin-like celerity, and gardens burst into instantaneous bloom. If
she willed the sea present, its waves rolled up to her feet in foam,
or caught and tossed her in their strong arms; if she called for
forests, swiftly their darkening branches shut her in, and her light
feet trod their dry, crackling twigs and rich, disordered flowers. The
very accidents of a great pine-cone to stumble over, or an unexpected
lizard running across the path, were there. The dull walls of the room
she sat in, the rough bricks under her feet, the crowded town about
her, were as though they were not. She was free of the world.
O precious gift of the magical lamp! which, at a touch, calls about
its possessor all that men wish, and work, and strive for of earthly
good, without the pain or responsibilities of earthly possession;
which gives the rose without its thorn, the wine without its lees, the
friend without the doubt, the triumph without disappointment! Happy
they who, when what we call real life presses too hard or becomes too
dull, can put it aside for the time, and enter a world of their own,
for ever beautiful and satisfying, who, walking the common street, see
things unseen of common eyes, and for whom many a beauty smiles under
an ugly mask.
Bianca was in no such exalted mood of fancy, but, withdrawn to the
chamber she was to occupy with the Signora, was lifting the holier
eyes of faith, and, with childlike simplicity and confidence, laying
all her heart open to God, sending up her petitions for earthly
happiness on a cloud of the Acts, said after her own manner: “O my
God! I believe in thee, I hope in thee, I love thee, I thank thee, and
I am sorry for having offended thee”; and then, as a thought or wish
more earthly thrust itself forward, presenting it, unafraid and
undoubting. Living and dead, friends and strangers, the poor, and
those who had no one to pray for them――all were remembered by this
tender heart; but ever, like the refrain of a song, came back the
petition, “Bless, and guard from all ill of soul or body, him who is
so much more to me than all other men, and, if it be thy will, give
him to me for a friend and companion as long as I shall live.”
The two in the balcony, left to themselves, were talking quietly,
having no mind to separate. The Signora found in the society of Mr.
Vane a pleasure altogether new to her――the pleasure of being able to
depend on some one. It was only now, when she was surrounded with a
constant, friendly care, that she became aware how unprotected and
unhelped her former life had been, and how sweet was that repose which
the protected enjoy. Besides, Mr. Vane’s care was of a particularly
agreeable kind. It did not, by watching and seizing on opportunities
of serving, suggest the existence of an emotional care which might
change to neglect, but was simply a calm readiness, which assumed, as
a matter of course, that it should help when help was needed.
“I shall never be sufficiently thankful for having been led to make
this European journey,” Mr. Vane said after a little silence. “It has
done me good in many ways, and promises more even than it has
performed as yet.”
“I am glad you say thankful instead of glad,” the Signora said,
smiling. “Perhaps, too, I should say, I am thankful you say so.”
He thought a moment before speaking, and recollected that only a few
months before he would not have used the word. The change had come so
gradually that he had scarcely been aware of it. “Yet I believe that I
always recognize the Source from which all good flows,” he resumed
seriously. “At least, I never denied it. Here religion is such a
household affair, one falls after awhile into the habit of expressing
what before was only felt, and felt, perhaps, unconsciously.”
“It is better so,” was the reply. “We strengthen a true feeling when
we give it utterance. Besides, we may thus communicate it to others.”
“One of my causes of thankfulness,” he resumed, “is that my daughters
should be associated with you. I wish you could make them more like
yourself, and I am sure that their admiration and affection for you
will lead them naturally to imitate you and to receive your
instructions willingly. They have been to me a source of great
anxiety, and I feel myself utterly incapable of directing them; for,
while I wish them to be modest and womanly, on the one hand, I as
certainly wish them to be capable of finding in life an object and a
happiness which shall not depend on any other person. It would please
me to see them well married; but God forbid that an unmarried life
should be for them a disappointed life! What I could do for them I
have done, but with an immense self-distrust; and I have felt safer
when leaving them to themselves than when interfering or seeking to
guide them.”
“I should think you had done well both in guiding and in leaving them
free,” the lady replied. “Many parents do too much either one way or
the other. Does not the result satisfy you so far?”
She was surprised at the emotion with which he spoke, not knowing
anything of his married life.
“The result is not yet. Everything depends on their marriage, or their
reason for not marrying.” He hesitated, then went on, as if incapable
of keeping silence longer on a subject of which he had never spoken:
“The fate of their mother is to me a constant warning and a constant
pain. In one respect I can save them from that; for I shall never urge
them to marry, and shall never oppose any choice of theirs, unless it
should be a manifestly bad one. But I cannot guard them from the
tyranny of some mistaken sense of duty, or mistaken pride or delicacy
which they might conceal from all the world.”
Startled by this half-revelation, his companion kept silence, waiting
for him to speak. It was impossible he should not speak after such a
beginning.
“I do not know which was the more deeply wronged, I or my poor
Bianca,” he said presently. “It all came from the blundering
coarseness of parents who overstepped, not their authority――for they
never commanded her――but their power to influence, which, with one
like her, was quite as strong. Their mistake has taught me to
interfere and control less the gentle, silent one than the one who
speaks her mind out clearly and loudly. I have always thought that the
mother of my daughters had some preference which she never
acknowledged. Often, more often than not, these preferences come to
nothing and are soon forgotten; but not always. She did not wish to
marry me, but she consented without hesitation, and I believed that
the slight reserve would vanish with time. Perhaps she believed it
too. Her conscience was as pure as snow. She did perfectly, with all
her power, what she believed to be her duty. But that preoccupation,
whether for another person or for a single life, was never vanquished.
You have, perhaps, chased a butterfly when you were a child, beaten it
with your hat from flower to flower, and at last imprisoned it under a
glass; or you have caught a hummingbird that has strayed into your
room, and flown from you as long as it had strength. Neither resisted
when it was caught; but the down was brushed off the butterfly’s
wings, and the bird was dead in your hand. My wife omitted nothing
that a good will could accomplish. She was grateful for my efforts to
make her happy; she was calm, and even cheerful; and I am sure that
she never said to herself, even, that she was sorry for having married
me. But the only beaming smile I ever saw on her face was when she
knew that she was going to die.”
His voice trembled a little, and he stopped a moment, as if to steady
it before going on.
“Was not I wronged too? Was not the unwilling jailer as unfortunate as
the unwilling prisoner? I say nothing of my own personal
disappointment, though that was great. The mutual confidence, the
delightful companionship, the perfect union, to which I had looked
forward, and which were my ideal of marriage――where were they? In
place of them I never lost the feeling that I had a victim for ever at
my side. I felt as if I had been unmanly and cruel; yet the fault was
not mine. She gave herself to me in all that she could, yet she was
never mine.”
He paused again; yet this time his voice trembled more in resuming
than in leaving off his story.
“I rejoiced in her release; and I look forward to no future meeting
with her that shall be different from that meeting which we are
permitted to look forward to with all the good in heaven. If other
husbands and wives expect some closer partnership in heaven, I neither
expect nor wish it. I have resigned her absolutely and for ever. I do
not think that I am morbid. You should know her peculiar character to
understand well how I could be made to feel that crystal wall that
always stood between us. I felt it so that I really believe, if the
children were not demonstrative in their affection for me, I should
not have the courage to show any fondness for them. I used, when they
were little ones, to look at them sometimes with a kind of terror when
I came home, to see if they would smile brightly, and run to me as if
they were glad from the heart to see me. I always waited for them,
and, thank God! they never failed me. Duty and submission are there,
but a perfect affection makes them almost unnecessary.”
Finishing, he glanced for the first time at his companion, and saw
that she was in tears.
“My dear friend!” he exclaimed, “how selfish I have been! Forgive me!”
“No,” she replied gently, wiping her eyes, “you are not selfish. It
seems to me that you are one of the least selfish of men. I am glad
you have confidence enough in me to tell me such a story, which, I can
well believe, you seldom or never speak of. It is quite natural that
you should confide it to some one, and you could not expect any one to
hear it unmoved.”
What an exquisite moonlight covered the world, and made a fairy-like,
silvery day in the little balcony where the two sat! The air sparkled
with it, and one tear still hanging to the Signora’s eyelashes shone
like a diamond in its beams.
“You are the first person to whom I have ever spoken on this subject,
and the only person to whom I could confide it,” Mr. Vane said. “Can
you guess why, Signora?”
She looked at him with a startled glance and read his meaning, and, in
the first astonishment and confusion, was utterly incapable of
replying.
“Shall I tell you why?” he asked.
She rose hastily, blushing and distressed.
“Do not say any more!” she exclaimed, and was on the point of leaving
him abruptly, but checked herself, and, turning in the open low
window, held out her hand to him. “You have called me friend. Let us
remain friends,” she said.
He touched the hand, and released it without a word, and they
separated.
Half an hour afterward Bianca’s face peeped out into the moonlight.
“Are you still here, papa?” she said, and went to him. “Good-night,
dear.”
He embraced her gently, and echoed her good-night, but did not detain
her a moment.
“What! papa romancing here all alone?” exclaimed Isabel in her turn.
“It isn’t good for your complexion nor for your disposition. Late
hours and too much thinking make one sad.”
“Therefore you should go to bed directly,” was his reply.
She kissed him merrily and left him alone.
TO BE CONTINUED.
MIVART’S CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTION.[100]
If in our contemporary evolution a great genius should appear, worthy
to continue the work of St. Thomas, it would be requisite that he
should combine in himself the gifts and acquirements of a
metaphysician, a theologian, and a master of natural science. We
accentuate strongly the last of these requisites, because we are not
so much in need of pure metaphysics and theology, possessing both
already in a state of high perfection and completeness, as we are of
the mixed science in which the relations of the higher and the lower
orders of being, truth and good, are developed and manifested. There
have been some men already, since the modern period began, who have
combined metaphysical and natural science in a remarkable degree. Such
a man was Leibnitz. The famous Jesuit Boscovich was perhaps superior
intellectually, as he certainly was morally, even to this prodigy of
talent and learning. He was a great mathematician and physicist, a
great metaphysician, and a great statesman, besides being eminent in
Christian perfection and apostolic zeal. Balmes was a man of a similar
stamp, though especially eminent in social science. Among living men a
high place belongs to Father Bayma as a metaphysician, mathematician,
and physicist, although he has published little under his own name,
except his remarkable work on _Molecular Mechanics_. Such men are
invaluable at the present time. And for all those who are aiming at a
thorough education for important positions in the service of the
church and humanity, the conjoined cultivation of these various
branches of science, in the due proportion for acquiring what we have
called the mixed science, is of the highest importance. We are happy
to know that it is not neglected, and is likely to be advanced to a
higher and more extensive state of excellence in the near future. One
who has the chance of looking over the theses in physics which are
prepared for the examinations at Woodstock will be convinced that
there is one Catholic seminary, at least, in this country where such
matters receive due attention. The articles published from time to
time in the Catholic reviews of Europe, as well as an occasional
volume from the pen of a Catholic professor, are another evidence of
what we have stated. The English hierarchy, aided by the band of
gifted and learned priests and laymen who adorn the Catholic Church of
England, is distinguishing itself in the promotion of this scientific
culture. Dr. Mivart is one of this band. We have, in former numbers,
taken occasion to notice several of his works, and express our high
estimation of the courage and ability with which he is constantly
laboring for the advancement of true, Catholic science. Dr. Mivart’s
specialty is natural science; but he is not a mere physicist or
scientist. He has the genuine philosophical spirit, and shows in his
writings that he has studied to some purpose metaphysics, theology and
ethics, history, politics, and _belles-lettres_. The essays contained
in the volume we are at present reviewing were first published in the
_Contemporary Review_, with the exception of the last one, which
appeared in the _Dublin Review_. We propose, at present, to do little
more than give an analysis of their contents and of the author’s
argument.
The title informs us that his topic of discussion is, “Some great
Social Changes.” These social changes, in his idea, are very deep and
universal alterations in the social fabric which have been going on
during the entire post-mediæval period, are still in progress, and are
likely to proceed much further as time goes on. It is in view of their
bearing on the perpetuity and action of the Catholic Church that they
are considered. In the introductory chapter a general view is taken of
their nature, origin, causes and probable development, and the plan to
be followed in pursuing the particular scope of the essay is laid
down. The second chapter is on Political Evolution. The third presents
the three ideals of social organization, which are proposed by as many
different classes of political philosophers: 1. The pagan, or
monistic. 2. The civic, or that which is based on some maxims of
natural right and expediency. 3. The theocratic or mediæval. The
fourth chapter treats of Scientific Evolution, the fifth of
Philosophical and the sixth of Æsthetic Evolution.
We may as well premise a statement of Dr. Mivart’s idea of evolution
before we proceed to analyze his argument. It is a procession from an
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity, whose origin is God as first cause, whose ultimatum is
God as final cause or end, whose principle of continuity is the
intelligent volition of God as ruler, embracing all the phenomena of
the universe, physical, biological, political, moral, and religious,
in one enchainment of activities, which rise in a graduated series
from the lowest to the highest toward their Ideal in God.[101] A
similar idea is laid by Leo at the foundation of his _Universal
History_: “The Christian view of the history of the world takes all
facts, not as something new superadded by the power of man to the
creative act of God, but only as a further _evolution_ of the facts of
creation.”[102] In the introductory chapter Dr. Mivart begins by
noting the fact that there are crises or great epochs in this
historical evolution, and expressing his conviction that the present
is one of these, and particularly marked by being a period of
_conscious_ development. As the outcome of the changes occurring in
the past, he traces its logical connection with the periods of the
French Revolution, the revolt of the sixteenth century, the
Renaissance, and the conflict of Philip the Fair with the Holy See.
The process of this evolution is designated as a struggle of reviving
paganism to reject the domination of mediæval theocracy, which,
gradually obtaining success, is likely to be carried to a much further
point than it has yet reached. Two questions are proposed for
consideration: 1. “The effect on Christianity of the further
development of the great movement.” 2. “The probable result of the
renewed conflict between such a modified Christianity and a revived
paganism.”
In order clearly and fully to understand the author’s method of
treating these questions, it is necessary to place and keep distinctly
in view with whom he is arguing and on what principles. It is not with
professed Christians or Catholics that he primarily intends to discuss
these topics, on their principles, but with those who are mere
naturalists, and who admit nothing but what is evident or provable by
purely scientific and rational arguments. The truth of revelation and
the Catholic faith is therefore left on one side, and nothing is taken
into consideration except “obvious or admitted tendencies of known
natural forces and laws.” It is the author’s purpose to extort from
the enemies of revelation and the Catholic Church, by using their own
principles and ideas, evidence for the ability of the church to cope
with, overcome, and bend to her own superior force of intelligence and
will the new and hostile environments, political, scientific, and
philosophical, by which she is surrounded. In respect to the political
aspect of the question, he argues that, supposing the changes in this
order to proceed in their evolution until a complete disintegration of
the mediæval, theocratic system is effected, an interior, latent
capacity will be evolved in the church, by which she will be
integrated and strengthened for a more complete and extensive triumph
than was ever before achieved. Briefly, his argument amounts to this:
Violent, red-republican, or despotic subversions of the liberty of the
masses and social order cannot be lasting. Some kind of basis for
liberty with order must be found in natural law and right, consisting
of maxims of ethical truth and expediency. The political maxims of
England and the United States are referred to for illustration, and
the author anticipates for the English-speaking nations, their maxims
of policy and their language, an universal, predominating influence in
the future. Now, the church, he argues, can avail herself of this
liberty. The laboring classes, once liberated from and raised above
that misery and oppression which are the active cause of their
hostility against both the hierarchy and the aristocracy, can be won
over to the cause of the church. Religious orders, founded on poverty
and labor, whose members are drawn from these classes and associated
with them, can gain new life, power, and extension. Opposition and
persecution will only purify and invigorate the intellectual and moral
constitution of the church, and intensify its unity of organic life
and action. That part of society which is corrupted by pagan
immorality will be weakened and diminished by its errors and vices,
while the Catholic portion will become always stronger and more
numerous by the effect of its ethical maxims carried out in practice.
The past history of the church enables us to augur for her future
history that there are no circumstances, however difficult and
apparently destructive to her life, which she cannot surmount, and
over which she cannot achieve a complete triumph, in virtue of the
organic strength which she possesses. At the end of his long and
minute process of argument, in which he says he has “endeavored
dispassionately to estimate what, at the very utmost, must be the
destructive effects on Christianity of the greatest amount of
anti-theocratic change which can possibly be anticipated,” the author
considers that a Catholic may be fairly entitled to express the
following conviction: “By the continuance, then, of this evolutionary
process, there is plainly to be discerned in the distant future a
triumph of the church compared with which that of mediæval Christendom
was but a transient adumbration――a triumph brought about by moral
means alone, by the slow process of exhortation, example, and
individual conviction, after every error has been freely propagated,
every denial freely made, and every rival system provided with a free
field for its display――a triumph infinitely more glorious than any
brought about by the sword, and fulfilling at last the old
pre-Christian prophecies of the kingdom of God upon earth.”[103]
One-half of the volume is taken up with the consideration of political
evolution and the three political ideals. Nevertheless, the author
considers that the questions respecting science and philosophy are
much the most important. For, although he concludes from his course of
reasoning that political changes will be harmless to the church, and
even give her increased strength, coherence, and efficiency, so that a
Catholic may reasonably expect for her all that triumph which he
thinks her Author has foretold, in spite of such changes; yet, in
arguing with an unbeliever, such a ground of confidence cannot be
assumed. If the claims of the church to authority, and the dogmatic
truth of her doctrine, can be successfully assailed by science and
philosophy, then scientific and philosophical evolution must be fatal
to Christianity, and political changes will facilitate and hasten the
catastrophe, though they are powerless to produce it by their own
solitary, unaided force. Here we arrive at that part of the subject
which is to us the most interesting, and which the author has treated
in the most satisfactory manner. On this field Dr. Mivart is at home;
for it is his own peculiar ground, where he has already labored with
eminent success, and where we confidently hope he will hereafter
gather a still greater and richer harvest.
We anticipate a great revolution in the attitude of what is in common
parlance rather incorrectly called “science”――_i.e._, the complex of
various branches of physics――toward the Catholic Church. A hostile
attitude is wholly unnatural. Second-class scientists, sciolists in
knowledge, men of an imperfect and one-sided culture, are
intellectually swamped in the morass of facts, theories, and
hypotheses in which they pass their lives. The imperfect beginnings of
natural sciences present phases of apparent contradiction to revealed
truths. Imperfect theological systems, and opinions which rest on
merely human authority, but are erroneously supposed to be revealed
doctrines, frequently clash with science, or with scientific
hypotheses which are more or less probable or plausible. But there is
in genuine natural science, in the methods by which it proceeds, in
the spirit which actuates its great masters, something eminently
favorable to genuine sacred science and akin to it. The wild,
anti-Christian hypotheses which are put forth under the name of
science are not unfrequently crushed by the masters in science, even
though they are not themselves Christians. Inductive science is
modest, calm, impartial, slow, and just, in its procedure. It is like
the law in its accepting and examining evidence on all sides of every
question. The masters in science who are unbelievers are so in spite
of, and not because of, their scientific spirit and method. If they
are actively hostile to Christianity, it is because of some false
philosophy which is accidentally connected with their science, or by
reason of their ignorance of real Christianity. No false system can
stand the application of the genuine principles and method of
scientific inquiry. It is precisely by that method and those
principles that the truth of the Catholic Church is established,
corroborated, and confirmed. An amiable friend, a Unitarian minister,
once remarked to us that men’s minds were going back, by a circuitous
route, to the Catholic Church. This is what Dr. Mivart endeavors to
show. Having tried all false routes and traced up all errors to their
ending in No-Land, men work back across lots and through thickets to
the old travelled road which they abandoned through caprice.
In respect to physical science, Dr. Mivart’s principal line of
argument goes to show that it has nothing to do directly with
theology, because it is conversant exclusively with “phenomenal
conceptions.” Facts as to the coexistences and sequences of phenomena
do not furnish the philosophy by which they are to be explained. This
philosophy, and the theology which rests on it as its natural basis,
have their own distinct sphere. It is only where theology affirms
something as a revealed truth respecting facts of this kind――_e.g._,
that the sun revolves around the earth, that creation began four
thousand years before Christ, and was completed in six literal
days――that it comes upon the common ground where it can clash with
physical science. In regard to Catholic doctrine, he shows that such
affirmations are but few, and that none have ever been made into
dogmas by the authority of the church which have been afterwards
proved by scientific evidence to be false. The complete revolution in
cosmology effected by the demonstration of the Copernican system is
referred to as an instance of apparent conflict between science and
dogma which turned out to be no conflict at all. So, also, the
apparent conflict between evolutionary biology and Christian dogma,
which the author has more fully discussed in other works, is
succinctly treated. The antagonism between physics and theology,
though of long standing, is accidental, and “physical science should
be considered, alike by the philosophic Christian and anti-Christian,
as neutral and indifferent.” The only influence, therefore, which
physical science can have on Christianity is through the philosophy
which is connected with it. It is philosophy which affords the real
battle-ground for the final and decisive conflict between the
Christian and anti-Christian forces. Notwithstanding the
narrow-minded, ignorant, and absurd contempt for philosophy which many
modern scientists express, and which has been quite common for some
time past, the author thinks that the scientists themselves, even by
their destructive efforts, are aiding powerfully in bringing about a
great philosophic reaction. The author most justly observes that
fundamental questions of philosophy underlie all physical science, and
that, for this reason, the great development and wide popularity of
physical science must drive many minds into philosophy. Reviving
paganism, which is only a return to the old Aryan predilection for
pantheistic naturalism, and is theoretically based on ancient
philosophical ideas revived in new dresses by modern sophists, can
only come into that internecine conflict with Christianity, after
which it pants, on the ground of philosophy. Both sides must therefore
give themselves to philosophical study and discussion, and they have
already begun to do so. The supreme question, therefore, in respect to
the movement of contemporary evolution, is the philosophical direction
it is likely to take.
We arrive, then, at the last topic but one considered by Dr.
Mivart――viz., Philosophic Evolution, and the process by which he
endeavors to “form a final judgment as to the result of the great
conflict between reviving paganism and the Christian church.”
In Dr. Mivart’s opinion――one in which we need not say we most heartily
concur――what is needed is a return, “not to a philosophy, but to _the_
philosophy. For if metaphysics are possible, there is not, and never
was or will be, more than one philosophy which, properly understood,
unites all speculative truths and eliminates all errors: _the_
philosophy of _the_ philosopher――Aristotle.”[104] Moreover, he
declares his conviction that evolution will infallibly bring about
this return. In his view, scholastic philosophy simply went out of
fashion in the same way that mediæval architecture came to be despised
as barbarous, and will again resume its sway just as the architectural
glories of northern Europe have come to be universally appreciated.
One or two testimonies to the grandeur of the mediæval philosophy from
distinguished opponents are given. The widespread and earnest revival
of the same among Catholics all over the world is a fact too patent to
need any proof. Dr. Mivart’s almost chivalric enthusiasm for
scholastic philosophy is of itself a signal instance of a movement in
this direction from a new quarter――_i.e._, from the ranks of the
devotees of physical science. It would seem that he himself has been
led through science to philosophy, and therefore his views and
reasonings on the matter have a peculiar interest. He presents two
distinct phases of the question. One represents the inability of the
anti-Christian scientists to construct a philosophy which may
successfully oppose Christianity. The other presents positive
tendencies in scientific evolution toward the peripatetic philosophy
of the Christian schools. In respect to the first, his line of
argument shows that these anti-Christian scientists are at war with
each other and can never agree upon any one system; furthermore, that
their reasonings end in absolute scepticism, and thus undermine their
own foundations. Human nature and common sense invariably cause a
reaction against idiotic and suicidal systems of this sort. Even the
cultivation of natural science, therefore, must produce a tendency to
seek for a satisfactory system of psychology and ontology. And as the
philosophy which Des Cartes brought into vogue, ending with the
transcendentalism of Kant and his successors, is no better than a
philosophy of scepticism, it seems that a return to the mediæval and
Grecian school, to Aristotle and St. Thomas, is unavoidable. There is
but one other system which holds out the promise of a refuge from
materialism and scepticism――that of the Ontologists. This system,
however, is too contrary to the spirit and method of the natural
sciences to offer any attractions to minds seeking for a synthesis of
the spiritual and the material. The exposition of positive tendencies
toward Catholic philosophy in the evolutionary processes of modern
thought is on too abstruse and extensive a range to admit of being
more compendiously treated than it actually is in the author’s text.
We will, therefore, content ourselves with quoting his own words, in
which he summarily expresses the result of his arguments in his
conclusion: “Glancing backward over the course we have traversed, it
seems borne in upon us that the logical development of that process
which Philip the Fair began is probably advancing, however slowly, to
a result very generally unforeseen. But if such result as that here
indicated be the probable outcome of philosophical evolution,
Christianity has once more evidently nothing whatever to fear from it.
A philosophy which as a complement unites in one all other systems
will harmonize with a religion which as a complement synthesizes all
other religions, and not only religions properly so called, but
atheism also. Atheism, pantheism, and pure deism, running their
logical course and mutually refuting each other, find an ultimate
synthesis in Christianity, as we have before found them to do in
nature. Christianity affirms the truth latent in atheism――namely, that
God, as He is, is unimaginable and inscrutable by us; in other words,
no such God as we can _imagine_ exists. It also affirms the truth in
pantheism, that God acts in every action of every created thing, and
that in him we live and move and are. Finally, it also asserts the
truths of deism, but by its other assertions escapes the objections to
which deism is liable from opposing systems. Similarly, Christianity
also effects a synthesis between theism and the worship of humanity,
and that by the path, not of destruction, but through the nobler
conception of ‘taking the manhood into God.’
“Our investigations have led us to what we might have _à priori_
anticipated――the conclusion that the highest and most intellectual
power is that which must ultimately dominate the inferior forces.
Neither political nor scientific developments can avail against the
necessary consequences of philosophical evolution. No mistake can be
greater than that of supposing that philosophy is but a mental luxury
for the few. An implicit, unconscious philosophy possesses the mind
and influences the conduct of every peasant. Metaphysical doctrines,
sooner or later, filter down from the cultured few to the lowest
social strata, and become, for good or ill, the very marrow of the
bones, first of a school, then of a society, ultimately of a nation.
The course of general philosophy, it is here contended, is now
returning to its legitimate channel after a divergence of some three
centuries’ duration. This return cannot affect prejudicially the
Christian church, but must strengthen and aid it; and thus that
beneficial action upon it of political and scientific evolution,
before represented as probable, will be greatly intensified, and the
great movement of the RENAISSANCE hereafter take its place as the
manifestly efficient promoter of a new development of the Christian
organism such as the first twenty centuries of its life afforded it no
opportunity to manifest.”[105]
The author’s last chapter, on Æsthetic Evolution, is a kind of
appendix to the essay――which is really concluded with the passage just
now quoted――but it is nevertheless an ingenious and elaborate essay in
itself. The author begins by remarking that the question of evolution
in religion is one which would furnish an interesting subject of
inquiry. He then pays a very high but just tribute to the genius of
Dr. Newman, whose influence over Dr. Mivart’s mind may be traced in
all his writings, as the one who, in his great essay on Development,
has elucidated with a master-hand the evolutionary process within the
church, and anticipated the doctrines of Spencer, of Darwin, and of
Haeckel. With a passing allusion to the great Vatican decree as the
culmination of this process and the keystone of the great arch of
civil and religious liberty; and to the two distinct though intermixed
processes of evolution outside the church, one simply pagan, the other
sectarian; and to the process of disruption and dissolution which is
tending to carry the adherents of the sects either toward anti-theism
or toward the church――the author turns aside to consider a subject
closely connected with religious evolution: the probable effect of the
great modern movement of contemporary evolution upon Christian art.
Most of his remarks are upon architecture, although he touches lightly
upon music, painting, and sculpture. In music he appears to give his
vote for St. Gregory and Palestrina. In respect to painting and
sculpture, he anticipates progress in these arts by the blending of
the best elements of the Preraphaelite period and those of the
Renaissance. In handling the topic of architecture he analyzes the
arguments for and against both the Gothic and Italian styles, and ends
by declining to advocate the side of the exclusive champions of either
of the two styles. After discussing some of the general principles of
the art, he proposes a return to the style which prevailed before the
introduction of the pointed arch, as a starting point for an improved
style combining some features of the Gothic with some others of the
Romanesque style of architecture. One consideration which he presents
respecting the use of stained-glass windows strikes us as especially
worthy of attention. As ornaments and as objects of devotion, the
paintings upon glass in church-windows are far inferior to statues and
pictures, and they nevertheless exclude them and occupy their place by
reason of the quality of the light which is reflected through stained
glass. It is desirable, therefore, to find some way of making the
windows beautiful and ornamental as well as useful, and at the same
time admitting light of that quality and in that direction which is
requisite in a church decorated with paintings and statuary. Dr.
Mivart says: “In the first place, the absence of any rigid rule of
symmetry will allow the admission of light just wherever it may be
required. Secondly, the windows may be of any shape found the most
convenient――square, elongated, and narrow windows, rose-windows or
semi-circular windows, as in the nave of Bonn cathedral. They may also
be made ornamental by mullions, while tracery need not by any means be
confined to the upper part of each window, since each window may be
all tracery, the stone-work being of such thickness as may combine
strength and security with a copious admission of light. The absence
of that beautiful but self-contradictory feature, _brilliant_ stained
glass, will allow an ample supply of light without too great a
sacrifice of wall-space, and without any impairment of stability. Not
that the glazing should not be ornamental and artistic; the pieces of
glass might be so designed that their lead frame-work may form elegant
patterns, while the glass itself, of delicate grays and half-tints,
will afford a wide scope for the skilful designer.”[106]
Finally, the author winds up by expressing his belief in a future
development of Christian art in language which we condense a little
from his concluding pages: “_Nullum tempus occurrit ecclesiæ!_ The
ever-fruitful mother of beauty and of truth, of holy aspirations and
of good works, has not come to the end of her evolution even in the
world of art, and it may be affirmed that there appear to be grounds
for thinking that in the whole field of art, music, painting,
sculpture, and architecture, our successors may witness a vast, new,
complex, and stable artistic integration of a special and distinctly
Christian character――a self-consciousness, as it were, in Christian
art such as never was before, and which will appropriately serve to
externally clothe and embody that vast and magnificent Christian
development for which all phases of evolution are preparing the way,
and to which Christians may look forward with joy and hope as the one
supreme end of the whole evolutionary process, so far as the Author of
nature has revealed to us his purposes either by the lessons which the
universe of mind and matter displays before our eyes, or by
supernatural revelation.”[107]
The essay of which we have given an analysis, and all the other works
of Dr. Mivart, are well worthy of attentive perusal. Their great merit
lies in the fact that they break up new ground and lead the way to
investigations in new fields of thought. Of course it could not be
expected that subjects so wide-spreading and far-reaching as those
which the author has discussed in this volume should be thoroughly and
completely handled within so small a compass. Each chapter would
require an elaborate volume even for the full elucidation of the
author’s own ideas. Whatever difference of opinion may exist in regard
to particular views and theories, there is one grand, predominant idea
pervading them all, in which Dr. Mivart expresses in his own peculiar
way what is a very common belief and expectation of great numbers of
the most illustrious champions of the Catholic Church in the present
eventful period.
That this is really a great and critical era in the church’s history,
and that present changes and events, however painful and unpromising
they may be, are preparing the way for one of her grand and decisive
triumphs, is a general conviction in the minds of her devoted
adherents, the truth of which her most embittered enemies seem to
forebode with a dread anticipation. All things created by God have a
potentiality in them which is infinite. Much more, the greatest of his
works on this earth, the church. The mere observation of what she has
done, and of the capabilities which are contained within her, looked
at from a purely rational viewing-point, is sufficient for
prognosticating a future evolution to which no limits are assignable.
A Catholic must, however, look upon her origin, her past action, and
her future destiny as belonging to the supernatural order. She has
been created to fulfil God’s purpose. That his purpose is the final
triumph of good over evil is certain. But, in particulars, we only
know how far, how long, and in what way this triumph is decreed to
take place on this earthly arena where the church is militant; in so
far as the purposes of God are made manifest to us by actual history
or by prophecy. The general sense of the most approved interpreters of
prophecy in the sacred Scriptures justifies the expectation of some
signal triumph of the church on the earth yet to come. There seems to
be a presentiment in the hearts of the faithful that it is now drawing
near. We have a strong warrant for attributing this presentiment to a
secret movement of the Holy Spirit, in the repeated and emphatic
utterances of the august and holy Vicar of Christ upon earth, our
gloriously reigning Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX. As to the time, the
means, the nature, and the duration of this triumph of the church upon
earth, and the exact, precise sense of the unfulfilled prophecies
respecting the temporal kingdom of Jesus Christ, there is room for
much diversity of opinion. The great social changes and evolutionary
movements of which Dr. Mivart writes present a problem to a thoughtful
Christian mind very difficult of solution. “_Où allons nous!_” is the
anxious exclamation of Bishop Dupanloup in respect to France, and a
similar questioning of the future agitates the minds of men throughout
the world. Whoever has any sagacious and well-reasoned answer to this
interrogation is, therefore, likely to find eager and interested
listeners, and deserves a respectful hearing. Dr. Mivart thinks that
he sees the way out of present complications, and discovers signs
which herald the advent of a new and long period of human history
under the influence of Christianity which will be the culmination of
God’s work on the earth. Whatever may be thought by different persons
of this horoscope and of the signs in our present sky, all must admit
the ingenuity and force of reasoning which the author has displayed,
admire his chivalrous and generous spirit, and recognize the great
amount of valuable knowledge and genuine truth, both in physics and
metaphysics, contained in the volume now reviewed and in Dr. Mivart’s
other productions.
[100] _Contemporary Evolution._ An Essay on some Recent
Social Changes. By St. George Mivart. (Dedicated to the
Marquis of Ripon.) Henry S. King & Co., London. 1876. (An
American edition of the work is announced by the Messrs.
Appleton.)
[101] See p. 194.
[102] _Lehrb. der Univ. Gesch._, vol. i. p. 17.
[103] P. 121.
[104] P. 179.
[105] P. 215.
[106] P. 247.
[107] P. 253.
THE DEVIL’S CHRISTMAS GIFT.
Let fastidious and fashionable people say what they will about
shanties, there was something in Mike Roony’s humble dwelling that was
really attractive. Perched on the top of a broad and lofty rock near
the corner of Broadway and Forty-ninth Street, it commanded a
magnificent view of the Hudson River and the Sound; and as the only
way to reach it was by a flight of steps which Mike had cut in the
rock, ’twas known among the neighbors by the name of Gibraltar. Some
said Roony was a squatter; that he paid neither tax nor rent for the
small piece of Manhattan Island which he occupied. Well, be this as it
may, one thing is certain――he always declared his readiness to move
when they blasted him out. Nothing grew upon this homestead――not a
bush, not a weed, not a blade of grass; it was a little desert, roamed
over by a goat, and swept clean by the winds, which made it their
romping-ground from every quarter of the compass.
But Mike had a wife who loved flowers, and in the window fronting
south stood a flower-pot wherein there bloomed a sweet red rose.
Helen――for this was her name――had the true instincts of a lady, albeit
her garment was not of silk and she sometimes went barefoot. She kept
herself scrupulously neat――for water does not cost anything――and was
fairer to behold than the flower she cherished. Born in America, of
Irish parents, hers was one of those ideal faces which we not seldom
meet with among American women. A freckle or two only helped to set
off the perfect whiteness of her skin; her eyes had taken their hue
from the blue sky of her native land, and like the raven’s wing was
the color of her hair.
But although Helen knew that she was beautiful, and there was a small
mirror in the shanty, she did not waste any time before it, unless,
perhaps, of a Sunday morning ere going to High Mass. A true helpmate
was this wife in every sense of the word. She arose betimes, no matter
how cold the weather might be, to prepare her husband’s breakfast,
and, if a button was missing off his coat, always found time to sew it
on before he went to his work. The floor of the shanty was daily
sprinkled with fresh sand; the pictures on the wall――one of the
Blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross, the other of St. Joseph――were
never hung awry; you saw no broken panes in the windows; and the faces
of her two little children, Michael and Helen, were kept as bright and
clean as her own. She never quitted home during her husband’s absence
to gossip and talk scandal with other women; and, monotonous as her
life may seem, ’twas a happy one. Mike, too, was happy, and no mariner
homeward bound ever watched for the beacon-light on his native coast
more impatiently than he watched for the light which Helen used to
place in the window, whence he might see it from afar as he trudged
back from his day’s work. And no matter how hard it might be raining,
or snowing, or freezing, at the first glimpse of its welcome rays Mike
always burst out into a merry song. In the evening she would read him
to sleep with some story from the _Catholic Review_; then, when his
head began to nod, she gently drew the pipe out of his mouth and
whispered: “Love, ’tis bed-time.”
Oh! happy were those days――so happy that Helen would sometimes
tremble; for surely they could not last for ever――otherwise it would
be heaven on earth.
But, sober and inoffensive as Roony was, he was not without enemies;
indeed, for very reason of his sobriety and inoffensiveness some hated
him. And one evening――Christmas eve――he and his young wife were seated
by the stove, talking about the Black-eye Club, whose head-quarters
were in a liquor-store close by, and whose members had sworn vengeance
on Mike for refusing to join them. “They have threatened to beat me,”
he said; “but if they only give me fair play, I’ll be a match for the
biggest of ’em.”
“Ay, fair play!” said Helen, shuddering. “Savages like them always
take a man unawares, and, like wolves, they hunt in packs.”
“They carry pistols, too,” added Mike, “while I carry nothing but my
fists.”
“Well, bad as I feel about it, husband dear, I’d a thousand times
rather have you brave the whole villanous gang than see you join them;
for now we are so happy.” Here Helen twined her arm round his neck,
then, gazing on him with loving eye, she continued: “You have never
touched liquor, you do not get into fights, you are so good; and this
rock is dearer to me than the greenest farm in the land.”
“With you any spot would be a paradise,” rejoined Mike; “and I hope
to-morrow will be the last Christmas that we’ll go without a turkey
and some toys for the children.”
“Oh! I’m sure it will,” said Helen. “But you are right to pay all our
debts first; and already the boards which the shanty cost are paid
for, and so is the stove, and there is nothing owing except the coal”;
then, with a smile: “And I’ve promised a pailful of coal to Mrs.
McGowan, who lives on the next rock. You see, poor as we are, we can
afford to give something away. Oh! isn’t that sweet?”
“It is indeed,” answered Roony; then, after a pause: “But now tell me,
wife, who do you think is going to preach to-morrow?”
“Father H――――.”
“Really! Oh! I’m so glad; he always knows when to stop.”
“A good sermon can’t be too long,” said Helen.
“Well, I own it isn’t easy to leave off when once you get a-going. I
was a brakeman five years, and know what it is to stop a train of
cars. But if I was in the pulpit I’d know how to do it.”
“How?”
“Well, I’d just fix my eye on the sleepiest-looking fellow in the
congregation, and the very moment his head began to nod I’d lift up my
hand and say, ‘A blessing I wish you all.’” Here Helen laughed, and
while she was laughing Mike added: “And I’ve sometimes thought Father
H―――― kept his eye on me.”
While they were thus chatting by the little stove the northwest wind
went howling round the house, and Jack Frost tried his best, his very
best, to get in, but did not succeed, not even through the keyhole;
for Roony was not sparing of fuel, and the stove-pipe was red hot.
Indeed, ’twas rather pleasant to hear the voice of the blast and the
rattling of the window-panes; while at times the whole building seemed
to rise up off the rock, and then Helen would throw an uneasy glance
at her husband, who would grin and say: “It’s well anchored, darling;
never fear.” At length the clock struck midnight, and the children,
who had been sleeping on their parents’ laps, were taken gently up and
put to bed――so gently that their slumber was scarcely broken. Then
husband and wife retired too; but, ere placing their heads on the
pillow, they knelt and gave thanks to God for the many blessings they
had enjoyed since last Christmas. Oh! sweet was the sleep which
followed the prayer, and happy were their dreams; and when Christmas
morning came, the sun did not rise on a happier home than this one.
Scarcely had its rays flashed through the east window when Mike sprang
up, and, clapping his hands, shouted: “O Helen, Helen! open your eyes
and see what Santa Claus has brought you.”
Obedient to his call, Helen awoke; and sure enough, to her great
surprise, discovered one of her stockings dangling from the latch of
the door, and there was something in it, but what it might be she had
not the least notion, nor her husband either.
“Oh! go quick and see what it is,” she said. “I’m so curious to know.”
Accordingly, Mike went to the stocking; then, plunging his hand into
it, drew forth――a bottle, and on it was marked, “Whiskey.”
“Well, I declare,” he said, grinning, as he held it up, “here is
something, Nell, to drink your health with this Christmas day.”
But the wife’s bright look had vanished in a moment when she heard
what the bottle contained; and now, in a grave tone, she answered:
“No, dear, do not drink my health with that. Thank God! you have never
yet touched liquor, so do not begin the bad habit on this sacred day,
nor on any other day. Throw the bottle out of doors――do!”
“Well, now, can’t a fellow take just a sip in honor of Santa Claus,
who brought it?”
“No, no; the devil brought it. Don’t take even one drop; throw the
poison away――quick!”
“Oh! but it’s a bitter cold morning, Nell, and the fire isn’t lit, and
a sip of whiskey’ll keep me warm while I make it――only just one sip.”
“Husband, I beg you”――here the wife clasped her hands――“I implore you
to get rid of the devil’s gift as quick as possible. I see that you
are already tempted. O husband! listen to my voice.”
To calm her――for she seemed much excited――Roony opened the door, and,
stepping out into the frosty air, struck the neck of the bottle
against the rock, so as to make her believe that it was broken in
pieces; but only the neck came off. “Really,” he said within himself,
after moistening his lips with a drop, “this doesn’t taste bad; surely
a little won’t hurt me.” Then, concealing the bottle in the
goat-house, he went back and told his wife what he had never told her
before――a lie.
“You broke it! Oh! I’m so glad,” she exclained, “so very glad!” But
there was a tear in her eye as she spoke; then, while Mike busied
himself kindling the fire, Helen knelt down and remained a good while
on her knees.
“Why, Nell, what ails you?” he asked, drawing near her after she had
finished the prayer. “This is Christmas morning; let’s be merry.”
“Oh! yes, I must be merry,” she replied, trying to assume a cheerful
air. But there was something in her tone which struck Mike as
peculiar, and for a moment he blushed. Did she suspect the untruth
which he had told? No; her faith in him was unbroken, and she could
not account to herself for the heavy weight upon her heart, which even
the prayer had not taken away; and now, despite the glorious sunbeams
flooding the room and the sweet voices of her children, Helen felt
sad. Who had entered their happy home in the stillness of night, and
placed that ill-omened gift in her stocking? Might it really be the
Evil One? And while she wondered over this mysterious occurrence, she
thought of the many families, once happy and well-to-do, who had come
to grief and misery through intemperance. Was her own day of trial
approaching? What did this Christmas gift portend? “But no, no; I will
not be sad; I’ll be cheerful. For Michael’s sake I will,” she said to
herself. Then, as the bright look spread over her face, Mike clapped
his hands and shouted: “That’s right, my darling. Hurrah!”
And so the early hours went by; and when ten o’clock struck, they set
out for St. Paul’s Church, which was about nine blocks off, the mother
holding her little boy by the hand, the father carrying little Nell,
who was not yet old enough to walk so far. But when they were within a
few paces of the church door, Roony stopped and declared that he had
forgotten to feed the goat. “Well, dear, it’s too late now,” said
Helen. “Nanny can wait; you’ll miss Mass if you go back.”
“O wife! how would you like to miss your breakfast?” rejoined Mike.
“Nanny is hungry. I must return.”
“And lose Mass?” she said, with a look of tender reproach. Roony did
not answer, but turned on his heel and went away, leaving her too
overcome with surprise to utter another word.
The priest was already at the altar when Helen arrived, and the church
very full; yet more people continued to push their way in, and ever
and anon she would look round to see if her husband were among the
late-comers. She tried to keep her thoughts from wandering, but did
not succeed. Never had Helen felt so distracted before, and the
foreboding of evil which had oppressed her in the early morning now
returned and shrouded her in such gloom that she could hardly pray.
But, troubled as the poor woman was, no suspicion of the truth had yet
entered her mind. She was very innocent, and did not doubt but Mike,
having come late, was hidden among the crowd by the door.
At length the service ended; and now she felt quite certain that he
would join her. But five minutes elapsed, and then ten――a whole
quarter of an hour passed away. The congregation was fast dispersing;
still, her husband did not appear. “Oh! where can he be?” she asked
herself. “Where can he be?” At every voice that greeted her Helen
started; for many knew her and wished her a merry Christmas, and Mrs.
McGowan, who had a keen eye, exclaimed: “Why, what ails you, Mrs.
Roony?”
How lonesome the wife felt as she plodded homeward! Yet her children
were prattling merrily, and the street was full of happy people. She
was blind to them all, she was deaf to every word that was spoken, and
kept murmuring again and again: “Where can Michael be?”
Finally Helen reached home, and was about to cross the threshold, when
suddenly she paused and uttered a cry which might have been heard
afar, ’twas so loud and piercing; while little Mike and Nell exclaimed
at one breath: “Mamma, look at papa sleeping.”
Yes, there lay their father stretched upon the floor, breathing
heavily. But ’twas not the pleasant slumber into which Helen loved to
see him fall when he returned weary from a hard day’s work; and after
gazing on him a moment with an expression impossible to describe, she
buried her face in her hands. Poor thing! well might she weep; and if
a feeling of disgust mingled with her grief, may we not forgive her?
He was breathing heavily; by his right hand lay an empty bottle with
the neck broken off, and the air of the room was tainted with the
fumes of liquor.
“Stop! let your father sleep,” she said to her son, who had knelt down
and was playfully brushing the hair off his parent’s face. But this
precaution was needless; the latter was too deep in his cups to be
roused by the touch of the child’s hand, and presently, with a heavy
heart, Helen turned away and set to work to prepare the dinner. There
was no turkey to cook; still, she had intended to provide a somewhat
better repast than ordinary, it being Christmas day. But, alas! she
hardly knew what she was doing as she bustled about the stove; and
when, by and by, dinner was ready, she tasted not a mouthful
herself――all appetite had fled. The children, however, ate heartily,
pausing now and again to say: “Mamma, why don’t you call papa?”
It was evening when Roony awoke, and the moment Helen perceived that
his eyes were open she began to tremble; for, though she did not doubt
but he was sober by this time, she felt as if another man were near
her, and not the one whom she had once so honored and trusted. And as
he stared at her from the floor, he did indeed appear changed; there
was a silly, vacant look on his face, his eyes were bloodshot, and it
was almost five minutes before he attempted to rise. Then, without
opening his lips, he got up and went out of the house, closing the
door behind him with a slam.
“Well, I declare,” he said, tossing away the broken bottle――“I declare
I’ve been drunk; and, what’s more, I told a lie and missed Mass. Will
she ever forgive me?” Then stamping his foot: “Oh! what a fool I’ve
been――what a wicked fool!”
Presently, while he was thus lamenting his sins, the door opened and a
voice said: “Come to me, dear; come to me.”
“O Helen!” he cried, turning toward her, “can you forgive me, will
you?”
“Come to me,” she repeated, opening wide her arms, but at the same
time drawing back a step from the threshold; for curious eyes were
watching them from a neighboring rock. Quick Roony flew into the
shanty, then, dropping down on his knees, burst into tears. The wife
wept too, while little Mike and Nell looked on in childish wonder at
the scene.
“But, darling, why do _you_ cry?” he exclaimed presently, rising to
his feet. “_You’ve_ done nothing wrong.”
Helen made no response, but brushing the tears away, twined her arms
around his neck.
“Well, speak, darling. What have _you_ done to cry?” repeated Roony.
“O Michael!” she answered in faltering accents, “you have been such a
good, kind husband to me. We have been so happy together――so very,
very happy. God has blest us with two darling children. We might live,
perhaps, years and years in this sweet spot; and when at length death
parted us, ’twould not be for long――we should meet again in heaven. O
Michael! I weep because all this may be changed――because death might
part us for ever and ever!”
“No, no, darling, it shall not! It shall not!”
“Well, I will pray with heart and soul, husband dear, that you may not
fall a second time. Alas! if the habit of drink once fasten upon you,
it may be impossible to shake it off; and intemperance not only ruins
many a family, but damns many a soul.” At her own words the wife
shuddered and began to weep anew.
“Well, I say never fear. Not another drop of liquor will I touch,”
said Mike――“no, not another drop as long as I live.”
“Oh! thank God!” exclaimed Helen, “thank God!”
“Yes, yes, I solemnly promise it. And now, darling, try and forget all
about my wickedness to-day, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll forget all about it,” she answered. With this Helen began
to sing a merry song, in which her husband joined, while the children
went romping around the room, and the cricket came out of his tiny
hole beneath the stove and chirped merrily too. But although Helen had
forgiven him, yet Mike’s conduct had wrought a deep impression on her;
and when bedtime arrived and they retired, he slept soundly enough,
but she lay awake for hours. And whenever the wind shook the house,
she would tremble; and once the door seemed to open. But no, this was
merely fancy. The noise, however, which startled her at midnight was
real and not imagination. It proceeded from the den where the
Black-eye Club was celebrating Christmas, and mingled with their yells
were horrible oaths. Helen did not doubt but a fight was going on;
perhaps some one was being beaten to death. Then she turned toward her
husband, and even touched him, to make quite sure that he was lying
beside her.
The following day Roony went off to work as usual, and came back in
the evening, cheered as usual, too, by the light in the window; and
immediately its welcome rays flashed upon him, he exclaimed: “Oh! what
a good wife I have. God bless her!”
Ay, Helen is good! Her heart is with you, Mike, wherever you go; and
at this very moment she is kneeling by the little beacon, praying that
it may guide you safely to her side, and that you may not be tempted
to stray into the bar-room on the corner.
But not the next day only, the whole week, Roony was his old,
good-natured, hard-working, sober self; and what had marred the joy of
Christmas was fast fading from Helen’s memory. But one Saturday
evening, as he was trudging homeward with his pocket full of wages,
there came over him a sudden craving for spirits; the broken bottle
out of which he had taken his maiden drink seemed to rise up before
his eyes; the delicious taste of the whiskey was on his lips afresh.
In fact, the craving was so very strong, so wholly unexpected, that it
startled him, and his heart beat violently.
“Oh! I never thought I should be seized in this way,” he groaned. “How
very strange! I can’t resist; yet I must. O Helen! would to God I had
not taken that first drink.” The words were scarcely breathed when the
beams of the home-light flashed upon him. ’Twas still a good distance
off, and the air was muggy and thick, yet it shone brighter than Mike
had ever seen it shine before. For about a minute he watched it
yearningly; he even quickened his steps and twice groaned, “O Helen!”
Then, muttering a curse upon himself, he turned his eyes away from the
light, and at the same time, swerving out of the dear home-path, he
hurried on to the liquor-saloon.
“Three cheers for Mike Roony!” was the salutation which greeted him
from a dozen voices as he entered. “I knew you’d join us afore long,”
said the President of the Black-eye Club, advancing and shaking him
warmly by the hand; then, motioning to the others, their empty glasses
were refilled and the new-comer’s health toasted. Presently Roony
wanted to treat; but “No, no,” they all shouted; “’tis our privilege
to treat you this evening.” Whereupon the bottle was passed round
again; while poor Mike, flattered beyond measure by this unlooked-for
reception, thought to himself: “What a fool I was not to join the club
long ago!”
And so on they went carousing, and Helen’s husband growing more and
more intoxicated, until at length, when he was barely able to stand, a
voice exclaimed: “Now, boys, let’s christen him.” Quick as lightning a
violent blow on the eye followed these words; then down dropped Roony
unconscious to the floor.
“Where can he be?” said the anxious wife, seeing that he did not
return at the usual hour. “I pray God nothing has happened. The dear
fellow came near being killed by a blast last year. O my God! I hope
nothing has happened.” After waiting for him awhile, Helen and her
young ones took their places at the supper-table; but not a morsel did
she eat. A vague fear possessed her. The children spoke, but the
mother answered them not; the cricket chirped――she was deaf to its
merry song; and every few minutes she would open the door, and look
out and listen. But no husband appeared. And now, without him, how
everything seemed to change! The rock, the shanty, the pretty rosebush
she cherished, even the children whom she loved ten thousand times
more than the rose――all appeared different to her eyes; nothing was
the same when he who was the corner-stone of home was missing; and
Helen realized as never before what a link of adamant bound her heart
to his. “Oh! if anything has happened. If he is killed, ’twill kill me
too,” she sighed. Then, when little Mike asked, “Where is papa?” she
answered, “Coming soon.” And even to speak these words brought her a
moment’s peace of mind, and she would try to think of some good cause
which might detain him. But the clock went on ticking, and the
hour-hand moved further and further toward midnight; still, no husband
came. The children were put to bed, and soon were fast asleep; the
fire in the stove died out; the cricket became silent; but the wife
grew more and more wakeful, while ever and anon she would go to the
window and nervously snuff the candle burning there. Then again she
would open the door and listen――listen with all her ears; but she
heard only the throbbing of her heart and boisterous voices in the
direction of the liquor-saloon.
“Well, I’ll watch and pray till he arrives,” said Helen; then kneeling
beside the crib where her children were sleeping, she lifted her
thoughts to God. But the many hours she had been awake, the busy day
prolonged so far into night, proved at last too much for her; and just
as the clock struck one her weary eyes closed and her guardian angel
took up the prayer which she left unfinished.
How long Helen slept she did not know; but when she awoke the candle
had burned out and the chamber was pitch dark. “Oh! what is the
matter? What did I hear? Was it only a dream?” she cried, starting to
her feet.
“Come, now, I want my supper!” growled Mike, staggering further into
the room. “Where’s my supper?”
Pen cannot describe the wife’s feelings as she groped about for the
match-box. And when finally, after letting three or four matches drop
out of her quivering fingers, she succeeded in lighting a fresh
candle, what a sight did she behold! Was this man scowling at her,
with one eye battered and swollen, her own Michael?
“I say, where’s my supper?” he repeated with an oath.
Without uttering a word, but with a sinking of the heart which she had
never experienced till now, Helen made haste to kindle a fire and heat
up the potatoes and pork which she had laid aside for him in the
evening. While thus employed Roony dropped down on a bench; then,
after grumbling at her a few minutes, began suddenly to giggle. “I
want you to know,” said he, “that I’m now a member of the Black-eye
Club. But that’s plain enough by looking at me, eh? And when I’ve
eaten supper, I’m going to make you cut my hair――cut it short to
fighting trim.”
“O husband!” replied Helen, in a voice of sorrowful entreaty, “do not
break my heart, I love you so.”
“Break your heart! Ha! ha! that’s a good joke.” Then, glancing up at
the clock: “Well, by jingo, Nell, I’d better call this meal breakfast.
Why, it’s pretty nigh four, isn’t it?”
Encouraged, perhaps, by the somewhat milder tone in which these last
words were spoken, she now approached him, and, bending down,
proceeded to examine his wounded eye. “Yes, bathe it for me,” he
continued. “But, for all it hurts, I’m deuced proud of it; for it’s
the christening mark of the Black-eye Club.”
“Oh! hush, dear. Don’t mention that wicked gang any more,” said the
wife. “I hate them; they are fiends.”
“Fiends? Ha, ha! Well, well, hurry up with my breakfast or supper,
whichever you choose to call it; then get the scissors and cut off my
hair.”
“Let me bathe your poor eye first,” she answered; “then, after you
have done eating, ’twill be daylight, and I want you, love, to come to
Mass this morning, and to see the priest; we’ll go together. O
Michael! dark clouds are lowering over us; come with me to the
priest.”
“To the priest? No, indeed! The Black-eye Club have nothing to do with
priests.”
“O husband! do not talk so; save yourself before it is too late,” she
went on, as she sponged the clotted blood off his cheek.
“I can’t, wife. The craving for spirits is too strong. It all comes, I
know, from that one little drink Christmas morning. Now I’m not master
of myself; I believe there’s a devil in me.”
A long, shadowy silence followed, during which Helen wept, while ever
and anon Roony would say, “It’s no use crying.” While he was at his
breakfast she once more begged him to go with her to Mass. But again
he refused, saying, “Our club don’t go to Mass; nor must you, until
you have trimmed my hair.”
“Why, ’tis short enough,” replied Helen.
“Is it? Look!” And as Mike spoke he clutched a fistful of it, then
gave a pull. “Now, don’t you see that some chap might grab me and get
my head in ‘chancery’? I want my hair short as pig’s bristles, and
well greased too; then I’ll be like an eel, and grab me who can.”
The wife obeyed without a murmur, performing the operation to his
entire satisfaction; after which, approaching the crib where her
children were sleeping, she gave each a soft kiss, then went off by
herself to church.
Helen had never been wanting in devotion; her faith had always been
strong. But now, as she took her way along the lonely street, with the
morning star still shining in the heavens, she felt as though God were
come nearer to her; and all her former prayers were cold compared with
the prayers which she offered this morning at the foot of the altar.
And when Mass was over and she turned her steps homeward, ’twas with a
more cheerful heart and a firm resolution to be a loving and faithful
wife to the end, the bitter end, whatever it might be.
When Helen entered the shanty she found her husband gone. But little
Mike was there, and he looked so like his father; and little Nell was
there too. Oh! surely they would not be abandoned. “No, God is with
us,” she murmured. “My prayers will be heard, and Michael will one day
be what he used to be. Yes, yes! I know it.” As she spoke a radiant
look spread over her face; then, making the sign of the cross, she
straightway set about her daily duties as if nothing had happened. O
blessed Faith! which makest the darkest hour bright; richer, indeed,
in gifts than a gold-mine art thou, and stronger than a mountain to
lean upon in moments like these!
When evening came round, Helen placed the candle in the window as
usual, although she had faint hope that Mike had been at work. And
again she set up till a very late hour, keeping the fire burning and
taking good care not to fall asleep this time.
It was one o’clock when Roony returned. He was not tipsy, but surly,
and when she laid her hand on his arm he flung it away, saying, “Now,
I want no preaching and petting; I want my supper.” The poor woman was
a little frightened, and waited upon him awhile in silence.
“Yet I must speak,” she murmured; “I must brave his anger. No husband
was ever kinder than he, no spouse happier than I have been till now;
I must make one more effort to save him from ruin.” With this, she
again gently touched his arm and said, “Dear love――”
“D―――― your preaching; I won’t listen to it,” he snarled, cutting
short her words, and in a voice so loud that it awoke the children.
Then, presently, shrugging his shoulders, “Oh! you needn’t whimper.
I’m bound to be master here.”
“Have I ever denied your authority?” inquired Helen, looking calmly at
him through her tears.
“Oh! hush. Don’t bother me,” continued Roony, lifting up his plate.
Then, as if he had changed his mind about throwing it at her, he
dashed it into shivers on the floor.
“Alas! what a curse liquor is,” she cried in a tone of passionate
energy. “What a terrible curse!”
“Well, I’m not drunk, am I?”
“But you have been drinking; and the poison is in your veins. O
Michael! for God’s sake abandon the villanous set you belong to!” Here
he clenched his fist. But heedless of the threat she went bravely on:
“Think how happy we were, Michael. This bare rock was more lovely than
a garden to us. And we have two dear children; look at them yonder!
Look at them!”
“I say, woman, go to bed and leave me alone,” thundered Roony,
bringing down his huge fist on the table with a thump which made
everything in the shanty rattle.
Poor, poor Helen! With a heart torn by anguish, she obeyed. But not a
wink of sleep came to her――no, not a wink, and never night seemed
longer than this one. But her husband slept like a top, nor opened his
eyes until ten the next morning; then, as soon as he was dressed, and
without waiting for breakfast, out he went to take a drink.
“Oh! what is coming? What is going to happen now?” thought Helen, as
she watched him enter the bar-room. Then kneeling down, she said a
prayer.
The clock had just struck noon when Mike returned, accompanied part of
the way by another man, who helped him mount the difficult path which
wound up the rock; and Roony needed assistance, for even when he
gained the summit he could not walk straight, and fell within a yard
of his door. Quick Helen ran to him; for, although his condition
filled her with disgust, yet she could not abide the thought of other
eyes than hers discovering him thus. “Come in, husband, come in the
house,” she said, taking his arm. Scarcely, however, had she got him
on his feet again when he caught her by the throat and exclaimed, in
the voice of a wild beast, “Ah, ha! now I’m going to beat you.” But in
an instant Helen broke loose from him; then rushing back into the
shanty, she called her children and bade them hurry out on the rock.
The little things obeyed, too innocent to know what the trouble was.
Then facing her husband, who was scowling at her from the threshold,
“Now enter,” she said, “and beat me if you will. Here, at least,
nobody will witness the deed.” Roony staggered in and Helen closed the
door.
That evening, after pressing her children many times to her poor
bruised heart, Helen went away. She quitted the home where she had
once been so happy, and, as she went, she said to herself: “If on my
wedding day an angel from heaven had told me this, I should not have
believed him.”
But the step she was now taking was all for the best. In his madness
Roony had threatened to kill her. “And he might do it,” she sighed,
“for when he is intoxicated he doesn’t know what he is doing. And then
all his life afterward he would be haunted by remorse. Poor Michael! I
believe he still loves me. For his own sake I am going away.”
It was Helen’s intention to seek refuge with a family who dwelt not
far off, and for whom she had once done some work. They received her
very kindly, and wondered ever so much at the ugly cut under one of
her eyes, from which the red drops were still oozing; and her upper
lip, too, was cut. But Helen refused to tell who had ill-used her.
“Pray, ask no questions,” she said. “Only furnish me with employment;
I’ll drudge; I’ll do anything to earn a little money.” Accordingly,
they gave her a number of shirts to make; and being a deft hand at
needle-work, she was able to gain quite a good livelihood. But it was
not for herself that Helen labored, ’twas for those whom she loved
better than herself. And every evening, when the stars began to
twinkle, she visited her old home, and there, peeping through the
window, would watch little Mike and Nell with yearning eyes. And once
she saw her husband seated by the stove, eating a piece of the bread
and meat which she had left at the door the previous evening.
“Oh! thank God!” she said, “that I am able to support him and the
children. Perhaps ere long my prayers will be heard, and I shall be
happy again.”
But Roony was still drinking steadily; even now, as he ate the cold
victuals, he was barely able to sit on the chair, and so the poor
woman did not venture to show herself. Next day, however, the fifth
since she left home, the longed-for opportunity presented itself; Mike
was sober, and with bounding heart Helen went into the shanty.
“O wife!” he exclaimed, rising to meet her, “’tis an age since I laid
eyes on you. Where have you been?” Then his countenance suddenly
growing dark as a thundercloud, “but, by heaven! what’s happened? How
came those bruises on your face? Somebody has ill-treated you! Tell me
the villain’s name, that I may take his heart’s blood.”
“I’ll never tell his name,” answered Helen, in a low but firm voice.
“Never!”
For about a minute Roony gazed on her in silence; the mournful, the
shocking truth seemed to be gradually dawning upon him. “Oh! is it
possible? Could I have done it――done such a wicked, brutal thing?” he
asked himself. Then, falling on his knees, he bathed her feet with
bitter tears. Helen wept also, while the children ceased their gambols
and wondered what was the matter. But presently the wife bade him
rise, then, twining her arms round his neck, gave him a tender
embrace, by which he knew that he was forgiven. And now for a brief
half-hour, oh! how happy he was, and how happy she was! During the
dark days which followed Helen often looked back to those fleeting
moments; ’twas like a gleam of sunshine flung across a scathed and
desolate landscape.
“Now, husband dear,” she said after he had fondled her a little while,
“let me put things to rights.” Whereupon she took her broom, swept the
floor, and sprinkled it with clean sand; the pictures were dusted; the
clock set agoing; the rosebush watered; nor was the poor goat
forgotten. And delighted, indeed, was the half-starved creature to see
her again.
“Helen!” exclaimed Mike, while she was thus employed, “a wife like you
is a priceless treasure. Would to Heaven I had listened to you
Christmas morning! What a different man I’d be now!”
“Well, love, all is bright once more,” answered Helen, cheerily. He
made no response save a deep sigh.
“Why, husband dear, what troubles you?” she asked, her look of joy
vanishing in a moment.
“No slave was ever bound by such chains as bind me,” he groaned,
dropping his forehead in his hands. “And it all comes from that one
fatal drink.”
“Well, pray, dear, pray to God, and I will pray with you.”
“Too late! The craving for liquor which seizes me at times is
irresistible; ’tis seizing me now――the demon!”
“O my Saviour!” cried Helen, trembling and turning pale. The words had
hardly left her lips when the door opened and a strange face――at least
it was new to her――peeped in.
“Time!” spoke the chief of the Black-eye Club in a voice which caused
Roony to start to his feet.
“Begone!” cried Helen, advancing boldly toward the intruder.
“Time!” he repeated, now holding up a pistol. But, nothing daunted,
she was about to try and close the door on him, when her husband
slipped past, and ere she could recover from her amazement they were
both beyond the rock and half way to the grog-shop.
That night the poor woman remained in the shanty, watching, and
weeping, and praying. But her husband did not come back till sunrise;
and then he was so crazy with drink that she deemed it best to quit
her home once more. Accordingly, she returned to the kind people who
had given her shelter and employment. But it was not easy to settle
down anew to her sewing; the needle would drop from her fingers and a
cold fear thrill through her veins as she thought of the repulsive,
sin-stamped face which had peeped into the shanty and enticed her dear
Michael away. We may imagine, also, her agony of mind when it was
reported that a burglary, accompanied by murder, had been committed
during the night, and that suspicion pointed to certain members of the
Black-eye Club. But, to her unspeakable relief, Mike was not among
those who were arrested. The chief of the gang, however, was; and
condemned, too, to be hanged; which sentence would doubtless have been
carried out had he not managed to escape from prison. This incident,
far from ruining the Black-eyes, only afforded them a pleasing
excitement; like rats when the cat comes, they dived into their holes
for a space; then out they came as flourishing as ever, and Roony was
one of their most popular members.
But let us be brief with our story. Why linger over poor Helen’s
misery? Why tell of all the brutal treatment she suffered?
Month after month rolled by. Spring came; summer followed spring. Yet
there was no change for the better in Mike. His shanty, once the
prettiest and cleanest of all the shanties on Manhattan Island, grew
to be the dirtiest and most forlorn-looking. The door was kicked off
its hinges, ugly rags and papers fluttered in the broken windows, and
occasionally the Black-eye Club assembled on the rock, making it the
scene of a drunken revel. But brave, faithful Helen continued to visit
her children every evening after dark, carrying them food and
clothing. She would not remove them from the spot which she still
called home, for she hoped that the sight of the little innocents
would sooner or later call her husband back to his old self again. And
every day Helen went to St. Paul’s church and made the Stations of the
Cross; this was her favorite devotion. “And if my Saviour suffered so
much,” she would say, “oh! surely, I can bear my load.” Yet there were
moments when she seemed well-nigh ready to sink under it. Ay, more
than once Hope wrestled with Despair; but Hope always came off
victorious.
If the wife’s faith was still glowing, if her trust in God continued
strong as ever, nevertheless in one respect a woful change appeared in
her. Oh! sad was the havoc which this year of grief, of cruel
ill-treatment wrought on her once bright and lovely face! ’Twas as if
a coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate tints of that sweet picture,
and left behind, not the ruins of her beauty, but the ruins of those
ruins.
And now in time’s monotonous circle winter is come round again;
another Christmas is at hand. Evergreens and toys, laughing children
and good-humored parents, with well-filled purses, all tell it to you.
And papa and mamma, as they dash hither and thither in their jingling
sleighs, doubt not but everybody else is happy too: Santa Claus will
visit every home; Santa Claus will fill every stocking. Why, who could
help feeling merry at this holy season?――unless, perhaps, the turkeys.
Yes, it is Christmas Eve.
“How well I remember last Christmas!” sighed poor Helen as she leaned
back in her chair and gazed with tearful eyes at the shirt which,
alas! she was unable to finish. How could she finish it? She was
barely able to see. Yet those livid, tell-tale marks on her visage,
painful as they are, are easier to bear than the curses and unfeeling
words which have broken her heart at last. As night approached, snow
began to fall and the wind to blow――a keen, angry wind from the
north-east; one of those winds we love so to hear howling round the
house while we sit toasting our slippers by the fire. But, bitter cold
as it was, Helen did not shrink from going to church; although
half-blind, she could still find the way there.
She went; she made anew the stations of the Cross, and said, as she
had so often said before, “If my Saviour suffered so much, oh! surely
I can bear my load.” As she breathed these words to herself the ugly
black-and-blue marks which disfigured her seemed to fade away, a glow
of heaven shone in her face, and for a moment, one brief moment, she
became once more the beautiful Helen――Helen, “the Belle of the
Shanties,” as Mrs. McGowan used to call her――then suddenly she gave a
start and the mien of rapture changed to a look of wonder and alarm.
Who had spoken her name? There was nobody near; who could it be? While
Helen was gazing about her, she heard the voice again. “Who is calling
me?” she asked, her heart now throbbing violently. The words were
scarcely uttered when for the third time, and more distinctly,
“_Helen!_” sounded in her ear. “It is Michael!” she exclaimed,
hastening to the door. “Yes, it is he calling me.” But ere she passed
out of the church she broke off a sprig of evergreen and dipped it
into the holy-water font. Then hiding it in her bosom, so that the
angry wind might not snatch it away, she sped homeward on winged feet.
But ’twas no easy matter to get to the rock at this hour with her poor
bruised eyes and in such a driving storm. Yet she did find the way.
And up the rude path she climbed with marvellous agility; ’twas as
though an invisible hand were leading her on.
The sight which Helen beheld on entering the shanty might have
appalled any heart but hers. Her husband, his face streaming with
blood, was engaged in a deadly struggle with a horrible-looking being
much larger than himself, who seemed striving to make him drink from a
cup which he pressed to his lips. “O Ellen!” cried Michael in a tone
of despair, “save me! save me!” Quick she flew towards him, stretching
forth at the same time the branch of evergreen. In another instant
’twas in his hand; then, just as he grasped it, his strange adversary
uttered a demoniac cry and the cup fell to the floor, shattered in
many pieces.
“Oh! I am saved,” exclaimed Roony――“saved! saved! Thank God!” But
while his joyful words were ringing through the house, the fiend
turned upon his deliverer and out into the black night Helen was
driven. Vainly she struggled; a powerful hand, which seemed mailed in
iron, thrust her out, and presently, when released from its ruthless
grip, she found herself blindly groping here and there in the
darkness. Round and round the house she wandered――near it always, yet
never finding it.
And during these sad moments, the last moments of her life, her
husband was anxiously seeking her. But it was easy to miss each other
in such a snow-storm, and when he shouted her name the wild wind
carried away her response, until at length, numbed by the cold, she
answered him no more. And so, within a few feet of home, the brave
Helen, the faithful Helen, was wrapt in a winding-sheet of snow.
* * * * *
Next morning――sweet Christmas morning――the sun rose in a cloudless
sky; and as its bright beams flashed from window to window, from spire
to spire, every object, the humblest, the least beautiful, became
suddenly transformed into a thing of beauty. Ay, even those two icy
hands peeping above the snow hard by Mike Roony’s shanty door sparkle
as if they were covered with gems and have a golden halo round them.
They were clasped as if in prayer, and when poor Mike discovered them
he cried aloud: “Oh! she prayed for me to the last; she prayed for me
to the last!”
His wail was heard at the next rock, and far beyond it. Then a crowd
began to collect, a very large crowd; for Helen was known to many, and
her husband was not the only one who shed tears over her remains this
bright Christmas morning.
“I had a feeling that something was going wrong,” spoke Mrs. McGowan.
Then, when Roony told of the infernal being who had attacked him, and
how he had been rescued by the blessed evergreen which Helen had
brought, the good woman solemnly shook her head, and whispered: “This
house ought to be exorcised――indeed it ought.”
“Well, one thing I vow by all that’s holy,” ejaculated Mike, crossing
himself and lifting his voice so that the crowd might hear him――“I vow
never again to touch liquor――never, never, never!”
“I join you!” exclaimed a bystander.
“So do I!”
“And I too!”
“And I!” shouted a number of voices. And those who spoke were members
of the notorious Black-eye Club. Then they all knelt around the body
and swore, hand-in-hand together, never to drink another drop of
intoxicating spirits.
And thus by Helen’s death many sinners were converted, many a
drunkard’s home made happy again; for the ways of the Lord are
mysterious. Good is not seldom wrought out only through tears and
suffering. Oh! who will say it was not well for Helen to die?
But poor Mike was inconsolable. He who had once been so blithe and
frolicsome now spoke scarcely a word. Days and weeks rolled by, yet he
did not change. We may pity him indeed! There was no light in the
window now to welcome him from afar as he trudged back from his work
in the dusk. And when he sat down to warm himself by the stove,
instead of lighting his pipe as of yore and falling into a pleasant
doze, he became strangely wakeful.
Then the spectre remorse would glide out of some shadowy corner and
whisper bitter words in his ear. If at times he succeeded in silencing
its voice, and would give himself up to a reverie of other days, when
this miserable shanty was more gorgeous to him than a palace, oh! the
pleasure which the sweet vision brought was like music heard from
withinside a prison wall, like sunshine seen through the bars; for
those golden days would come never more. Eternity stood between him
and them.
Then back remorse would creep and whisper: “You beat her――you broke
her heart――you killed her――you did――you did!”
And one evening, while these torturing words were wringing his soul,
he threw up his right hand――the hand which had struck her so
often――and groaned aloud: “Oh! this is hell. Where’s the axe?”
Forlorn wretch! well it was that as he bared his arm and clutched the
axe――ay, well it was that at that very moment the minister of God
appeared to check the rash deed he contemplated, to speak soothing
words, to save him, perhaps, from madness.
And as from this hour forth a new life began for Michael Roony, we end
our tale with the closing advice which the priest addressed him. “My
dear friend,” he said, “do not weep any more, for tears will not bring
back your wife. There is nothing in this world so vain as regret.
Therefore cease to mourn; strive your best to be cheerful.” Then
pointing to little Mike and Nell, who were playing at his feet, “work
hard, too, for these children whom she bore you. For their sake, as
well as your own, keep true to the pledge of temperance, and so live
here on earth that one day you may meet again your dear Helen in
heaven.”
SIENA.
_Cor magis Sena pandit._
The railway from Empoli to the south passes through a rough, hilly
country, following its sinuosities, spanning the valleys on gigantic
arches, or plunging through the tunnelled mountains. One tunnel is a
mile long――through the hill of San Dalmazzo; and when you issue from
it, you see before you another hill, on which rises, stage after
stage, the strange, mediæval city of Siena, to the height of nearly a
thousand feet above the level of the sea. It was rather a
disappointment not to enter it, as carriages from Florence do, by the
celebrated Porta Camollia, where the traveller is greeted by the
cordial inscription, _Cor magis Sena pandit_――Siena opens her gates
even more willingly than her heart――testifying to the hospitable
character of the inhabitants. The city is built on three hills, with
deep ravines between them. These hills are crossed by three main
streets, meeting at the Piazza del Campo, around which the city
radiates like a star. There is scarcely a level spot in the whole
place. Even the central square descends like the hollow of a cone.
Nothing could be more favorable to the picturesque. The old brick
walls of the thirteenth century, with their fortifications and
thirty-eight gate-ways, go straggling up the heights. Narrow,
lane-like streets, inaccessible to carriages, rush headlong down into
deep ravines, sometimes through gloomy arches, the very houses
clinging to the steep sides with a giddy, top-heavy air. On one of
these three hills stands the cathedral, with its lofty arches and
magnificent dome, a marvel of art, full of statues and bronzes,
carvings and mosaics. On another is the enormous brick church of San
Domenico, for ever associated with the divine raptures of St.
Catharine of Siena. Palaces, as well as churches, adorn all the
heights――palaces grim and time-worn, that bear old, historic names,
famed in the great contests between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, in
which live, secluded in their own dim halls, the aristocratic owners,
keeping up their ancient customs, proud as the imperial Ghibellines or
lordly Guelphs from whom they sprang. Amid all the towers, and domes,
and palaces, rises, from the central square, light and slender, the
tall, arrow-like Torre del Mangia, which shoots up to a prodigious
height into the sapphire sky, crowned with battlements, as if to
defend the city against the spirits of the air.
Yes, Siena is singularly picturesque and striking as no other city in
Italy is, but sad and melancholy with its recollections of past
grandeur. It cannot forget the time when it sent forth its legions to
triumph over the Florentines, and had two hundred thousand
inhabitants. Now it has only about a tenth of that number. Once it was
great in war. It was a leader in art. Eight popes sprang from its
territory, among whom were Pius II., the poet, diplomatist, and lover
of art, from the Piccolomini family; the great Hildebrand, so
prominent in the history of the church; and Alexander III., who
deposed Frederick Barbarossa, and gave his name to a city――styled by
Voltaire himself the benefactor of the human race. And like so many
stars that blaze in the heaven of the Italian Church――nay, the church
universal――are the Sienese saints, wondrous in life and glorified by
art.
The first place into which the traveller inevitably drifts, if he
attempts to explore the city alone, is the Piazza del Campo, now
called, of course, Vittorio Emmanuele, in spite of Dante. This piazza
is singularly imposing from its unchanged, mediæval aspect. It slopes
away like an amphitheatre, being intended for public games and
spectacles; Murray says, like a shell. Yes, a shell that whispers of
past storms――of the tempestuous waves that have swept over the city;
for it has witnessed many a popular insurrection, many a struggle
between the nobles and people. Among the interesting associations we
recall the haughty Ghibelline leader, Provenzano Salvani, whose name,
as Dante says:
“Far and wide
Through Tuscany resounded once; and now
Is in Siena scarce with whispers named.”
It was here, when a friend of his, taken prisoner by Charles of Anjou,
lay under penalty of death, unless his ransom of a thousand florins in
gold should be paid within a certain time, that Provenzano, the first
citizen of the republic, the conqueror of Monte Aperti, unable to pay
so large a sum, humbled himself so far as to spread a carpet on this
piazza, on which he sat down to solicit contributions from the public.
“When at his glory’s topmost height,
Respect of dignity all cast aside,
Freely he fixed him on Siena’s plain,
A suitor to redeem his suffering friend,
Who languished in the prison-house of Charles;
Nor, for his sake, refused through every vein to tremble.”
Dante, who meets him in Purgatory, alludes to the grandeur of this act
as atoning for his ambition, which
“Reached with grasp presumptuous at the sway
Of all Siena.”
So stanch a friend would seem to have deserved a less terrible fate.
On the disastrous day of Colle he was taken by the Florentines, who
cut off his head, and carried it around the battle-field, fastened on
a lance.
On one side of the piazza is the massive Palazzo Pubblico, bristling
with battlements. On its front blazes the holy name of Jesus, held up
by St. Bernardin of Siena for the reverence of the whole world. The
busy throng beneath looks up in its toilsome round, and goes on, the
better for a fleeting thought. Below is a pillar with the wolf of
pagan Rome that bore Siena. From this palace rises the beautiful tower
_del Mangia_, seen far and wide over the whole country, so called from
the automaton which used to come forth at mid-day, like the Moor at
Venice, to strike the hours. This figure was to the Sienese what
Pasquino was to Rome. To it were confided all the epigrams of the city
wits; but, alas for them! one day, when it came forth to do its duty,
a spring gave way, and it fell to the ground and was dashed in pieces.
This tower commands an admirable view. North, the country looks
barren, but the slopes of Chianti are celebrated for their wines, and
Monte Maggio is covered with forests. South and west, it is fresher
and more smiling, but leads to the fatal marshes of Maremma. Santa
Fiora, the most productive mountain, annually yields vast quantities
of umber. The happy valleys are full of olives and wheat-fields.
Farther off, to the south, the volcanic summits of Radicofani,
associated with Boccaccio’s tales, blacken the horizon. To the east
everything is bleak and dreary, the whole landscape of a pale, sickly
green.
At the foot of the tower is a beautiful votive chapel of the Virgin,
built in the fourteenth century after a pestilence which carried off
eighty thousand people from Siena and its environs. It is like an open
porch resting on sculptured pillars. Over the altar within are statues
and a fresco of the Madonna, before which are flowers and lamps
burning in the bright sunlight――all open to the air, as if to catch a
passing invocation from the lips of those who might otherwise spare no
thought, amid their toils, for heaven.
Siena is peculiarly the city of Mary. Before the great battle with the
Florentines,
“That colored Arbia’s flood with crimson stain,”
the Sienese solemnly placed their city under the protection of the
Virgin, and vowed, if victorious, to regard her as the Sovereign Lady
of the land, from whom they would henceforth hold it as her vassals.
After their triumph they came to lay their spoils at her feet, and had
her painted as Our Lady of Victory, throned like a queen, with the
Infant standing on her knee. When Duccio, some years later, finished
his Madonna, he wrote beneath it: _Mater sancta Dei, sis causa Senis
requiei!_――Give peace to Siena!――and the painting was transported,
amid public rejoicings, to the cathedral. Business was entirely
suspended. All the shops were closed. The archbishop, at the head of
the clergy and magistrates, accompanied it with a vast procession of
people, with lighted tapers in their hands, as if around a shrine. The
trumpets sounded; the bells rang; nothing could equal the enthusiasm.
The picture was placed over the high altar of the church.
This was during the height of Siena’s grandeur, when the wisdom of its
laws corresponded to the depth of its religious sentiments, so that,
while most of the Italian republics were ruined by intestine
commotions between the nobles and people, Siena had the wisdom to
modify its constitution in such a way as to admit the representatives
of both parties to the government, and so preserve the vigor of the
nation. It was thus she was enabled to extend her dominion and win the
great victory of Monte Aperti, in which ten thousand Florentines were
left dead on the field.
On one side of the piazza is the palace of the Sansedoni, one of the
great Ghibelline families belonging to the feudal aristocracy of
Siena――a frowning, battlemented palace, with a mutilated tower built
by a special privilege in 1215. In it is a chapel in honor of the
Beato Ambrogio Sansedoni, a Dominican friar who belonged to this
illustrious family. It was he whom Pope Clement IV., after a vain
effort to save the unfortunate Conradin of Souabia from death, sent to
administer the sacraments and console the young prince in his last
moments. Ambrogio distinguished himself as a professor of theology at
Paris, Cologne, and Rome.
Close beside the Palazzo Buonsignori, one of the finest in the city,
is the house said by tradition to have been inhabited by the unhappy
Pia de Tolomei, indebted for her celebrity to Dante, rather than to
her misfortunes. He meets her in the milder shades of Purgatory, among
those who had by violence died, but who, repenting and forgiving,
“Did issue out of life at peace with God.”
Her death was caused by the deadly miasmas of “Maremma’s pestilential
fen,” to which her cruel husband had banished her.
It was a member of the Tolomei family――the Beato Bernardino――who, in
the fourteenth century, founded the Olivetan Order. He was previously
a professor at the university of Siena, but, being struck blind while
discussing some philosophical subject in his lecture-room, he
resolved, though he soon recovered his sight, to embrace the religious
life; and when he next appeared in his chair, instead of resuming his
philosophical discussions, he astonished his audience by insisting on
the vanity of all earthly acquirements, and the importance of the only
knowledge that can save the soul. Several of his pupils were so
impressed by his words that they followed him when he retired to one
of the family estates not far from Siena, which he called Monte
Oliveto, whence the name of the order. Bernardino fell a victim to his
zeal in attending to the sick in the time of a great plague. The
convent he founded became a magnificent establishment, with grounds
luxuriantly cultivated, a church adorned by the arts, and apartments
so numerous that the Emperor Charles V., and his train of five
thousand, all lodged there at once.
The Palazzo Bandanelli, where Pope Alexander III. was born, is gloomy
and massive as a prison, with iron gratings at the arched windows,
brick walls black with age, from which project great iron rings, and
on the doors immense knockers of wrought iron, made when blacksmiths
were genuine artists. But, however dismal his birthplace, Alexander
III. was enlightened in his views. It was in 1167 he declared, in the
name of a council, that all Christians ought to be exempted from
servitude.
To go back to the Piazza del Campo. Before the Sansedoni palace is the
Fonte Gaja――so called from the joyful acclamations of the people, when
water was brought into the square in 1343. It is surrounded by an
oblong basin of white marble, elegantly sculptured by Giacomo della
Quercia, to whom was henceforth given the name of Del Fonte.
Siena, being on a height, was, from the first, obliged to provide
water for its inhabitants at great expense. Aqueducts were constructed
in the time of the Romans. But a still grander work was achieved in
the middle ages, when water was brought from the neighboring mountains
by an aqueduct about twenty miles long, that passed beneath the city,
giving rise, perhaps, to the derisive report in Dante’s time that the
hill was tunnelled in search of the river Diana:
“The fancied stream
They sought, of Dian called.”
These vast subterranean works so excited the admiration of Charles V.
that he said Siena was more wonderful below ground than above. Now
there are three hundred and fifty-five wells in the city, and eighteen
fountains. The deep well in the cloister of the Carmine is called the
Pozzo di Diana.
The most noted of the fountains is Fonte Branda, whose waters were so
famous in Dante’s time for their sweetness and purity that he makes
Adamo of Brescia, the coiner of counterfeit money, exclaim, amid the
flames of the Inferno, that to behold the instigators of his crime
undergoing a like torture would be sweeter to him than the cool waters
of Fonte Branda:
“For Branda’s limpid font I would not change
The welcome sight.”
This fountain has also been celebrated by Alfieri, who often came to
Siena to visit his friend, Francesco Gori, with whom he remained
months at a time. He liked the character of the people, and said, when
he went away, that he left a part of his heart behind. And yet Dante,
perhaps because a Florentine, accused the Sienese of being light and
vain:
“Was ever race
Light as Siena’s? Sure, not France herself
Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain.”
Formerly, if not still, giddy people in Tuscany were often asked if
they had been drinking water from the Fonte Branda, as if that would
account for any excess.
The Sienese are proud of the fame and antiquity of this fount, which
is known to have existed in 1081. It flows at the very bottom of one
of the deep ravines which makes Siena so peculiar, between two
precipitous hills, one crowned by the Duomo, and the other by the
church of St. Dominic, and you look from one to the other in silent
wonder. The whole quarter is densely populated. The people are called
Fontebrandini――mostly, as five centuries ago, tanners, dyers, and
fullers, who are reputed to be proud, and are to Siena what the
Trasteverini are to Rome. The streets around diverge from a
market-place, on one side of which is the fount under a long, open
arcade of stone, of immense thickness, built against the hillside. You
go down to a paved court, as to something sacred, by a flight of steps
as wide as the arcade is long. Here are stone seats around, as if to
accommodate the gossips of the neighborhood. Three pointed archways,
between which lions look out with prey between their outstretched
paws, open into the arcade, where flow the waters, gathered from the
surrounding hills, by three apertures, into an enormous stone
reservoir. The surplus waters pass off into other tanks beyond the
arcade, for the use of the workmen of the quarter. Lemon-trees hang
over the fount, and grape-vines trail from tree to tree. The steep
hillside is covered with bushes and verdure up to the church of San
Domenico, which stands stern and majestic, with its crenelated tower
amid the olive-trees.
An old Sienese romance is connected with the Fonte Branda. Cino da
Pistoja, a poet and celebrated professor of jurisprudence at Siena in
the fourteenth century, whose death Petrarch laments in a sonnet,
promised his daughter, a young lady of uncommon beauty, to any one of
his pupils who should best solve a knotty law-question. It was a young
man, misshapen in form, to whom the prize was adjudged, and the poor
girl, in her horror, threw herself into the Fonte Branda. Her suitor,
sensible of the value of the prize, plunged in after her, and not only
saved her life, but fortunately succeeded in winning her affections.
Turning to the right, and ascending the Costa dei Tintori, you come in
a few moments to the house of St. Catharine of Siena, once the shop of
her father, a dyer, but now a series of oratories and chapels,
sanctified by holy memories and adorned by art. It is built of brick,
with two arched galleries, one above the other, of a later period.
_Sposæ XPI. Katharinæ Domvs_ is on the front, with a small head of the
saint graven in marble, and another tablet styling her the Seraphic
Catharine. Below hang tanned skins, probably for sale. The memories of
the place are truly seraphic, but the odors would by no means be
considered so by those who do not believe in the dignity and
sacredness of labor; for the whole quarter――at least, when we were
there――was redolent of tan. Skins hung on all the houses. Tan-cakes
for fuel were displayed on shelves for sale at every door. Everybody
seemed industrious. There was none of the _far niente_ we like to
associate with Italy. It was a positive grievance to find great heaps
of tan around the Fonte Branda, so poetical to us, because associated
with the Divine Poet. But it was still harder to have the same odors
follow us to the very house of the seraphic St. Catharine, the mystic
Bride of Christ. Very little change can have taken place during the
last five centuries in the neighborhood where bloomed this fair lily
of the church, and, in one sense, this is a satisfaction. The house
itself is of the most touching interest. There are the stairs
Catharine, when a child, used to ascend, with an _Ave_ at every step,
and over which the legend says she was so often borne by the angels.
Everywhere through the passages are the emblematic lily and heart. An
oratory has been made of the kitchen which became to Catharine a very
sanctuary, instead of a place of low cares, where she served Christ
under the form of her father, the Blessed Virgin under that of her
mother, and the disciples in the persons of her brothers and sisters.
Her father’s _Bottega_ has also been converted into an oratory. In the
garden where she loved to cultivate the symbolic rose and lily and
violet for the altar, is a chapel in which hangs the miraculous
crucifix painted by Giunta of Pisa, framed in pillars of black marble,
over the altar. Before this crucifix she received the stigmata in the
church of St. Christina at Pisa. In these various oratories are a
profusion of paintings by Sodoma, Vanni, and other eminent artists.
Del Pacchia has attained the very perfection of feminine beauty in his
painting of St. Catharine’s visit to the shrine of St. Agnes of Monte
Pulciano――a genuine production of Christian inspiration. Salimbeni
represents her calm amid the infuriated, ungrateful Florentines after
her return from Avignon; and Sebastian Folli, her appearance before
Gregory XI.
But the most sacred part of the house is her chamber, a little, dark
cell about fifteen feet long and eight or nine wide. A bronze door now
opens into this sanctuary. Here you are shown the board on which she
slept, and other relics of the saint. Here she passed nights in prayer
and converse with the angels. Here she scourged her frail body,
unconscious that her mother was weeping at the door. Here she wrote
the admirable letters so remarkable for their purity and elegance of
style. Here took place the divine _Sposalizio_ which, immortalized by
art, we see all over Italy. Here, when calumniated by the repulsive
object of her heroic charity, she came to pour out her pure soul, that
shrank from the foul accusations, before the heavenly Bridegroom; but
when he appeared with two crowns, one of gold set with jewels, and the
other of thorns, she unhesitatingly chose the latter, pressing it deep
into her head, thus becoming for all time, in the world of art, the
thorn-crowned Catharine. Pius IX., when he visited the house in 1857,
prayed long in this cell, where lived five centuries ago the obscure
maiden who, for a time, almost guided St. Peter’s bark.
On St. Catharine’s day the house is richly adorned and resplendent
with light. The walls are covered with emblems and verses
commemorating her life. The altars have on their finest ornaments. The
neighboring streets are strewn with flowers and hung with flags.
Hangings are at all the windows. A silver statue of the saint is borne
into the street by a long procession of clergy and people. The
magistrates join the _cortège_, and they all go winding up to San
Domenico with chants, perfumes, and flowers, where a student from the
college Tolomei pronounces a eulogy on their illustrious townswoman.
When night comes on, the whole hill around Fonte Branda is
illuminated, the rosary is said at the foot of the Madonnas, and hymns
are sung in honor of the saint.
St. Catharine’s life, in which everything transcends the usual laws of
nature, has been written by her confessor, the Blessed Raymond of
Capua――the life of one saint by another. He was not a credulous man
easily led away by fantasies of the imagination, but one of
incontestable ability and knowledge, who relates what he witnessed in
the soul of whose secrets he was the depositary, who scrutinized every
prodigy, but only to give additional splendor to the truth.
Raymond was a descendant of Piero della Vigna (the celebrated
chancellor of Frederick II.), whose spirit Dante finds imprisoned in
“the drear, mystic wood” of the Inferno, and, plucking a limb
unwittingly from
“The wild thorn of his wretched shade,”
to his horror brings forth at once cries and blood. For nineteen years
Raymond was general of the Dominican Order. Pope Urban VI. confided
the most delicate and difficult missions to him; called him his eyes,
his tongue, his feet, and his hands; held him up to the veneration of
princes and people; and would have raised him to the highest dignities
but for the opposition of the saint. No one, therefore, could have
greater claims to our confidence.
Catharine Benincasa was born in 1347. From her earliest years she was
a being apart, and favored with divine communications. Uncomprehended
at first by those around her, her home became to her a place of
trials. Her parents tried to draw her into the world, and she cut off
her long, golden hair. They wished her to marry, and she consecrated
herself to a higher love. They then subjected her to household labor,
but she found peace in its vulgar details. She worked by day. At night
she prayed till lost in ecstasy, insensible to everything earthly. She
wished to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic, but was refused
admission because she was too young and beautiful. It was only after
an illness that made her unrecognizable that she was received; but she
continued, like all the members, an inmate of her father’s house. Her
soul was peculiarly alive to the sweet harmonies of nature. She liked
to go into the woods, at springtime, to listen to the warbling of the
birds and watch the mysterious movements of awakening vegetation. She
loved the mountain heights, with their wild melodies of winds and
torrents, as well as the gentle rustling of the air among the leaves,
which seemed to her like nature’s whispered prayer. She said, as she
looked at the ant, a thought of God had created it. She loved flowers.
She had a taste for music, and liked to sing hymns as she sewed. The
name of Mary from her lips was said to leave a singular harmony in the
ears of her listeners. She sympathized in every kind of misery to aid
it; lent a helping hand to every infirmity, and often served in the
hospital, choosing those who were abandoned by the rest of the world
as the objects of her care. She rose above the wants of the body. From
her childhood she never ate meat, the very odor of which became
repugnant to her. For years she subsisted from Ash Wednesday till
Whitsuntide solely on the Holy Eucharist, which she received every
morning. She entered into all the troubles of the times, diffusing
everywhere the pure light of divine charity. Though without human
instruction, she astonished the doctors of the church by her profound
knowledge of theology. “The purest Italian welled from her untutored
lips.” She wrote to popes, cardinals, princes, and republics. Some of
her letters are to Sir John Hawkwood, or, as the Italians call him,
Giovanni Aguto, the ferocious English _condottiere_, who stained the
flag of the church, and then entered the service of her enemies. She
takes a foremost rank among the writers of the age――that of Boccaccio,
who lacks her touching grace and simplicity.
Siena, at the time of St. Catharine, was no longer the powerful,
united city it had been a century before, but in its turn had become
the prey of anarchy and division. The different classes of people were
at war with each other. They proscribed each other; and private hatred
took advantage of the disorder to indulge in every kind of revenge.
The Macconi were at variance with the Rinaldini; the Salimbeni with
the Tolomei; the Malvotti with the Piccolomini.
War reigned all over Italy. Milan and all Lombardy were ravaged by the
Visconti. Naples was a prey to the excesses caused by Queen Joanna.
Florence, that had been devoted to the church, was now governed by the
Ghibellines, who went to every extreme against the Guelphs, whose
cause, says Dean Milman, “was more (!) than that of the church: it was
that of freedom and humanity.” The States of the church were ravaged.
Rome itself, widowed and abandoned, “with as many wounds as she had
palaces and churches,” as Petrarch says, was in a complete state of
anarchy.
Amid all these horrors St. Catharine moved, an angel of peace. God
gave her a wonderful power of appeasing private resentments and
calming popular tumults. Inveterate enemies clasped hands under her
influence. Veteran warriors, and republics themselves, listened
respectfully to her voice. She wrote to Pope Gregory XI. at Avignon,
pleading the cause of all Italy, and urging him to return to Rome,
where he could overrule the passions that agitated the country, and
restore dignity to the Apostolic See. Her heart bled at the sight of
so much misery and crime. “Peace! peace!” she wrote to the
pope――“peace for the love of a crucified God! Do not regard the
ignorance and blindness and pride of your children. You will perhaps
say you are bound by conscience to recover what belongs to holy
church. Alas! I acknowledge it; but when a choice is to be made, it
should be of that which is most valuable. The treasure of the church
is the Blood of Christ shed for the redemption of souls. This treasure
of blood has not been given for temporal dominion, but for the
salvation of the human race. If you are obliged to recover the cities
and treasures the church has lost, still more are you bound to win
back the souls that are the true riches of the church, which is
impoverished by losing them. It is better to let go the gold of
temporal than the gold of spiritual wealth. You must choose between
two evils――that of losing grandeur, power, and temporal prosperity,
and the loss of grace in the souls that owe obedience to your
Holiness. You will not restore beauty to the church by the sword, by
severity and war, but by peaceful measures. You will combat more
successfully with the rod of mercy and kindness than of chastisement.
By these means you will recover what belongs to you both spiritually
and temporally.”
Noble liberty on the part of the dyer’s daughter! And it is to the
honor of Pope Gregory that he listened to her with respect. It was
time to pour oil on the troubled waters. The proud republic of
Florence, after revolting against all spiritual authority, torturing
the priests, declaring liberty preferable to salvation, and exciting
the papal cities to rebellion, had been laid under an interdict. The
people began to feel the disastrous effects on their commerce, and
came to solicit Catharine’s intervention with the pope. She went to
Avignon, where she made known her mission in a public consistory. “She
passed from her father’s shop to the court of princes, from the
calmness of solitude to the troubles of factions; and everywhere she
was in her place, because she had found in solitude a peace above all
the agitations of the world, and a profound charity.”
Pope Gregory left her to dictate the terms of peace with the
Florentines, though he foresaw their ingratitude. Nay, more: after
some hesitation he decided to return to Rome. Nor was St. Catharine
the only woman that urged him to do so. St. Bridget of Sweden added
the influence of her prophetic voice. Ortensia di Gulielmo, one of the
best poets of the day, thus begins a sonnet:
“Ecco, Signor, la greggia tua d’intorno
Cinta da lupi a divorla intenti.
Ecco tutti gli onor d’Italia spenti,
Poiché fa altrove il gran Pastore soggiorno.”[108]
Catharine’s return to Siena was celebrated by festive songs:
“Thou didst go up to the great temple,
Thou didst enter the mighty consistory;
The words of thy mouth were full of power;
Pope and cardinals were persuaded to depart.
Thou didst direct the course of their wings towards the See of
Peter. O virgin of Siena! how great is thy praise――soul prompt
in movement, energetic in action.”
On the tomb of Gregory XI., in the church of St. Francesca at Rome,
St. Catharine is represented walking before the pope’s mule as he
makes his triumphal entrance into the city――a symbol of her guiding
influence. From this time she took a prominent part in all the affairs
of Italy. But the re-establishment of the papal throne at Rome was her
last joy on earth. At the death of Pope Gregory fresh disorders broke
out. Catharine’s life slowly wasted away, inwardly consumed, as she
declared, for the church. She died in Rome at the age of thirty-three,
and lies buried under the high altar of the Minerva, surrounded by
lamps and flowers. Her countryman, Pius II., canonized her, not only
at the request of the magistrates of Siena, but of several of the
sovereigns of Europe.
Siena boasts of other saints: St. Ansano, the first apostle of the
country, beheaded on the banks of the Arbia in the time of Diocletian;
Galgano di Lolo, who led an angelic life in the mountains; the founder
of Monte Oliveto, whose order sheltered Tasso; Ambrogio Sansedoni, the
confessor of Conradin, noted for his eloquence and sanctity; St.
Bernardin, on whose breast glows the potent Name; Beata Nera Tolomei,
noted for her ascetic charity; the poor Pietro Pettinajo, who devoted
himself to the plague-stricken in the hospital della Scala;
Aldobrandescha Ponzi, who wished to be crowned with thorns like
Christ; the Blessed John Colombini, whose only passion was to be like
Jesus; and many more besides. But St. Catharine――the heroine of divine
love――is the most sublime expression of Sienese piety, and of her is
the city especially proud. Her statue was placed by the republic on
the front of its glorious cathedral, and she is represented in the
gorgeous picture of Pinturicchio in the library, where, as Mrs. Stowe
says, “borne in celestial repose and purity amid all the powers and
dignitaries of the church, she is canonized as one of those that shall
reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.”
From St. Catharine’s house you go winding up under the mulberry-trees
to San Domenico, soon leaving the tops of the houses below you. On the
way is the place where Catharine, when a child, coming down the hill
one evening with Stefano, her favorite brother, turned to look back,
and saw the heavens opened above the campanile of the church, and the
Great High-Priest seated on a radiant throne, around which stood SS.
Peter, Paul, and John, who seemed with uplifted hands to bless her.
Keeping on to the top of the hill, you come to a large green, silent
and deserted, before the church. The street that properly leads to it
is well named the _Via del Paradiso_. The church of St. Dominic is
vast and imposing, though of severe simplicity of style, offering a
marked contrast to the richness of the Duomo. It is shaped like the
letter T, without aisles or apsis. Rafters support the vault, but at
the entrance to the transepts is an enormous arch of singular
boldness. There is something broad and expansive about the atmosphere
of the church, as often found in the churches of the Dominican Order.
Even with a considerable number of worshippers it would seem solitary.
In one of its chapels is a Madonna, celebrated in the history of art,
long attributed to Guido of Siena, but now proved to be by Guido di
Graziano, a contemporary of Cimabue, whose Madonnas it resembles, with
its oblique eyes, large head, and a certain angular stiffness. Among
other noted paintings is one of Santa Barbara by Matteo da Siena, very
beautiful in expression. She sits, crowned by two angels, with a palm
in one hand and a tower-like tabernacle in the other, in which the
Host is exposed above a chalice. SS. Magdalen and Catharine are at her
side.
A domed chapel, protected by a balustrade of alabaster, has been built
on the east side of the church, in which is enshrined the head of St.
Catharine――evidently the most frequented part of the church, from the
numerous seats before it, mostly with coats of arms and carved backs.
Framed prayers, as is common in Italy, are chained to a
_prie-Dieu_――one to St. Catherine with the anthem: _Regnum mundi et
omnem ornatum sæculi contempsi propter amorem Domini mei Jesu Christi,
quem vidi, quem amavi, in quem credidi, quem dilexi_. Three lamps were
burning before the relics of St. Catharine. The walls are covered with
exquisite paintings by Sodoma, which were lit up by the morning sun.
Nothing could be more lovely than St. Catharine swooning at the
Saviour’s apparition――a figure full of divine languor, grace, and
softness. Two nuns tenderly sustain her. Her stigmata are radiant. An
angel bears a lily. The whole painting is delicate, ethereal, and
heavenly as a vision. It is on the gospel side of the altar; on the
other side she kneels between two nuns with her eyes raised to heaven,
where, above the Virgin and Child, appears the _Padre Eterno_. Angels
bear the cross and crown of thorns. Another brings the Host. A death’s
head and lily are at her feet. The whole is of wonderful beauty.
On the left wall, as you enter the chapel, is painted the execution of
a young knight, beheaded at Siena for some slight political offence.
St. Catharine went to comfort him in his despair, and induced him to
receive the sacraments. She even accompanied him to the block, where
his last words were “Jesus” and “Catharine,” leaving her inundated
with his blood, but in a state of ecstasy that rendered her insensible
to everything but his eternal welfare. The odor of his blood seemed to
intoxicate her. She could not resolve to wash it off. She only saw his
soul ransomed by the blood of the Lamb, and, in describing her state
of mind to her confessor, she cries: “Yes, bathe in the Blood of
Christ crucified, feast on this Blood, be inebriated with this Blood,
weep in Blood, rejoice in Blood, grow strong in this Blood, then, like
an intrepid knight, hasten through this Blood to defend the honor of
God, the liberty of the church, and the salvation of souls.” Her
letters often begin: “I, Catharine, servant and slave of Jesus Christ,
write you in his precious Blood,” as if it was there she derived all
her strength and inspiration. In the picture before us nothing could
be more peaceful than the face of the young knight just beheaded,
whose soul two beautiful angels are bearing to heaven.
On the pavement is traced in the marble Adam amid the animals in
Paradise, among whom is the unicorn, the ancient emblem of chastity.
At the extreme end of the church is the Chapel delle Volte, to which
you ascend by six steps. Over the door is this inscription:
En locus hic toto sacer | et venerabile orbe,
Hic Sponsũ Catharina suum | sanctissima sepe,
Vidit ovans Christum | dictu mirabile, sed tu
Quisquies ades hic funde | preces venerare beatam
Stigmata gestantem | Divini insignia amoris;――
Behold this place, sacred and venerable among all on earth; here holy
Catharine rejoicing often beheld, wondrous to say, the Christ, her
spouse. But thou, whosoever approachest, here pour forth thy prayers,
to venerate the holy one who bore the sacred stigmata, the insignia of
divine love.
This chapel, the scene of so many of St. Catharine’s mystic visions,
is long and narrow, with one window. The arches are strewn with gilt
stars on a blue ground. The floor is paved with tiles, with tablets
here and there. On one, before the altar, are the words: _Cathâ. cor
mutat XPUS_――Christ changes the heart of Catharine; for it was here
she underwent that miraculous change of heart which transformed her
life. Our Saviour himself appeared to her, surrounded by light, and
gave her a new heart, which filled her with ecstatic joy, and inspired
a love for all mankind.
Over the plain altar is an authentic portrait of St. Catharine by the
poetic Andrea Vanni, a pupil of Sano di Pietro. He was one of her
disciples and correspondents, though a _Capitano del Popolo_. He
painted this portrait in 1367, while she was in an ecstatic state in
this very chapel. It represents her with delicate features, a thin,
worn face, and must have been a charming picture originally, but it is
now greatly deteriorated.
On one of the pillars of the chapel is the inscription: _Catâ. cruce
erogat XPO_――Catharine bestows the cross on Christ; referring to the
silver cross she one day gave a beggar in this church, which was
afterwards shown her set with precious stones. And on another pillar
is: _Catâ. vesti induit XPUM_――Catharine clothes Christ with her
garment; in memory of the tunic she here gave our Saviour under the
form of a beggar, who showed it to her some hours after, radiant with
light and embroidered with pearls――acts of charity full of
significance. Three lovely little paintings by Beccafumi, at the Belle
Arti, represent the three mystic scenes commemorated in this chapel.
In the adjoining convent, now a school-house, lived for a time St.
Thomas of Aquin and the Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni, whose tomb is in
the cloister. Here, in 1462, was held a chapter of fifteen hundred
Dominicans, and here Pius II. blessed the standard of the Crusaders.
On our way to the Porta Camollia we turned down at the left, by a
steep, paved way, to the church of Fonte Giusta, erected in memory of
a victory over the Florentines. It is a small brick church with four
small windows, four pillars to which are attached four bronze angels
holding four bronze candlesticks, and on the walls hang four paintings
of note. One is a beautiful coronation of the Virgin with four saints,
by Fungai. Then there is a Visitation by Anselmi, in which two
majestic women look into each other’s eyes, as if to fathom each the
other’s soul. In an arch of the right aisle is the sibyl of Peruzzi――a
noble figure――said to have been studied by Raphael when Agostino
Chigi, the famous banker of the Farnesina palace (a Sienese by birth),
commissioned him to paint the celebrated sibyls of the _Della Pace_ at
Rome――sibyls that have all the grandeur of Michael Angelo, and the
grace that Raphael alone could give.
But what particularly brought us to this church was to see the Madonna
of Fonte Giusta, to which Columbus made a pilgrimage after the
discovery of America, and presented his sword, shield (a round one),
and a whale’s bone, which are still suspended over the entrance. The
Madonna turns her fair, sweet face towards you, while the Child has
his eyes turned towards his mother, with his hands crossed on his
breast. Both have on silver crowns, and pearls around their necks. The
picture is in a frame of cherubs’ heads, surrounded by delicate
arabesques. Beneath is the inscription:
Hic requies tranquilla,
Salus hic dulce levamen:
Hic est spes miseris ꝕsidiũq reis――
Here is tranquil repose; here safety and sweet consolation; here is
hope for the wretched, and for the guilty an unfailing refuge.
Columbus’ devotion to the Blessed Virgin is well known. It was under
her auspices he undertook, in a vessel called by her name, the
discovery of a new world. He daily said her office on board ship from
a valuable MS. given him by Alexander VI. before his departure and
afterwards bequeathed to Genoa, and the _Salve Regina_ was sung every
evening by his followers.
Porta Camollia is not remarkable in an architectural point of view,
but it has its sacred associations. It was here St. Bernardin of Siena
used to come every night, when a boy, to pray before the tutelar
Madonna of the gate. His aunt, hearing him speak of going to see the
fairest of women, followed him at a distance one night and discovered
his secret.
The chapel of the Confraternity of San Bernardin is a museum of art.
The walls are covered with fine frescoes of the life of the Virgin by
Beccafumi, Sodoma, and Pacchia. One of the most beautiful is Sodoma’s
“Assumption,” in which Mary――_pulchra ut luna_――in a mantle like a
violet cloud, is borne up to her native heaven by angels full of
grace. The apostles, with thoughtful, devout, but not astonished
faces, stand around the tomb, out of which rise two tall lilies amid
the white roses. St. Thomas lifts his hands to receive the sacred
girdle.
Everywhere about this chapel is the sacred monogram so dear to San
Bernardin. The holy name of Jesus is inscribed on the front, on the
holy-water basin, on the walls; placed there in more devout times,
when even genius sought to
“Embalm his sacred name
With all a painter’s art and all a minstrel’s flame.”
There are more than sixty churches and chapels at Siena, but perhaps
not one without some work of art that is noteworthy. Siena was the
cradle of art in the thirteenth century, and has its aureola of
artists as well as of saints. The school of Florence only dates from
the fourteenth century. Guido da Siena, Bonamico, and Diotisalvi were
the glorious precursors of Cimabue, and Simone Memmi, a century later,
shared with Giotto the friendship and admiration of Petrarch.
“_Ma certò il mio Simon fû in Paradiso._”
The old Sienese artists were profoundly religious. In their statutes
of 1355 they say: “We, by the grace of God, make manifest to rude and
ignorant men the miraculous events operated by virtue, and in
confirmation, of our holy faith.” The efflorescence of the arts is one
of the expressions of a profound faith. We have only to visit the
galleries of Italy, filled with the sad spoils of numberless churches
and convents, to be convinced of this. And there is not a tomb of a
saint of the middle ages out of which does not bloom some flower of
art, fair as the lilies that spring from the sepulchre of the Virgin.
What wreaths of art entwine the tombs of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and
St. Antony of Padua!
The collection of paintings at the Academy of Siena is very
interesting. Here Beccafumi represents St. Catharine receiving the
stigmata. She is in soft, gray robes, with a lovely face, kneeling
before a crucifix under an archway, through which you see the
landscape. A dead, thorny tree is behind her. By way of contrast to
her beauty and grace is the austere St. Jerome, haggard and worn, with
his lion, before one of the pillars of the arch. At the other is a
Dominican in black and white garments. Above are the Madonna and Child
attended by angels. The whole picture is very soft and charming.
Sodoma has also here a St. Catharine with a delicate, thoughtful face,
and a crucifix in her pierced hands.
Perhaps the most striking picture in the gallery is Sodoma’s “Christ
Bound,” which is wonderful in expression. The face and form are very
human and of grand development. From under the crown of thorns flows
the long, amber hair. The eyes are sad, inexpressibly sad, and the
bleeding form is infinitely pathetic. “It is a thing to stand and weep
at,” says Hawthorne.
“I suffer binding who have loosed their bands.
Was ever grief like mine?”
Sodoma’s “Judith,” in a blue dress and orange mantle, stands beside a
leafless tree, holding up the bloody knife with one hand, and the head
of Holofernes with the other. She has a gleaming jewel on her
forehead, though the old rabbis represent her with a wreath of lilies,
believed by the ancients to be a protection against witchcraft and
peril.
The university of Siena existed in the thirteenth century. Among its
noted members was Cisto da Siena, a Jew, who became a Catholic and a
monk, and finally a Calvinist. Condemned to death for his apostasy, he
was indebted for his life to the friendship of Pope Julius III. and
Cardinal Ghislieri, afterwards Pius V.
M. Taine speaks of the deplorable ignorance of the present Sienese,
and says there is no library, not a book, in the place.[109] As he
seems, by his journal, to have been there only two days, he probably,
like many travellers, noted down his preconceived opinion. The library
of Siena, one of the oldest in Italy, has always been famous. It was
founded by Niccolo Oliva, an Augustinian friar, and contains fifty
thousand volumes――a respectable number for an inland town. About seven
hundred belong to the very first age of printing. There are also five
thousand manuscripts, among which are a Greek Gospel of the tenth
century that came from the imperial chapel at Constantinople, bound in
silver, and many other rare MSS. and documents, such as the original
will (in Latin) of Boccaccio, and autograph writings of Metastasio,
St. Catharine, and St. Bernardin.
Siena has several charitable institutions. The asylum for deaf mutes,
founded by Padre Pendola is spacious and agreeable. The great hospital
della Scala, opposite the cathedral, founded by Fra Sorore, is one of
the most ancient in Italy. It is vast and sunny, with a fine view over
the valley around Siena. Its atmosphere is thoroughly religious, with
its walls frescoed by the old masters, its numerous altars and
religious emblems. St. Catharine used to come here to attend the sick.
It is now served by Sisters of Charity.
It is dreadful to say, but the first glimpse we had of the Duomo, with
its striped wall of black and white marble, reminded us of good old
Sarah Battles――“now with God”――and her cribbage-board, which Charles
Lamb tells us was made of the finest Sienese marble, and brought by
her uncle from Italy. But on coming nearer to it every trivial thought
vanishes before its grandeur and expressive richness of detail. The
impression it makes on the mind is so profound, M. Taine says, that
“what we feel on entering St. Peter’s at Rome cannot be compared to
it.” He calls it “a most admirable Gothic flower, but of a new species
that has blossomed in a more propitious clime, the production of minds
of greater cultivation and genius, more serene, more beautiful, more
religious, and yet healthy; and which is to the cathedrals of France
what the poems of Dante and Petrarch are to the _chansons_ of the
French _trouvères_.”
On the pavement before the entrance is represented the parable of the
Pharisee and the Publican who went up into the Temple to pray――a
lesson to ponder over as we enter the house of prayer. The façade is
of marvellous workmanship. Amid angels and prophets and symbolic
sculpture, delicate as lace-work, are St. Ansano, St. Catharine, and
San Bernardin――the special patrons of Siena. On entering the church
you are at first dazzled by its richness. The pavement is unrivalled
in the world, with its pictures in niello, by an art now lost, where
we find page after page from the Scriptures, some written by the
powerful hand of Beccafumi, whose cartoons are to be seen at the Belle
Arti; sibyls noble as goddesses; Trismegistus, who received his
knowledge from Zoroaster, offering the Pimandra in which is written:
“The God who created all things, the maker of the earth and starry
heavens, so greatly loved his Son that he made him his Holy Word”; and
Socrates climbing the mountain of Virtue, who sits on its summit,
holding forth a palm to him, while with the other hand she offers the
book of wisdom to Crates, who empties a casket of jewels to receive
it. The walls are covered with paintings, by Duccio, of twenty-six
scenes of the Passion, full of life and power, dramatic and yet
strictly Scriptural, forming a book one is never weary of studying as
Christian or artist. The stalls by Fra Giovanni, the Olivetan monk,
are the very perfection of intarsia work, which here, as Marchese
says, “almost rises to the dignity of painting.” The wondrous pulpit,
with its nine columns resting on lions, its sides covered with scenes
from the life of Christ by Nicholas of Pisa, and the seven sciences on
the central octagonal pillar, is a prodigy of richness and elegance.
The frieze around the nave is adorned with the heads of the popes down
to Alexander III. Among these, strange to say, was once Pope Joan,
such hold had that popular error on the public mind. It was Florimond
de Raymond, a counsellor of the parliament of Bordeaux, and a friend
of Montaigne and Justus Lipsius, who, in the sixteenth century,
protested against such an insult to the Papacy, and by his efforts had
it effaced. He wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff himself: “Avenge the
injury done to your predecessors. Order this monster to be removed
from the place where Satan, the father of lies, has had it set up. Do
not suffer an image to remain of that which never existed. If there
was no body, let there be no shadow”; and he calls upon the pope to
destroy this idol, raised to the disgrace of the church. Besides this,
he wrote a book, now rare, completely exploding the fable, showing by
incontestable documents there was not the least place for Joan in the
succession of popes. This work, together with his appeal, produced
such an effect as to procure the removal of her portrait from the
cathedral of Siena. The illustrious Cardinal Baronius wrote to him in
1600 that it had just been removed by order of the Grand Duke of
Tuscany according to his wishes, and he congratulated him in
magnificent terms on such a triumph.
On an altar in the left nave is the crucifix borne by the Sienese at
the battle of Monte Aperti, and beneath the arches are still
suspended, after so many centuries, the long flag-poles captured from
the Florentines Sept. 4, 1260, the most glorious day in the history of
Siena.
At the right is the chapel of the Madonna del Voto, built by Alexander
VII., a Sienese pope (Fabio Chigi), with its Byzantine-looking Virgin
amid paintings, bronzes, mosaics, and precious stones.
The family of Piccolomini is glorified in this church. To it belonged
the great Æneas Silvius, as well as Pius III., also a lover of the
arts, and Ascanio Piccolomini, Archbishop of Siena, a friend of
Galileo, to whom he gave hospitality when he came forth from what
people are pleased to call the dungeons of the Inquisition at
Rome――that is, from pleasant apartments in the delightful palace of
the Tuscan ambassador on the Trinità de’ Monti, now the French
Academy. The Piccolomini chapel has five statues sculptured by Michael
Angelo, and the beautiful hall, known as the Library, is world-famous
for its frescoes of the life of Pius II. by Pinturicchio.
The whole church is a temple of art, with its sculptured altar, its
bronze tabernacle, its rare paintings, its beautiful pillars of
differently-colored marbles, and its rich windows of stained glass.
Nothing could be more serene and calm than the atmosphere of this
glorious church. Amid the sacred silence, the struggling light, with
the grandest symbols of religion on every side, you feel lifted for a
moment out of your own mean imprisonments into a very heaven of art
and piety.
[108] Behold, O Lord! thy flock surrounded by wolves eager
to devour it. Behold all the honor of Italy spent, because
its Chief Pastor sojourns in a foreign land.
[109] “_Point de bibliothèque: aucun livre_,” are his words.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
XVI.
Whilst Margaret and Pierre Gilles were thus conversing, above their
heads, in a magnificent gallery flashing with gilt, and adorned with
portraits of all the archbishops who had occupied this palace,
destined for their residence, the court had assembled, and there the
jury was called which was to try, or rather to condemn, Sir Thomas
More.
At the extremity of this hall, upon an elevated platform all covered
with carpet and fringe, were seated the new lord chancellor, Thomas
Audley; near him, Sir John Fitz-James, Lord Chief-Justice; and beyond,
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; the Duke of Norfolk, several lords
of the Privy Council, among them the Duke of Suffolk, the Abbot of
Westminster, and Cromwell, who on this occasion acted as secretary. To
the left of the court, and near the jury, was seated Richard Rich, the
creature of Cromwell, and his worthy associate, newly appointed, on
account of his efficient services, solicitor-general.
“Sir Thomas Palmer, knight?” said the clerk. “Sir Thomas Peint,
knight? George Lowell, esquire? Thomas Burbage, esquire? Geoffrey
Chamber, gentleman? Edward Stockmore, gentleman? Joseph Leake,
gentleman? William Brown, gentleman? Thomas Bellington, gentleman?
John Parnell, gentleman? Richard Bellam, gentleman? George Stokes,
gentleman?”
All responded to their names.
“Sir Thomas More,” said the lord chancellor, in a slow and hard tone,
“do you challenge any one of these gentlemen of the jury?”
“No, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, who was standing up before the
court, leaning upon a cane he held in his hand, and which had been of
great assistance to him during the long sessions he had already been
obliged to endure in that fatiguing and inconvenient position.
Meanwhile, he anxiously watched the door through which the accused
entered, and was uneasy at not seeing the Bishop of Rochester; for
they met only in court, and it was a moment of relief when he beheld
his friend near him, although he every day remarked with sadness that
Rochester was failing in a lamentable manner.
“The accused challenges none of the members of the jury,” proclaimed
the lord chief-justice. He then arose, and began to recite the formula
of the oath to be taken by each member of the jury.
“Now, Sir Thomas,” said the chancellor, “I desire to address you yet a
last observation, and I wish with all my heart that you may yield to
it; because the king, not having forgotten your long services, is
deeply grieved at the perilous position in which your obstinacy, too
evidently the result of malice, has placed you. He has ordered us to
unbend again, and for the last time, so far as to implore you, in his
own name and for the love of him, to take the oath of obedience which
you owe to the statute of Parliament, and of fidelity to his royal
person――an oath he has a right to exact of you according to all laws,
divine and human.”
“In fidelity, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “in respect, in
attachment, I have never been wanting to the king. It has been a long
time, a very long time, an entire lifetime, since I took the oath. It
cannot be changed; therefore it can never be necessary to have it
renewed.”
“You persist, then, in your culpable obstinacy?” said the lord
chancellor.
“Nay, my lord, I am not obstinate.”
“Then say, at least,” cried Cranmer, wishing to appear animated by an
officious zeal, “what offends you in this oath, what word you would
reject――what is the reason, in fine, that prevents you from taking
it.”
Sir Thomas raised his head, and paused a moment to consider the court.
There was the Abbot of Westminster, who, during the days of his
prosperity and favor, had overwhelmed him with visits and surfeited
him with flattery; by his side the Duke of Norfolk, who without
emotion beheld him to-day near death, and yet he had formerly loved
him as a friend in whom he felt honored; Cromwell, whom he had always
treated with respect, in spite of the antipathy he felt for him; the
Duke of Suffolk, who had solicited him unceasingly, and almost gone
down on his knees to him to obtain money from the king or a place for
one of his creatures; Sir John Fitz-James, finally, to whom he had
rendered an eminent service, and who had in other times sworn eternal
gratitude to him, and to remain devoted to him in life and in death.
Now death was approaching him, and he counted Sir John Fitz-James
among the judges who were going to demand his head. Absorbed in the
sad and dolorous conviction that in this world he could rely upon no
one, he hesitated for a reply.
“You have heard, prisoner?” said Richard Rich brusquely.
“Pardon me, sir,” answered Sir Thomas gently; “but the lords have
already spoken so much about the king’s displeasure that, if I should
refuse to take this oath of supremacy, I fear to augment it still more
by giving the reasons.”
“Ah! this is too much,” cried all the lords. “You not only refuse to
take the oath, but you are not even willing to say why you refuse.”
“I would rather believe,” said Cromwell, “that Sir Thomas has returned
to reason, and that he is no longer so sure that the oath may wound
his conscience. Sir Thomas, is it not the case that you are now rather
in a state of doubt and uncertainty in this regard? You know,” he
continued, “that we owe entire obedience to the king; therefore you
should take the oath he demands of you, and the scruples you feel
would be removed by this imperious necessity.”
“It is true, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “that I ought to obey the
king in all things as a faithful subject――which I am, and will be
until death. But this is a case of conscience, in which I am not bound
to obey the prince. Listen to me, my lord of Canterbury,” he said,
fixing his eyes upon him with an expression full of benevolence. “I
would blame none of those who have taken the oath; but, at the same
time, I must say, if your argument was solid, there would be no more
cases of doubtful conscience, because it would be sufficient for the
king to pronounce yes or no in order to annihilate them all.”
“Truly,” cried the Abbot of Westminster, hurriedly interrupting him,
“you are very obstinate in your own opinions; you ought to see that,
from whatever point you view this question, you are necessarily
mistaken, since you are entirely in opposition to the chief council of
the kingdom, and that without doubt it possesses light enough to
remove and destroy the scruples of your conscience.”
“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “if it is true that I am alone in my
opposition to the entire Parliament, I ought certainly to feel
alarmed. Nevertheless, in refusing the oath I listen to and follow the
voice of the greatest of all counsellors――one to which every man
should listen before any other; a monitor which he carries always
within his own bosom. Besides, I will add that the opinion of the
English Parliament cannot overbalance that of the Council of all
Christendom.”
“Then you blame the Parliament, and refuse to adhere to the act of
succession it has established?” angrily exclaimed Norfolk, the uncle
of Anne Boleyn.
“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “your lordship knows that my intention
is not, as I have already explained, to find fault either with the act
or with the men who have drawn it up, nor to blame the oath nor those
who have taken it. As far as I am personally concerned, I cannot take
this oath without exposing myself to eternal damnation; and if you
doubt that it is my conscience which causes me to refuse, I am ready
to swear to the sincerity of my declaration. If you do not believe
what I say, it is a great deal better not to impose the oath; and if
you believe me, I hope you will not demand one in opposition to my
conscience.”
Norfolk made a gesture of impatience. Then Audley, lord chancellor,
turned toward his colleagues. “You see, you hear,” he said, “that Sir
Thomas believes that he knows more than all the priests in
London――than the Bishop of Rochester himself!” And he dwelt with a
slight tone of irony on the last sentence.
“What! the Bishop of Rochester,” cried Sir Thomas.
“Without doubt, the Bishop of Rochester,” repeated Audley. “Mr.
Secretary,” he said, turning towards Cromwell and giving him a
preconcerted signal, “communicate to the accused a certain fact in
which he is interested.”
Cromwell, descending from the platform, approached Sir Thomas and
whispered in his ear: “The Bishop of Rochester has consented to swear;
they have conducted him to the king, who has forgotten all his past
conduct, and intends to load him with new favors.”
“Fisher has sworn!” cried Sir Thomas; and he was struck with
consternation.
“Certainly!” said Cromwell, with an ill-disguised expression of irony
and satirical joy; “they concealed it from you, that it might not be
said you had pinned your opinion to the sleeve of another.”
“Sir,” answered More in a tone of profound sorrow, but with an
expression of dignity greater still, “rest perfectly satisfied they
will not say that. While bishops are appointed to do good and teach us
to do it, it does not follow that, if they fall into error, we should
imitate them. I am deeply afflicted by what you tell me, but do not
change my opinion for all that. My conscience alone has directed me;
now she alone remains with me, but I cannot, neither must I, cease to
listen to her. I blame nobody――nobody! O my friend! what anguish has
been reserved for me. My God! thou hast permitted it. Rochester has
fallen!” said More in a low voice. “Lord, if the cedars break, what,
then, will become of the reeds?”
Sir Thomas was unable to comprehend how Fisher could have been induced
to yield or become so weak, and he was reduced to a state of mortal
affliction.
“What!” said Cromwell, “can you not make up your mind?”
“Nay, sir, nay; I cannot make up my mind to this. There remains
nothing more for me to do in this world, and I pray the Lord to remove
me from it!”
“The accused refuses everything,” replied Cromwell in a loud voice, as
he turned away from him.
“What obstinacy!” exclaimed the lords in one voice. “Sir Thomas,
swear!――we conjure you in the name of all you hold most dear.”
“Alas!” said Sir Thomas to himself, “this is why he has not appeared.
Alas! each day when I have suffered so much seeing him stand so long
by my side, pale with fatigue and weakness, I was nevertheless happy.
To-day――can it be? No, he has not been able to endure their tortures
longer. God forgive them and save this country! Your pardon, my
lords,” he said, remembering that they had addressed him. “What were
your words to me?”
“He does not even listen,” they remarked. “We conjure you to swear; we
implore you to do so with all our power.”
“I cannot,” replied Sir Thomas firmly, “and I positively refuse.”
On hearing him pronounce these words, which left them no alternative,
there was a sudden commotion among the lords; they regarded each other
with anxiety.
“A man of such merit, of such virtue,” thought Fitz-James, filled with
remorse――“what business have I here?”
“Truly, Sir Thomas,” cried Secretary Cromwell, feigning compassion, “I
am sorely grieved to hear you speak thus, and I declare here, before
all this respectable assembly, that I would like better to lose an
only son than to see you refuse the oath in this manner. For very
certainly the king will be deeply wounded by it; he will conceive the
most violent suspicions, and will not be able to believe that you have
had no part in that affair of the Maid of Kent.”
“I am very much moved by your affection,” replied Sir Thomas; “but
whatever penalties I may have to undergo, it is impossible for me to
redeem them at the price of my soul.”
“You hear him, my lords,” said the chancellor, looking at his
colleagues. “Sir Thomas, deaf to all our prayers, forgetting the
favors with which the king has overwhelmed him for twenty years,
tramples under foot the authority of Parliament, the laws of the
kingdom, and persists traitorously, maliciously, and in your presence,
in refusing to take an oath which every subject of this kingdom cannot
and ought not to refuse. Consequently, I order the act of accusation
to be read to the court, after which it will render judgment and
pronounce its sentence.”
The clerk then began reading, in a nasal voice and monotonous tone, an
accusation so long, the grievances of which were so multiplied,
divided, extended, and diluted by a crowd of words and phrases,
inductions, prejudices, and all kinds of suspicions, that it would
require too much time to report them; but it was easy to see that it
had been fabricated in bad faith and with the absence of all
reasonable proofs.
This reading continued for two hours, and, when it was finished, the
lord chancellor began: “What have you to reply to all this?” said
Audley. “You see, Sir Thomas, and you should acknowledge, that you
have gravely offended his majesty; nevertheless, the king is so
merciful, and is so much attached to you, that he would pardon your
obstinacy, if you changed your opinion, and we would be sure of
obtaining your pardon, and even the return of his favor.”
He looked at Sir Thomas to see if he was relenting; for, except
Cromwell, who desired More’s death, all the others, while too
ambitious, too base, or too cowardly to dare sustain him, would have
preferred seeing him yield to their entreaties.
“It would rejoice us greatly!” said Sir John Fitz-James.
“Most surely,” cried the Duke of Norfolk.
“Ay, verily,” slowly repeated Cromwell.
“He will listen to nothing!” said the Abbot of Westminster.
“Noble lords, I am under infinite obligations to your lordships for
the lively interest you have manifested in my case; but, by the help
of God, I wish to continue to live and die in his grace. As to the
accusation I have just heard, it is so long, the hatred which has
dictated it so violent, that I am seized with fear in realizing how
little strength and understanding the sufferings of my body have left
in my mind.”
“He should be permitted to sit down,” said Sir John Fitz-James in a
low voice, the tears gathering in his eyes.
“Nobody objects,” said the Duke of Norfolk. “I demand it, on the
contrary,” he added, elevating his voice.
“This will never end, then,” murmured Cromwell.
“Let a chair be brought to the accused,” said Audley, who dared not
resist the Duke of Norfolk.
Sir Thomas seated himself for a moment, because he was able to stand
no longer; then, summoning all his strength, he again arose to his
feet, and spoke: “My accusation can be reduced, it seems to me, to
four principal heads, and I will try and take them in order. The first
crime with which I am accused is of being in my heart an opponent of
the king’s second marriage. I confess that I have said to his majesty
what my conscience dictated, and in that I can see no treason. But, on
the contrary, if, being required by my prince to give him my opinion
on a matter of such great importance, and which so deeply concerns the
peace of the kingdom, I had basely flattered him, then indeed I should
have been a treacherous and perfidious subject to God and to the king.
I have not, then, offended, nor wished to offend, my king in replying,
with the integrity of my heart, to the question he has asked me;
moreover, admitting that I have been at fault in this, I have been
punished for it already by the afflictions I have endured, the loss of
my office, and the imprisonment I have undergone. The second charge
brought against me, and the most explicit, is of having violated the
act of the last Parliament, in this: that being a prisoner and
examined by the council, I have not been willing, through a spirit of
malice, of perfidy, of treachery, and obstinacy, to say whether or not
the king was supreme head of the church, and that I have not been
willing to confess whether that act was just or unjust, for the reason
which I gave――that, having no other rank in the church than that of a
simple layman, I had no authority to decide those things. Now, I will
avow to your lordships that this was my reply: ‘I had neither done nor
said anything which could be alleged and produced against me on the
subject of this statute’; and I added that I no longer desired to
occupy myself with anything here below, in order to be entirely
absorbed in meditating on the Passion of my Saviour Jesus Christ in
this miserable world, where I have such a short time to remain; that I
wished ill to no one――on the contrary, every kind of prosperity; and
also, if that was not sufficient to preserve my life, I did not desire
to live; I had violated no law, and that I was not willing to
surrender myself as guilty of any crime of high treason――for there are
no laws in the world by which a man can be punished for his silence;
they can do no more than punish him for his words and actions, and it
is God alone who judges the heart.”
As Sir Thomas said these words, the advocate-general, Christopher
Hales, suddenly interrupted him: “You say you have not uttered a word
nor committed an act against this law; but you admit that you have
kept silence, which is a conclusive sign of the malice of your heart,
no good subject being able to refuse without crime to reply to this
question when it is set before him as the law ordains.”
“My silence,” replied More, “is not a sign of the malice of my heart,
since I have answered the king when he has consulted me on divers
occasions; and I do not believe a man can be convicted of having
attacked a law by keeping silence, since this maxim, ‘_Qui tacet
consentire videtur_,’ is adopted and recognized as true by all the
most learned and enlightened men of the law. With regard to what you
say about a good subject having no right to refuse a direct reply to
this question, I believe, on the contrary, that such is his duty,
unless, indeed, he wish to be a bad Christian. Now, it is better to
obey God than man, and it is better not to offend one’s conscience
than everything else in the world, above all when this conscience
cannot be the occasion of revolt against, or injury to, the king and
the country. I protest to you, on this subject I have not revealed my
opinion to any man living.”
“You know very well, on the contrary,” said the Duke of Norfolk
sharply, “that your example will be followed, and a great many will
refuse the oath on seeing you reject it.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas; “but I have the right to
think thus, since a moment ago my lord the chancellor reproached me
with being the only one of my opinion in the kingdom. I can say, then,
that my silence is neither injurious to the prince nor dangerous to
the state.”
“How can you assert,” cried Christopher Hales, “that your refusal will
not be the cause of any sedition or of any injury toward the king? Do
you not know, then, that all his enemies have their eyes fixed on you,
in order to confirm themselves by your audacity, and take advantage of
the malice of which you have given proof? What, then, would you call
an injury, if not a refusal thus contemptuous and unlawful with
respect to the submission you owe to the will of your king, the living
image of God upon earth?”
“The king has no enemies, sir,” replied Sir Thomas; “he has only some
faithful subjects who wish to sigh in silence over the perfidious
counsel which has been given him. I will dare almost to say,” he
cried, laying his hand on his breast, “some tender and respectful
friends, who would have given all for his glory, sacrificed all for
his salvation, but who, for that same cause, cannot approve the error
into which he has been made to fall.”
“Alas! he is lost,” thought Sir John; and he turned away his head.
“Well,” said Cromwell to himself, “the case becomes clear; they cannot
draw back.”
While a low murmur of surprise and admiration arose among the jury,
their foreman leaned toward Mr. Rich, and whispered to him excitedly.
“Truly! It is so, sir!” said the latter, looking fixedly at him. “It
seems to me, Sir Thomas Palmer, that your remarks have much weight.
Have you been called here to interpret the wishes of the king, or have
you, by chance, a mind to make a short sojourn in the Tower or some
part of its environs?” And he made his fingers crack. “With your
short-sighted justice,” he replied, “do you believe that there are not
some great reasons, which they do not wish you to know, which have led
Sir Thomas to the bar of this tribunal? And if I should say to you――”
He paused. “The dogs!” he murmured, looking at the faces of the
jurors. “And if I should say to you,” he continued, “that this is an
extortioner, and that he has devoured the revenues of the
state――sucked――sucked the hearts’ blood of the poor people!”
“It cannot be possible!” said Palmer, awaiting each word of Rich,
which seemed to fall drop by drop from his lips. “What! like the
other?”
“Exactly, precisely like the other! Wonderful!” said Rich to himself.
“They themselves furnish me with the words, the fools! I hope, indeed,
that I may be exalted a grade from this; for this herd of jurors make
me sweat blood and water. They called them so well chosen! So it
appears; one goes to the right, the other to the left, a third to the
middle. To the death――that is too hard; no, confiscation, or rather
imprisonment. They wish to enter into the spirit of the law, as if
they regarded the law! Condemn him, sirs――that is all they ask of
you――and then go to your beds! Every one to his trade; theirs is not
to inquire what we do, but what we wish them to do!” And Rich, much
excited, shaking his great sleeves, leaned forward in order to listen.
“I come, then, to the third article of my accusation,” said Sir
Thomas, “by which I am accused of malicious attempts, efforts, and
perfidious practices against the statute, because, since being
confined in the Tower, I have sent several packages of letters to
Bishop Fisher, and in those letters I have exhorted him to violate
this same law, and encouraged him in the resistance he has made to it.
I have already demanded that those letters should be instantly
produced and read to the court; they could thus have acquitted me or
convicted me of falsehood. But as you say the bishop has burned them,
I am only able to prove what I advance here by my own words; therefore
I will state what they contained. The greater portion of those letters
related to my private affairs, especially to our old friendship; in
one of them alone I responded to the demand he had made to know how I
would reply in my interrogatory upon the oath of supremacy, and I
wrote to him thus: that I had examined this question in conscience,
and he must be content with knowing that it was decided in my mind.
God is my witness, as I hope to save my soul, that I have made no
other reply, and I cannot presume that this could be considered an
attack upon the laws.”
“Oh! no, by no means,” said several of the jurors. “Nevertheless, it
would be necessary to see these documents.”
“That is the custom,” said a voice loudly enough.
“The jury examines the documents,” said another; “that is always
done.”
“My lord judge! my lord advocate! it is necessary, it is
customary――indispensable――”
Audley looked angrily at Rich. “Gentlemen, the jurors are perfectly
right,” he cried in a shrill voice; “but these letters have been
destroyed. They will proceed to examine other documents; then the
witnesses of these facts will be heard.”
“Silence! silence!” cried the court usher.
“Gentlemen, do not interrupt the court,” said Cromwell gravely; “we
should listen religiously to the least word of the prisoner’s
defence.”
And thus he stifled by his awful voice the truth which had been
excited in those troubled hearts.
Fatigued and weary, More kept silence; he was thinking, moreover, of
his letters to the Bishop of Rochester. “If I had spoken more strongly
to my friend,” he sorrowfully reflected, “perhaps he would not have
succumbed. My God and my only Saviour! behold the afflictions that
overwhelm my soul; for I fear I have only listened to the cowardly
prudence of the children of men. And yet what could I do?”
More reproached himself with not having done enough, with having been
mistaken. He groaned in spirit and humbled himself to the dust before
God; whereas this tribunal by which he was being judged, in the face
of which he found himself placed, before which he was traduced, was
composed of men whom avarice, fear, and ambition caused to walk
rapidly and firmly, without remorse and without shame, in the road,
strewn with thorns, of vice, falsehood, and slavery.
“Speak on,” said Cromwell, provoked by his silence; “they will not
dare to interrupt you again.”
Sir Thomas raised his eyes to his face, and regarded him fixedly. So
much suffering, so many conflicting emotions, were weighing on his
mind, that he no longer knew how to resume his discoveries or where he
had left the thread of his ideas.
“You had replied to the third article,” said Cromwell, promptly
assisting him, for fear of giving the assembly time for reflection.
“Now, what else have you to say, and what have you to oppose to the
testimony of Master Rich, who has heard you say in the Tower that the
statute was a two-edged sword which killed necessarily either the soul
or the body?”
“What I have to reply to that,” said Sir Thomas, “is that Master Rich
called on me continually while they were removing the books I had in
my prison. Fatigued by his importunate demands, I replied to him
conditionally (which makes the case very different) that, if it was
true, it was equally dangerous to avow or disavow this act; and that
if it was similar to a two-edged sword, it was very hard to make it
fall on me, who had never contradicted the statute either by my words
or my actions. As to their accusing me of having drawn the Bishop of
Rochester into my conspiracy, and induced him to make a reply similar
to my own――alas! no, I have not done so. I have nothing more to add.”
And he took his seat without a word more.
“You have nothing more to say?” repeated the chancellor.
“No, my lord.”
“That is well,” said Audley.
“He is here no longer,” said More; and he looked around him. “Where
have they dragged him? To the king, perhaps. We should have received
our sentence together. O Fisher! O my friend! No, it cannot be,” said
More; “they are surely deceiving me! Does not falsehood flow naturally
from their lips? Oh! how I would joy to see him, for one moment only.
However, if he has not taken the oath, he will be here.” And he sank
again into his silent sadness.
“We will proceed to examine the witnesses,” said the chancellor.
Master Rich, relieving himself immediately of his great robe, slowly
descended from the platform and the chair from which he had surveyed
the jury, and took his seat in the midst of the hall, in front of the
tribunal.
He raised his hand and took the oath without hesitation. He then
related how, having entered the prison cell of Thomas More with Palmer
and Sir Richard Southwell, he had heard Sir Thomas express himself
strongly against the statute and declare that no Parliament in the
world would be able to submit to the question of the supremacy.
“You hear, Sir Thomas!” cried all the lords. “There is nothing to
reply to this.”
Sir Thomas arose immediately, and an expression of deep emotion showed
itself on his weary features. “My lords,” he replied, “if I was a man
who had no regard for my oath, I would not be here before you as a
criminal. And you, Master Rich,” he continued, turning toward him, “if
what you have declared be true, and the oath you have taken be not
perjury, then may I never look upon the face of God!――and this I would
not assert for all the world contains, if what you have testified was
the truth. Listen to me, my lords; judge between us, and learn what I
have said to Master Rich. When he came to carry away my books from the
dreary prison where I was confined, he approached me, took my hands,
overwhelmed me with compliments, and, protesting to me that he had no
commission touching the supremacy, during the course of a long
conversation he recalled all the circumstances of our childhood, and
proposed to me this question: ‘If Parliament recognized me as king,
would you recognize me? and would it be treason not to do it?’ I
answered that I would recognize him, but it was a _casus levis_. And
in my turn I said to him: ‘If an act of Parliament should declare that
God is not God, do you think it would be treason not to submit to that
act?’
“Then Master Rich said that this question was too remote, and they
could not discuss it. Whereupon he left me, and went away with those
whom he had brought with him.
“In good faith, Master Rich,” pursued Sir Thomas, “I am more concerned
on account of your perjury than because of the danger into which you
have so heartlessly thrown me, and I must tell you that neither I nor
any one else has ever regarded you as a man to whom they could confide
a thing of so much importance as this. You know that I am acquainted
with your life and conversation from your youth up to the present
time. We were of the same parish; and you know right well, although I
am very sorry to say and speak of it, that you always bore the
reputation of having a very flippant and very lying tongue, that you
were a great gambler, and you had not a good name in your parish and
in the Temple, where you have been reared.
“Your lordships,” continued Sir Thomas, “can you believe that, in an
affair of so great moment, I would have had so little discretion as to
confide in Master Rich, entertaining the opinion I do of his want of
truth and honesty; that I would have disclosed to him the secret of my
conscience touching the supremacy of the king――a subject upon which I
have been so strongly pressed, and which I have always refused to
reveal to any of his grave and noble counsellors, who, your lordships
know well, have been so often sent to the Tower to interrogate me? I
submit it to your judgment, my lords: does this appear to you credible
or possible?
“Moreover,” he immediately continued, “supposing Master Rich speaks
the truth, it should still be remarked that this might have been said
in a secret and private conversation upon some supposed questions and
without any offending circumstances. Therefore they cannot, at least,
say there was any malice on this occasion; and that being so, my
lords, I cannot believe so many reverend bishops, honorable
personages, so great a number of wise and virtuous men of which the
Parliament is composed, would wish to punish a man with death when he
has had no malice in his heart――taking, most certainly, this word
malice in the sense of ill-will and open rebellion. Finally, I would
again recall to your lordships’ attention the inexpressible kindness
his majesty has manifested toward me during more than twenty years
since he called me into his service, constantly appointing me to some
new charge, some new office, and finally to the position of lord
chancellor――an honor he had never bestowed on any lawyer before, this
dignity being the greatest in the kingdom, and coming immediately
after that of the crown; lastly, in relieving me of this charge, and
permitting me to retire, and allowing me, at my own request, the
liberty of passing the remainder of my days in the service of God, in
order that I might occupy myself no more with aught but the salvation
of my soul. And therefore I say that all the benefits his majesty has
for so long a time and so abundantly showered upon me, in elevating me
far beyond my merits, are enough, in my opinion, to break down the
scandalous accusation so injuriously formulated by this man against
me.” Having said these words, Sir Thomas was silent.
The tribunal looked at him. This earnest and truthful attack on the
reputation of Master Rich was hard to weaken, although the latter,
after having resumed his seat, had already cried out sneeringly three
or four times: “Palmer and Southwell will testify if I have told the
truth, yes or no.”
“Yes or no,” repeated Cromwell to himself――“the world is summed up in
those two words; only it is necessary to manage them well. Go, clerk,”
he said, “call Master Southwell.”
And the clamorous voice of the clerk resounded through the vast
enclosure where he kept the witnesses.
“Master Palmer! Master Richard Palmer!” he repeated; and Master Palmer
presented himself.
“You swear,” said Audley to the witness, “that the testimony you are
about to render before this court, and before the jury interposed
between your sovereign lord the king and the prisoner here present at
the bar, will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you God!”
As the chancellor said these words, they brought the book of the Holy
Evangelists, and opened it, in order that Palmer might lay his hand on
it to swear.
“But, my lord,” said Palmer, anxiously looking around him, “I know
nothing, nothing at all, about what you are going to ask me.”
“Well, you need only tell what you know,” said Audley brusquely.
“Very well, then,” said Palmer in a low voice; and laying his hand on
the book, he was sworn in the usual manner.
“What did you hear while removing the books belonging to Sir Thomas?”
“Nothing, my lord. I threw the books as fast as possible into a sack.
They made some noise in falling one upon the other, and I heard
nothing else.”
“That is not possible!” said Audley. “The chamber is very small; you
would have been very near Sir Thomas and Master Rich, who were
conversing together, and you must have heard their conversation.”
“I have heard that Sir Thomas stooped down to pick up a book I let
fall from my hands, and that it seemed to give him pain when they took
his books away from him; so that when I saw the dismal little cell,
the pallet they had given him for a bed, the broken earthen pitcher
which was in one corner, with an old candle standing in the neck of a
bottle, and that they had forbidden him for the future to light that
candle――for fear, they said, that he might set fire to the prison――the
tears came into my eyes, and I felt my heart ache with sorrow as I
thought I had seen him lord chancellor such a little while ago. That
is all, my lord.”
“But,” said Cromwell, provoked by this recital, “Sir Thomas spoke; you
have declared that already.”
“Oh! he spoke, without doubt. I do not deny that he could speak;
certainly he spoke. For instance, when he saw the sack of books
carried away he said: ‘_Now that the tools are removed, there is
nothing more to do but close the shop._’ But we saw, in spite of this
pleasantry, that it distressed him very much,” added Palmer after a
moment’s silence.
“How prolix is this witness!” said the Abbot of Westminster in a
contemptuous tone.
“Come, that’s enough,” said Cromwell. “You know nothing more?”
“No, my lord, nothing more――nothing at all.” And he hastened to
withdraw.
As he retired, Richard Southwell appeared.
Audley immediately began to interrogate him.
“Your name?”
“Richard Southwell.”
“Your age?”
“Twenty-four years.”
“Your profession?”
“The king’s clerk.”
“You swear,” said the chancellor to the witness, “that the testimony
you are about to render before the court, and before the jury
interposed between our sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the
bar, will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so
help you God.”
“I have no testimony to offer,” said Richard.
“What!” exclaimed Audley. “Here is Master Rich, who cites you as
having been present at a conversation he had in the Tower prison with
Sir Thomas More.”
“Master Rich says just what it suits him to say. The truth is, I went
with Master Palmer to remove the books of Sir Thomas because I was
obliged to do it. I found Master Rich there, whereat I was surprised.
Everybody knows what Rich is, and what confidence should be placed in
anything he asserts. I will swear, then, to nothing, nor take any oath
on a matter of business in which he is mixed up, being well assured in
advance that it can only be something bad.”
Rich’s face became purple.
“My lord chancellor,” cried the new solicitor-general, “the witness
insults the court.”
“Master Rich, yes; but the court, no,” growled Audley. He answered
nothing, and had not the appearance of heeding what Richard Southwell
was saying, if even he was not pleased with it; for the vile and
corrupt men with whom Henry VIII. each day surrounded himself, in
order to serve his frenzies, abhorred him and sought only his
destruction, or to elevate themselves one above another by crushing
each other. “You refuse to swear, then?” said he to the witness,
without deigning to listen to the recriminations of Rich.
“Yes, my lord,” replied Southwell.
“The witness will pay a fine.”
“Very well, my lord! I know that I owe it.”
And Southwell retired. Then a profound silence reigned throughout the
assembly, because the decisive moment approached.
Meanwhile, the lord chief-justice, the timid Fitz-James, arose at a
sign given him by Audley, and in a trembling voice propounded the
following questions to the jury:
“Has Sir Thomas More rendered himself guilty of the crime of high
treason towards our lord the king in refusing, through a spirit of
malice, treachery, and obstinacy, the oath which he demands of him as
supreme head of the church on earth? Is Sir Thomas More guilty of
resisting the statute of Parliament which has conferred this dignity
on our lord and master, King Henry VIII.?”
The court officers struck a blow with their maces.
The judges all arose, and the court marched out majestically, while
the jury retired into another room.
“Now we shall see if Rich is sure of his jury,” said Cromwell to
himself, following them with his eyes; and not looking before him, he
trod on the train of the chancellor’s robe, who turned round,
impatiently saying that he had offended his dignity. Cromwell began to
laugh; for he cared little for the dignity of this chancellor of
recent date and mediocre worth――and he continued to look behind him.
“Well! this will soon be ended,” said Sir Thomas; and he asked the
yeomen who guarded him permission to approach one of the windows
looking out on the courtyard.
More humane than the tigers who had just gone out, these rude men
granted his request.
Sir Thomas looked out, but a broad, sculptured cornice extending
around the gallery prevented him from seeing if his daughter was still
below, and his eyes rested only on the magnificent view to be enjoyed
from the apartments of Lambeth Palace. The sun was reflected upon the
surface of the river, and he could see even the smallest boat that
glided on the water.
“Is she still there?” thought Sir Thomas, as he leaned his head
against the window. “Well, it is all over.” He stepped back, and gazed
out into the distance. “This whole city,” he said, “comes, goes,
stirs, agitates itself. What matters it to them that a man is
condemned in a corner? Had they need of my services, they would
run――‘Sir Thomas! there is Sir Thomas!’ They would follow; they would
call me. Now the crowd forgets us in two days! An immense abyss, an
entire chaos, almost a generation, separates the evening from the
morrow! My friends are afraid――those, at least, who remain to me. They
grieve in secret. The tears will be wiped from their eyes in
obscurity; but my daughter, who will dry hers? She will pass away like
myself, alone in this world; she will have need to pass quickly, and
without looking around her.”
He wiped his forehead; for it was damp and hot.
“It is impossible for them not to condemn me!” And he leaned against
the window-sill, scarcely able to stand on his feet; he experienced a
sort of faintness for which he could not account, and which obliged
him to change his posture every moment. “Nothing! There is no word
from them. My God! they are a long time. And for what purpose, when
all was decided in advance? O Rochester! where art thou? It is this
that lowers my courage. Well! they do not return. What can this jury
be doing? It seems to me that it is already two hours since they went
out.” He looked around him, and saw that the two guards had commenced
a game of cards.
“How much a game?” said the bigger of the two.
“A penny.”
“A penny!” cried the other. “Of what are you dreaming, Scotchman? The
profit of a week! A half-penny now, and more on trust if――You
understand me?” And he made a gesture as if drinking.
“Always drinking, always drinking!” replied his adversary.
They were dealing the cards, when the maces of the court officers
resounded on the floor, announcing that the deliberations were ended
and the court was returning.
“What!” cried the two gamesters, “they have finished already? How they
have hurried over this business! Ordinarily they take an hour, at
least.”
They hastened to gather up their cards and conceal them under their
jackets.
At a signal given by the officers Sir Thomas came hurriedly out from
the deep embrasure of the window where he was leaning. He then
observed a man and a young girl, who, alone in the midst of this vast
enclosure, were gazing in every direction, astonished at the solitude
in which they found themselves, and seeking him whom their hearts
loved.
“Margaret!” cried Sir Thomas――“Margaret here at this fatal moment! No
grief must, then, be spared me!”
At the voice of More his daughter rushed toward him. She covered his
face with kisses and tears. Pierre Gilles was at her side.
“Pierre Gilles here!” cried More.
Meanwhile, the heavy doors rolled on their hinges, and the judges
approached.
“O More! O my friend! is the trial ended, that I see you alone and at
liberty here?”
“Yes! it is over,” said More; “but not as you think,” he added,
lowering his voice. “My friend, in the name of our tender friendship,
take Margaret away! I will see you again in a moment. I pray you, one
minute, one minute only, go, take her out, if you love me, if you have
loved me! Ah! Pierre Gilles, thou here? I confide her to thee!” And
Sir Thomas cast on him a glance so imploring, and an expression so
deep, that the heart of one father was immediately comprehended by the
other.
Pierre Gilles made a rapid movement to lead the young girl out. He was
too late; the court had entered, and the judges had taken their
places. The chancellor remained standing in the midst of them, and,
turning to the foreman of the jury, who advanced, he put the terrible
question:
“Is the accused guilty?”
“Yes,” said the foreman, “upon all the counts.” And his voice failed
in adding the last words.
“Upon all the counts!” repeated Pierre Gilles.
“What did he say?” cried Margaret, transfixed with expectation and
terror. “My father guilty? No, never! Pierre Gilles, what did he say?
Guilty? Oh! no, no. My father!”
The young girl pronounced this word so tenderly, with a cry so
piercing, an accent of despair so heartrending, that Sir Thomas
trembled from head to foot, and it seemed his soul was shaken to its
very depths.
“In mercy take her away!” he said in a faint voice.
“Guilty!” repeated Margaret――“guilty! They have dared say it. Guilty!
Then all is finished! He is lost, condemned! O cowardice! O horror!
Guilty!”
And a change so horrible came over her features that Margaret was
unrecognizable.
“Sir Thomas More guilty before God and before man!” she pursued with a
smile of frightful bitterness, while her eyes remained dry. “Pierre
Gilles, you have heard it; have I not told you? O ignoble creatures!
Behold them, these bloody judges――this Cromwell, with his livid face,
and envy corroding his heart; this Audley, vender of consciences; this
Cranmer, renegade archbishop! No, you do not know them! There they are
before your eyes, and they invoke the name of Almighty God! One day,
yes, one day, we also will see them before the tribunal of the
Sovereign Judge――before that tribunal without appeal and without
mercy――to receive the reward of perjury and of murder. May Heaven hear
my cry; may my tears mount to the skies, and fall back upon them to
add new strength to the remorse which they have so long sought to tear
from their hearts!”
“What woman is this,” said Cromwell, “who dares to disturb the court?”
“Nay, Master Cromwell,” replied More in a stifled voice, “pardon her!
She is a child. Alas! you know her well.”
“Bear her away,” said Audley instantly.
“Officer, lead that woman out!” exclaimed Cromwell in a voice of
thunder.
“My daughter, my cherished daughter, follow Pierre Gilles! My friend,
take her out!” cried Sir Thomas.
“I will not go!” exclaimed Margaret, bracing her feeble feet against
the long stone slabs.
“Will you suffer a varlet to lay his hands on you, Margaret?” said
Pierre Gilles, whose tears streamed down his cheeks and stifled his
voice.
“Yes, anything! If I leave him, they will let me see him no more.”
“Sheriff, do you hear?” cried Cromwell.
“O Master Cromwell!” exclaimed Margaret, falling on her knees and
raising her suppliant hands toward him. “But, no,” she said,
immediately rising again, “I will not descend so low! Implore him? You
may annihilate but never demean me!” And casting a withering glance
upon Cromwell, she seized the arm of Pierre Gilles, and, dragging him
away, left the place without even looking toward her father.
This scene created some disturbance in the horrible assembly, and a
moment of silence and hesitation followed, when Cromwell made a sign
to the lord chancellor not to let it be prolonged.
Audley then began to pronounce the formula of the sentence, but Sir
Thomas interrupted him.
“My lord chancellor,” he said, “when I had the honor of being at the
head of justice, the custom was to demand of the prisoner, before
pronouncing sentence, if he had anything to say that might arrest the
judgment about to be rendered against him. I ask, then, to say a few
words.”
“And what can you have to say?” asked Audley brusquely.
“Much, my lord,” answered Sir Thomas; “for, now that I have been
condemned, and it can no more seem like presuming on my own strength
in exposing myself to death, I can discharge my conscience, and speak
freely and without restriction. I therefore declare, in the presence
of your lordships here present, that I regard the statute of
Parliament as entirely illegal and contrary to all laws, divine and
human, and my accusation, consequently, as being completely null.
Parliament has no right, and cannot in any manner have the power, to
give the church a temporal head. In conferring the spiritual
government of one portion of Christendom on another than the Bishop of
Rome, whose universal supremacy has been established in the person of
St. Peter, chief of the apostles, by the mouth of our Lord Jesus
Christ himself when he was present and visible on earth, Parliament
has exceeded the limits of its authority. There are not, therefore,
and there cannot be, among Catholic Christians, laws sufficient to
oblige a Christian to obey a power which might have been usurped in
order to prove this assertion. I will say, moreover, that the
Parliament of this kingdom can no more bind all Christendom by such an
act than one small portion of the church can make a law in opposition
to the general law of the church universal; or than the city of
London, which is only a member in comparison with the body of the
state, can make a law against an act of Parliament which would bind
the whole kingdom. I will add, furthermore, that this law is contrary
to all the statutes and to all the laws in force until this day, and
any yet reported, especially to these words written in the great
charter: ‘The English Church is free, her rights shall remain
untouched, and none of her liberties shall be cut off’; finally, that
it is contrary to the oath taken by the king at his consecration, in
presence of all the assembled people. And I say that there is far more
ingratitude in the English Parliament refusing to acknowledge the
authority and spiritual supremacy of the pope than there would be in a
child refusing to obey its father; because it is to Pope St. Gregory
that we are indebted for the knowledge of the Holy Gospel; it is he
who regenerated us――a heritage richer and more desirable than that
which any father according to the flesh can bequeath to his children.
Yes, noble lords, I confess before you that, since this question has
been raised among us, I have spent days and nights in examining it,
and I have been unable to find in the centuries passed, or in the
works of any doctors, a single example, or even a sentiment, which may
authorize a temporal king to usurp the spiritual government of the
church. And consider: this divine authority, necessary to the unity
and the purity of the Christian faith, would then be committed, in the
course of time, in following the order of succession established in
this kingdom, to the feeble hands of a woman or the blind keeping of
an infant in its cradle! Truly, my lords, it is a thing which shocks
not only the unchangeable rule followed up to our day, but even the
most ordinary judgment and common sense.”
“Then,” said Audley, interrupting him with a smile of mockery and
disdain, “you esteem yourself wiser than, and believe you possess a
knowledge and degree of enlightenment far above that of, the bishops,
the reverend doctors, the nobility, and the people of the kingdom
generally!”
“I doubt, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas firmly, “of there having been
this unanimity between them in which your lordship appears to believe;
but, supposing it existed, if we are to judge by the number, it must
be very much less even than that of the Christians who are spread
throughout the whole world, and of those who, having gone before them
in life, are now among the glorious saints in heaven.”
“Sir Thomas,” cried the Duke of Norfolk, reddening, “you show clearly
how far your malice and obstinacy extend.”
“Noble duke,” replied More, “you are mistaken: it is neither malice
nor obstinacy which makes me speak thus, but rather the desire and the
necessity of clearing my conscience; and I call upon God, who sees and
hears us, to witness that this is the only sentiment inspiring my
heart!”
Cromwell, in the meantime, grew very impatient at this debate, and
made signals in vain to Audley that he should impose silence on Sir
Thomas; but the former hesitated, stammered, and delayed pronouncing
his sentence, resolving in his mind not to take upon himself the
responsibility of the proceeding. All at once he turned toward the
lord chief-justice, Fitz-James.
“Why,” said he, “Sir John, do you not assist me with your opinion?
Could it be true that our sentence were unlawful? Speak! Are you not
the lord chief-justice?”
At this question a frightful apprehension arose in the soul of the
weak judge; he was conscious of the adroit snare into which he had
been drawn. They questioned him directly; they placed in the hollow of
his hand the weights which were to turn the balance and decide the
fate of Sir Thomas, his benefactor and friend. He paled visibly and
answered nothing.
“Well!” said Cromwell, “the chancellor interrogates you, my lord, and
it seems you hesitate in your reply!”
If he had had courage, he might, perhaps, have saved More; it failed
him. “I think,” he answered in an evasive way, less odious perhaps,
but none the less criminal, “that if the statute of Parliament was
illegal, the process of law would be equally so.”
“Assuredly,” said Cromwell with a bitter smile, “this is very
judicious. If there was no law, there could be no criminal; and if
there was no day, there would be no night――there are some things which
reason themselves so naturally that we cannot but concede them.” As he
said these words, he passed to the chancellor the sentence of
condemnation.
Audley read it in a very loud tone, which he lowered, however, when he
came to the details of the execution, which set forth that Sir Thomas,
after having been carried back to the Tower by Lieutenant Kingston,
should be dragged through the streets of the city on a hurdle; led
afterward to Tyburn, where, after having been hanged by the neck, he
should be taken down, when half dead, from the gallows, to be
disembowelled and his entrails cast into the fire; after which his
body should be cut into four pieces, to be placed above the gates of
the city, the head excepted, because the head must be exposed on
London Bridge in an iron cage.
While the sentence was being read the face of Sir Thomas More remained
impassible. At the end only a slight start seemed to denote some
feeling. He lowered his head, and it was seen, by an almost
imperceptible movement of his lips, that he prayed.
A profound silence reigned around him, and it seemed that no human
voice or respiration dared be raised in the presence of such cool
atrocity.
After a moment a slight sigh was heard.
“A death of infamy may not be,” murmured the Duke of Norfolk; “he has
been lord chancellor!”
He leaned over toward Cromwell. “You have deceived me,” he said.
“Decapitation is the only punishment which can be inflicted on him. He
has been lord chancellor! Have you thought of that?”
“But,” replied Cromwell, “the law is positive; such is the penalty
that follows the refusal of the oath.”
“The king will dispense with the gibbet,” said Norfolk angrily, “or I
am not chief of his council!”
“We will see,” said Cromwell. “That will matter nothing, provided he
dies,” he added to himself.
Lord Fitz-James had heard Norfolk’s remark, and, unable to restrain
his tears, addressed him. “My lord,” he said in an oppressed voice,
“the king might be willing to grant his pardon. Ask Sir Thomas if he
have not yet something to say. Perhaps, alas! perhaps he may be
induced to make some act of submission.”
Norfolk made a sign of approval. “Sir Thomas,” he said, “you have
heard what are the rigors of the law, and the penalty that your
inconceivable obstinacy calls down upon your head. Speak, then; have
you nothing to reply that may give us the means of mitigating it?”
Sir Thomas raised his head, and looked at him for a moment with an
expression of calmness, of gentleness, benevolence, and dignity which
it is impossible for any human pen to describe. “Noble duke,” he
answered, “no, I have nothing more to say; I have only to submit to
the sentence you have passed on me. There was a time when you honored
me with the name of friend; I dare believe that I still remain worthy
of it. I regard the words you have addressed to me as a souvenir of
that good-will, old and proven, which you have felt for me. I would
thank you for it at this last moment; for I hope that we may meet
again in a better world, where all these dissensions shall have passed
away. And even as the holy Apostle Paul, who was one of those who
stoned St. Stephen, is now united with him in heaven, where they love
with an eternal love, so I hope also that your lordships, who have
been my judges here on earth, and all those who have participated in
any way in my death, may be eternally reunited and happy in possession
of the salvation which our divine Saviour Jesus Christ has merited for
us on the cross. To this end I will pray from my heart for your
lordships, and above all for my lord the king, that God may accord him
faithful counsellors, and that the truth may no longer remain hidden
from him.”
And saying these words with much sweetness and fulness of heart, Sir
Thomas was silent.
As soon as he had ceased speaking the guards, by Cromwell’s order,
pressed around him. An axe was raised, the edge of which was turned
toward the condemned by a man who walked before him. And so he was led
back on foot, through the streets, to the Tower, there to wait until
the hour of execution should be appointed by the king, after he had
affixed his signature to the death-warrant.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD AND THE INVOCATION
OF SAINTS.[110]
Mr. Withrow claims to have produced the only English book on the
Catacombs in which the latest results of exploration are fully given
and interpreted from a Protestant point of view. We must decline to
acknowledge the justice of his claim. His book is very far indeed from
giving the latest results of exploration, and he certainly is not the
first who has attempted to interpret them from a Protestant point of
view. He is, however, as far as we know, the last; and as he has
pretty faithfully repeated all the misstatements and mistakes of his
various predecessors in the same subject, only adding a few more of
his own, it will be worth while to set before our readers a short
refutation of some of them. Indeed, this work of refutation is the
more necessary because “the testimony of the Catacombs relative to
primitive Christianity” is daily increasing in value, as our knowledge
of the Catacombs is becoming more exact and scientific. Some years
ago, and to some intelligences even now, a painting or an inscription
from the Catacombs was “a monument of ancient Christianity,” and one
such monument was as good evidence as another of primitive Christian
doctrine. It has been reserved to the labors of De Rossi to introduce
light and order into this chaos; and those who profess to publish the
fruits of his discoveries ought not to withhold this most important
portion of them; at least, they ought scrupulously to follow the lines
of chronology which he has established, or else themselves to
establish others on surer foundations. Mr. Withrow’s neglect of these
distinctions――indeed, of all chronological order whatever――is quite
unpardonable. Whilst in the title of his work he promises to examine
“the testimony of the Catacombs relative to primitive Christianity,”
we sometimes find that the greater portion of the evidence he adduces
on some of the most important questions of Christian doctrine is not
even taken from the Catacombs at all. Let us look, by way of example,
at a single doctrine――the elementary doctrine of the Resurrection――and
see how he deals with it. “This glorious doctrine,” he says, “which is
peculiarly the characteristic of our holy religion as distinguished
from all the faiths of antiquity, was everywhere recorded throughout
the Catacombs. It was symbolized in the ever-recurring representations
of the story of Jonas and of the raising of Lazarus, and was strongly
asserted in numerous inscriptions” (p. 431). But of the inscriptions
which he proceeds to quote, one is spurious (_Alexander mortuus non
est_, etc.); others belong to the years 449, 544, etc., long after the
practice of burial in the Catacombs had ceased. And we shall presently
have occasion to notice other sins, scarcely less flagrant, against
every canon of chronology belonging to the subject which he professes
to handle. But first let us say a few words as to what those canons
are, and how they have been established.
It is only in our own day that the study of inscriptions generally,
and especially of Christian inscriptions, has received that
development which entitles it to a place among real sciences. It has
now acquired a light and a solidity which constitute it one of the
most trustworthy founts of ancient history. To confine ourselves,
however, strictly within the limits of our present argument, we will
speak only of the method which has been followed by De Rossi during
the thirty years he has devoted so assiduously to this subject, and
whereby he has been enabled to discover the laws which regulated the
gradual development of Christian epigraphy. If we must summarize his
method in a single word, we should say that his secret consists in a
minute study of the topography of all inscriptions. In every fresh
excavation――_i.e._, in every reopening of the galleries and chambers
of the Catacombs, and clearing away the _débris_ with which they have
been so long encumbered――he has carefully marked and registered every
stone, and even every fragment of every stone, bearing so much as a
single letter or symbol engraved upon it, and taken note of the
precise spot where it has been found. When a sufficient space has been
cleared to enable him to make a study of its contents, he collects all
the stones that have been discovered within this _area_; carefully
eliminates all those which have evidently fallen through the
_luminaria_, or in other ways have been introduced from the upper
world; next, makes a separate class of those whose place of origin is
doubtful――those which there is some reason, either from their size,
their shape, or for some other cause, to suspect may have come from
outside; and then there remain, finally, those only which beyond all
question belong to the subterranean cemeteries. Many of these he has,
perhaps, discovered _in situ_, still closing the graves to which they
were originally attached――and these, of course, are cardinal points in
his system of arrangement; of many others he knows the chamber or
gallery whence they came; and of all he minutely examines the
language, the symbols, monograms or other ornaments, the form of the
letters, the names, and, finally, the style and epigraphic _formulæ_;
and the minute study of the inscriptions of innumerable _areæ_ of
various cemeteries according to this strict topographical system has
led to wonderfully interesting and important discoveries, both as to
their history and chronology. This process of examination, it need
hardly be said, is laborious and wearisome in the extreme; even the
material difficulties which surround it are not slight. It sometimes
happens that within the limits of a single _area_――_e.g._, in that of
St. Eusebio’s monument in the cemetery of San Callisto――there are
upwards of a thousand fragments of epitaphs to be sifted and
classified. De Rossi, therefore, occasionally gives utterance to a
pathetic lament as to the dry and tedious character of the task he has
imposed upon himself. Nevertheless, he has persevered in it with the
most conscientious fidelity, even when at times the attempt at
arrangement seemed almost desperate, and the results have in the end
abundantly rewarded his labors. It is with these results that we are
at present concerned; and it is obvious that in these pages we can
only reproduce them: we cannot enter into an examination of the
evidence upon which they rest. This is the less necessary, however,
since even the most bitter of Protestant controversialists admit that
“De Rossi has the rare merit of stating his facts exactly and
impartially, precisely as he finds them,” and that “his assiduous
researches have been conducted with a sincere zeal for truth.”
Let us proceed, then, to state some of the conclusions to which De
Rossi’s researches have led him――first, upon the general subject of
the chronology of the inscriptions which have come to us from the
Catacombs, and next as to the dogmatic allusions contained in them.
And first, as to the inscriptions, it is patent that not one in ten
bears its date on the face of it. Are the other nine (speaking
generally) older or more recent? De Rossi pronounces quite positively
in favor of their greater antiquity. He says that the _most_ ancient
Christian epitaphs make no mention either of the day or year of
decease; that during the time of the first emperors there are very few
exceptions to this rule; that in the third century the mention of the
day and month of the decease was not uncommon, though the year was
still passed over in silence; finally, that in the fourth century this
also was added.[111] But he says that there are other tokens, such as
the number and character of the names or of the symbols employed, the
style of diction, the form of the letters, etc., which, if carefully
examined and compared with one another, enable us not unfrequently to
make a very probable statement as to the age of undated inscriptions
(_probabili non raro sententiâ definies_); if, in addition to this, we
know the place where the inscription was found, and have had the
opportunity of examining other inscriptions found in the same
neighborhood, then it will rarely happen that there is any doubt at
all about the age to which it belongs. It is not, of course, meant
that it is possible to fix the year, or even the decade or score of
years, perhaps, to which it belongs; but De Rossi would certainly fix
its chronology within the limits of half a century or less (_tum de
ætate latè saltem sumptâ vix unquam grave dubium supererit_); he
certainly would never be in doubt with reference to any particular
inscription, still less with reference to a whole class of
inscriptions, whether it belongs to the ages of persecution or to the
end of the fourth century.
Now, Mr. Withrow is either aware of these canons whereby the
chronology of the inscriptions from the Catacombs is fixed, or he is
not. If he is not, he is quite incompetent to follow by their means
(as he professes to do, p. 415) “the development of Christian thought
from century to century, and to trace the successive changes of
doctrine and discipline.” If he is aware of them, his reasoning is
most disingenuous when he first seeks to settle a disputed question by
the testimony of the dated inscriptions of the first three centuries
(p. 426)――which are not more than thirty in number altogether――and
then proceeds to argue that “if those inscriptions which apparently
favor Romish dogmas, of which we know the date, are all of a late
period, we may assume that those of a similar character which are
undated are of the same relative age, and therefore valueless as
evidence of the antiquity of such dogmas” (p. 446). There is no
necessity, and indeed no room, for “assumption” at all. The question
can be decided by scientific rules whether such and such inscriptions
belong to the third century or the fifth, and he ought honestly to
have told his readers as much, and to have stated what that decision
is. As he has failed to do so, we must supply the omission.
First, however, let the limits of our task be clearly defined. We are
not undertaking to establish any point of Christian doctrine by the
unaided evidence of inscriptions or paintings from the cemeteries,
though we are far from saying that there are none which might be so
established. But at present we are only concerned to refute Mr.
Withrow’s Protestant interpretation of these monuments, and to show
that they at least favor, if they do not demand, a Catholic
interpretation. We know that not even the writings of the Fathers
present a complete picture of the whole doctrinal system of the age to
which they belong, but must be studied by the light reflected upon
them from the more developed and systematic expositions of those who
came after them. Still less do we think it reasonable to look in a
collection of epitaphs for a clear statement of the articles of faith
professed by those who wrote them; the utmost that can be expected
is that they should contain what De Rossi calls “dogmatic
allusions”――more or less distinct, if you will, but always, or at
least generally, merely indirect and casual. And as to drawing any
trustworthy conclusions with reference to the antiquity of this or
that Christian doctrine from the supposed absence of all allusion to
it in the dated tombstones of the first three centuries, the mere
enunciation of such a theory is enough to demonstrate its absurdity.
Yet we are sorry to say that Mr. Withrow has been guilty of even worse
absurdity than this, if it ought not rather to be called dishonesty.
It is certainly worse than mere literary or dialectic trifling――it
looks like a wilful throwing of dust in the reader’s eyes――to assert
in the text (p. 517) that the order of acolytes, “discontinued in the
Protestant communion,” was “probably the offspring of the increasing
pomp and dignity of the bishops to whom they acted as personal
attendants, especially in public processions and religious festivals,”
and that “the only dated epitaphs of acolytes are of a comparatively
late period,” whilst forced to acknowledge in a note that “Cornelius,
Bishop of Rome in the third century” (A.D. 250)――_i.e._, at a time
when “the pomp and dignity of bishops” consisted in their being the
special objects of imperial persecution, and the only “public
processions” in which they can have taken part were those in which
they were led forth to public execution――that Cornelius, Bishop of
Rome in the middle of the third century, “says there were in that
church forty-two acolytes.” What does Mr. Withrow mean by placing
these two statements together in the way we have described? Does he
really wish to insinuate that the absence of an ancient dated epitaph
of a deceased acolyte ought to counterbalance the testimony of the
bishop to the existence of forty-two living ones? or does he think
that the Protestant public, for whose tastes he so unscrupulously
caters, will read his text and overlook his notes? or, finally, that,
reading the notes, they will nevertheless give greater weight to the
uncharitable suggestion of a Protestant clergyman in the nineteenth
century than to the testimony of an eye-witness, who was also pope, in
the third? Had the order of acolytes been retained instead of being
rejected by the Protestant communion, doubtless Mr. Withrow would have
recognized the conclusiveness of the evidence of Pope Cornelius; he
would have seen that the forty-two acolytes who were alive in A.D. 250
must sooner or later have died, and been buried in Christian
cemeteries, and consequently that the non-discovery there of any dated
epitaphs recording their decease is “valueless as evidence” against
the antiquity of their order.
But we will not detain our readers any longer by pointing out the
curiosities with which Mr. Withrow’s volume abounds, but proceed at
once to redeem our promise of setting before them the real state of
“the testimony of the Catacombs relative to primitive Christianity” on
one or two of the more prominent doctrines of the Catholic faith. We
have said that it is unreasonable to look for a profession of faith in
an epitaph. But there is one point on which we should be disposed to
make an exception to this remark. We think it is quite natural to
expect from a large collection of sepulchral inscriptions considerable
information as to the belief of those to whom they belonged with
reference to the present condition or future prospects of the dead,
and their relations with the survivors; and in this expectation the
inscriptions from the Catacombs do not disappoint us. Let us call them
into court, and hear what evidence they can give.
Mr. Withrow shall open the pleadings, and it must be allowed that he
does so with a very loud blast of his trumpet, and one which “gives no
uncertain sound” (p. 418). “There is not a single inscription,” he
says, “nor painting, nor sculpture, before the middle of the fourth
century, that lends the least countenance to the erroneous dogmas of
the Church of Rome. All previous to this date are remarkable for their
evangelical character, and it is only after that period that the
distinctive peculiarities of Romanism begin to appear.” Presently he
quotes what he calls “the first dated inscription possessing any
doctrinal character.” It belongs to the year 217, and states of the
deceased that he was “received to God” (_receptus ad Deum_) on such a
day; whereupon our author exclaims: “We have here the earliest
indication of doctrinal belief as to the condition of the departed. It
is not, however, a dark and gloomy apprehension of purgatorial fires,
but, on the contrary, the joyous confidence of immediate reception
into the presence of God.” Twenty pages later, however, he is obliged
to acknowledge that “there occur in the Catacombs frequent examples of
acclamations addressed to the departed, expressive of a desire for
their happiness and peace; and these acclamations have been quoted by
Romanist writers as indicating a belief in the doctrine of purgatory
and in the efficacy of prayers on behalf of the dead”; and he proceeds
to give a score of examples, such as these: _Vivas in Deo, in Deo
Christo_――Mayest thou live in God, in God Christ; _Vivas inter
sanctos_――Mayest thou live among the saints; _Deus tibi refrigeret,
spiritum tuum refrigeret_――God refresh thee, or refresh thy spirit;
_Pax tibi_――Peace be to thee, etc. But, he says, “it will be perceived
that these are not intercessions _for_ the dead, but mere apostrophes
addressed _to_ them; they were no more prayers for the souls of the
departed than is Byron’s verse, ‘Bright be the place of thy rest.’”
Mr. Withrow continues, and is presently obliged to make a still
further concession――viz., that “the wish _does_ sometimes take the
form of a prayer for the beloved one,” and he gives half a dozen
examples, one of which he curiously misunderstands, and another we do
not recognize as belonging to the Catacombs. However, five at least
are genuine, and we could have furnished him with a score or two of
others, all containing distinct prayers “to God,” “to the Lord,” “to
the Lord Jesus,” “to remember the deceased,” “to remember him for
ever,” “to refresh his spirit,” “not to suffer his spirit to be
brought into darkness,” etc. How is such evidence as this to be
withstood? Mr. Withrow shows himself quite equal to the occasion:
“They are intense expressions of affection of the ardent Italian
nature, that would fain follow the loved object beyond the barrier of
a tomb” (p. 443). “They are the only witnesses that keen Roman
Catholics can adduce from the Christian inscriptions of the first six
centuries,” but “no accumulation of such evidence affords the
slightest warrant for the corrupt practice of the Church of Rome.”
We need hardly say that Mr. Withrow is not the first who has thus
“interpreted” these epitaphs “from a Protestant point of view.” Mr.
Burgon had long since given the same explanation, and even quoted the
same poetical illustration from Byron. But we must confine ourselves
to Mr. Withrow, and follow him through his graduated scale of
confessions. They may be cast in this form: the earliest inscription
bearing on the subject of prayers for the dead discountenances them;
there are frequent examples of acclamations or good wishes for the
departed, but these are not prayers; moreover, they are, comparatively
speaking, few in number――Bishop Kip puts them as “half a dozen among
thousands of an opposite character”――and, being undated, we may
“assume” that they are of a late age; finally, there are a few
prayers, but these are only the untutored outburst of the ardent
Italian nature. Let us set side by side with these the statements of
De Rossi on the same subjects. And, first, as to the antiquity of
these _formulæ_. He says: “There are two distinct classes of epitaphs
to be found in the Catacombs; the one, brief and simple, written
apparently without a thought of handing down anything to the memory of
posterity, but designed by the survivors mainly as a means of
identifying, amid so many thousands of graves of the same outward
form, those in which they were specially interested.[112] These are
the more ancient, and most of them contain nothing beyond the name of
the deceased and some of those short acclamations or prayers of which
we have just given examples. Inscriptions of the second class record
the age of the deceased, the day of his death, or more specially of
his burial, and, in fact, omit nothing which is wont to be found on
sepulchral monuments. They are also often defaced by bombastic
exaggerations of praise and flattery; and _the pious acclamations or
prayers we have spoken of are rarely or never found_.” It appears,
then, according to the evidence of De Rossi――which on this question is
surely of supreme authority――that the presence on a tombstone of
acclamations or prayers for the dead, so far from being evidence of
the corruption of a later age, is an actual test or token of primitive
antiquity. Some indication of this may be gathered, by a careful
observer, even from an inspection of the volume of dated inscriptions
already published. “May you live among the saints” is engraved on a
tombstone of the year 249, and “Refresh thyself, or Be thou refreshed,
with the holy souls,” on another of 291; that is to say, there are two
distinct examples out of the 32 dated inscriptions prior to the
conversion of Constantine. Among the 1,340 dated inscriptions
subsequent to that event you will scarcely find another.
And next, as to the relative numbers of the epitaphs which speak
positively (in the indicative mood) of the present happiness of the
deceased, and of those which speak only optatively and breathe the
language of prayer. We cannot, indeed, give any exact statement of
figures until De Rossi’s great work on the inscriptions shall have
been completed and the whole number brought together in print. But
wherever we have had an opportunity of instituting a comparison, we
have always found the optative or deprecatory form in the ascendant.
It is so in the epitaphs collected in the Lapidarian Gallery of the
Christian Museum at the Lateran in Rome; it is so in the inscriptions
of each separate _area_ of the great cemetery of San Callisto, so
minutely registered by De Rossi in his _Roma Sotterranea_; and he
himself writes as follows: “Some of these acclamations are
affirmative, and these may be considered as salutations to the
deceased, full of faith and Christian hope, substituted for the cold,
hopeless dreariness of the pagan _vale_;[113] but _for the most part_
they are optative, and ask for the deceased life in God, peace, and
refreshment. We should inquire whether these have not often a real
deprecative value, and were not uttered or written with the intention
of praying to God for the peace and refreshment of the departed
souls.” A full and satisfactory answer to this question, he says,
cannot be given till all the inscriptions of this class have been
brought together, so that they may mutually explain and illustrate one
another. Nevertheless, he refers to what he had said in another
place[114] on the same subject; and there we read: “These auguries or
good wishes are not mere apostrophes, giving vent to the feelings of
natural affection (_sfoghi d’affetto_); some of them express
confidence that the soul received into the heavenly peace of God and
his saints is already in the enjoyment of a life of bliss, and these
speak positively――_vives_; others, again, are equivalent to real
prayers to obtain that peace, and are expressed in another
mood――_vivas_.”
Mr. Withrow, however, and his co-religionists, may plead that, though
constrained to yield to De Rossi’s statement of facts, they are not
bound by his interpretation of them. Waiving, therefore, all dispute
as to the number and antiquity of the inscriptions which seem to favor
the practice of prayers for the dead, they may still persist that they
should be taken, not as the voice of the church, but the errors of
individuals; or, as Mr. Withrow himself expresses it, “they are not a
formulated and authoritative creed formed by learned theologians, but
the untutored utterances of humble peasantry, many of whom were recent
converts from paganism or Judaism, in which religions such expressions
were a customary sepulchral formula.” If Mr. Withrow merely means to
say that Christian epigraphy was the spontaneous growth of the natural
feelings and supernatural faith of the people, rather than the result
of any written or traditional law devised and imposed by
ecclesiastical authority, we are heartily at one with him. We do not
doubt that it was the natural fruit of the religious feeling which
pervaded all classes of the new society, that was reflected in their
epigraphy as in a mirror. But Mr. Withrow clearly meant something
different from this; he intended to insinuate that these inscriptions
which are distasteful to himself would have been disapproved of also
by all well-instructed members of the church, especially by her
pastors and doctors. Yet Tertullian, at least, could hardly have
disapproved, who takes for granted in one of his treatises, and uses
it as the foundation of an argument, that every Christian widow will
be continually praying for the soul of her departed husband, and
asking for him refreshment (_refrigerium_), and offering sacrifice for
him on the anniversary of his decease. Neither could such prayers have
been deemed either objectionable or useless by St. Cyprian and his
predecessors in the see of Carthage, who decreed the loss of them as a
fitting punishment for any man who should presume to leave the care of
his children or of his property after his decease to a cleric, because
“he does not deserve to be named in the prayer of the priest at the
altar of God who has done what he could to withdraw a priest from the
service of the altar.”[115] However, it is not worth while, easy as
the task would be, to justify the inscriptions in question by a catena
of venerable authorities from among the bishops and teachers of the
primitive church; we will only mention one fact about them which seems
to us conclusive――viz., that they are in exact accordance, not to say
in verbal and literal agreement, with the most authoritative
formularies that have come down to us from ancient days; we mean the
ancient liturgies. The language of the public offices of the
church――if not an apostolic tradition, which Mr. Withrow would not
easily admit――was surely formulated by somebody and formulated
according to the dogmas of the faith, and not in a spirit of weak
indulgence to any poetical fancies or excess of passionate feeling,
whether of affection or of grief. We turn, then, to the oldest
sacramentaries,[116] and the prayers we find there run as follows: “We
pray that thou wilt grant to all who rest in Christ a place of
refreshment, light, and peace”; “Grant to our dear ones who sleep in
Christ refreshment in the land of the living”; “Refresh, O Lord! the
spirits of the deceased in peace”; “Cause them to be united with thy
saints and chosen ones”――the very words and phrases which we have read
on the ancient tombstones, and which we still hear from the lips of
all devout Catholics when they pray, either in public or in private,
for those who are gone before them.
Not without reason, then, does De Rossi describe these prayers for the
dead, which are of such frequent recurrence in the Catacombs, as a
faithful echo of the prayers of the liturgy. Of such an inscription as
this, _In pace Spiritus Silvani, amen_, he says very truly that one
seems to hear in it the last words of the solemn burial rite, just as
the tomb is being closed and the sorrowing survivors bid farewell to
the grave.[117]
But Mr. Withrow would have us look for the original of these prayers,
not to the Christian liturgy, but to the monuments of “paganism and
Judaism, in which religions such expressions were a customary
sepulchral formula.” No doubt there was in many pagan epitaphs an
address, or acclamation, or apostrophe――call it what you will――to the
deceased. But it was either a brief and sad farewell――an “everlasting
farewell,” as they mournfully felt it to be――or it was an idle wish
“that his bones might rest well,” or (far more commonly) “that the
earth might lie lightly upon him”; or there was a still more unmeaning
and unnatural interchange of salutations between the living and the
dead. The passer-by was exhorted to salute the deceased with the
customary _Ave_ or _Salve_, and the imaginary response of the dead man
stood engraven on the stone, ready for all comers. Surely it is
impossible that anybody (εἰ μὴ ζέσιν διαφυλάττων, as old Aristotle has
it) can be so blind as to confound this empty trifling of the pagan
with the hearty yet simple and touching prayers of the Christian.
Between the Christian epitaphs and those of the ancient Jews we might
naturally have expected a somewhat closer degree of affinity; and so
there is. Yet even here the closest point of resemblance that we are
able to find is this: that the Jews ordinarily spoke of death as
sleep, and very commonly wrote on the grave-stones, “His sleep is in
peace.” We do not remember ever to have seen one of ancient date in
which peace is _prayed for_, neither does Mr. Withrow produce one,
though it has suited his purpose to give a deprecatory form to his
translation of _Dormitio in bonis_. The Christian epitaphs, then, have
this in common with Jewish epitaphs: that they speak of the dead as
sleeping in peace; it still remains as peculiar to themselves that
they supplicate for the deceased life――life in God, life everlasting,
life with the saints――light, and refreshment.
But we must pass on to another point of doctrine connected with the
dead, on which inscriptions in the Catacombs might reasonably be
expected to throw some light, and on which the testimony they give is
sometimes disputed. Mr. Withrow shall again be permitted to make his
own statement of the case: “Associated with the Romish practice of
praying _for_ the dead is that of praying _to_ them. For this there is
still less authority in the testimony of the Catacombs than for the
former. There are, indeed, indications that this custom was not
unknown, but they are very rare and exceptional. In all the dated
inscriptions of the first six centuries there is only one invocation
of the departed.” It is of the year 380, and by an orphan. “But the
yearning cry of an orphaned heart for the prayers of a departed mother
is a slight foundation for the Romish practice of the invocation of
the saints. Previous to this date we have found not the slightest
indication of Romish doctrine.… The few undated inscriptions of a
similar character are probably of as late, or it may be of a much
later, date than this.”
We have already had occasion to expose the fallacy of this favorite
argument of Mr. Withrow’s founded on the paucity and relative
antiquity of dated inscriptions. We have pointed out its direct
contradiction to all the canons of chronology so laboriously and
conscientiously established by De Rossi. Here, however, we must be
allowed again to quote his testimony, given precisely upon this
particular subject: “Invocations of the deceased,” he says, “asking
them to pray for the survivors, are found only in the subterranean
cemeteries, not in those made above ground; always in epitaphs without
dates, never in those bearing dates of the fourth and fifth centuries.
They belong to the period before peace was given to the church, and
the new style inspired by the changed conditions of the times sent
them quickly into disuse.” The simple and natural character of earlier
Christian epigraphy gave place to colder and more artificial
announcements. But whilst the more ancient and more religious style
prevailed the following are fair specimens of the epitaphs that were
written: _Vivas in pace et pete pro nobis. Christus spiritum tuum in
pace et pete pro nobis. Bene refrigera et roga pro nos. Spiritus tuus
bene requiescat in Deo petas pro sorore tuâ. Vincentia in Christo
petas pro Phœbe et pro Virginio ejus. Vivas in Deo et roga. Spiritus
tuus in bono, ora pro parentibus tuis. In orationis tuis roges pro
nobis quia scimus te in Christo_――“Mayest thou live in peace, and pray
for us. May Christ refresh thy spirit in peace, and pray for us.
Mayest thou be well refreshed, and pray for us. May thy spirit rest
well in God; pray for thy sister. Vincentia in Christ, pray for Phœbe
and for her husband. Mayest thou live in God, and pray. Thy spirit is
in good; pray for thy parents. In thy prayers make petition for us,
because we know thee to be in Christ.”
In all these instances――and many more might easily be given, in Greek
as well as in Latin, some edited, others still inedited――it is clear
that the survivors had a firm hope that their departed friends had
been called by the ministry of angels to the enjoyment of the promised
bliss and heavenly peace, and this faith was the foundation of these
fervid petitions for their prayers. But, objects our author, “these
invocations are almost invariably uttered by some relative of the
deceased, as if prompted by natural affection rather than by religious
feeling.” No doubt the invocations that have been quoted are the
utterances of loving and sorrowing relatives; for to them it usually
belongs to bury their dead and to write the epitaphs on their
tombstones. But does it therefore follow that they were extravagant,
unwarranted, and out of harmony with the teaching of the church?
First, their very number and antiquity is _primâ facie_ evidence
against so unjust a suspicion; and, next, they in no way go beyond the
eloquent invocations of the martyrs, whether in the _graffiti_ on the
walls near their tombs or in the more formal inscriptions of the
bishops themselves――_e.g._, of Pope Damasus at the tomb of St. Agnes;
but, lastly and above all, these again are in exact agreement with the
public liturgy of the church. In a fragment of a very ancient liturgy,
only published in our own day, and bearing internal evidence of having
been used during the days of persecution, the priest is instructed to
pray “for grace to worship God truly in times of peace, and not to
fall away from him in times of trial,” and then, after the accustomed
reading of the diptychs――_i.e._, reading the names of the martyrs, the
bishops, and the dead for whom the Holy Sacrifice was being
offered――he proceeds as follows: “May the glorious merits of the
saints excuse us or plead for us, that we may not come into
punishment; may the souls of the faithful departed who are already in
the enjoyment of bliss assist us, and may those which need consolation
be absolved by the prayers of the church.” The different gradation of
ranks and the different sense of the liturgical commemoration of the
saints, the faithful who are dead and those who are still living,
could hardly be defined with greater distinctness in “a formulated and
authoritative creed formed by learned theologians.” We need hardly add
that the same doctrine is to be found more or less explicitly in all
the old liturgies――_e.g._, in a prayer that “Christ will, through the
intercession of his holy martyrs, grant to our dear ones who sleep in
him refreshment in the abode of the living”; “that the prayers of the
blessed martyrs will so commend us to Christ that he will grant
eternal refreshment to our dear ones who sleep in him,” and several
other petitions to the same effect. But we are already exceeding the
limits of space assigned to us, and we must be content with a general
reference to the old sacramentaries; neither can we find room for the
passages which are at hand from St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, and other
patristic authorities containing the same doctrine.
We must not, however, altogether omit another branch of evidence
belonging to the Catacombs themselves――namely, the frescoes and other
monuments in which the saints are represented as receiving and
welcoming the deceased into heaven, conversing with them, lifting up
the veil, and introducing them into the garden of Paradise, etc.
Everybody knows the inscription scratched in the mortar round a grave
in the cemetery of Pretextatus fifteen centuries ago, and now brought
to light again some twenty years since, in which the martyrs
Januarius, Agapetus, and Felicissimus are invoked to refresh the soul
of some departed one, just buried near their own tombs; and the
anxiety of the faithful of old to obtain a place of burial near the
graves of the martyrs is too notorious to need confirmation in this
place. This practice had, of course, a doctrinal foundation. St.
Gregory Nazianzen, Paulinus of Nola, or other Christian poets may use
the language of mere poetical fancy when they talk of the blood of the
martyrs penetrating the adjacent sepulchres; but the spiritual meaning
that underlies their words is plain――viz., that the merit of the
martyrs’ pains and sufferings, and the intercession of their prayers
thus sought by the living, were believed to profit the souls of the
deceased. In a recently-discovered fresco in the cemetery of SS.
Nereus and Achilleus, a deceased matron, Veneranda, is manifestly
commended to the patronage of St. Petronilla, who is represented
standing at her side; and there are not wanting inscriptions in which
the survivors distinctly commend the souls of their children or others
whom they have buried to the care of that particular martyr in whose
cemetery they have been laid. We do not quote them at length, not only
from want of space, but also because this class of monuments belongs,
generally speaking, to the fourth century, when no one doubts that
invocation of the saints was in common use; and we have already quoted
a large class of inscriptions, more ancient and quite as conclusive to
all minds of ordinary candor. We mention them, however, because they
are links in the chain of evidence we have been inquiring
about――evidence given by the Catacombs――and yet more especially
because they remind us of the beautiful language of our ritual, which
none can forget who have ever heard it sung to the solemn chant of the
church: _In Paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te
martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem_. We cannot
help suspecting that these prayers or acclamations are as old as the
monuments which they so faithfully interpret. The invocation of the
martyrs, and of them only amongst “the spirits of the just made
perfect” who have already “come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many
thousands of angels,” seems to point to such a conclusion; it has a
flavor of quite primitive times about it, certainly of the age of
persecution. It may well have been contemporary with the following
inscription, at present in a private museum, but originally taken from
the Catacombs: “_Paulo filio merenti in pacem te suscipiant omnium
ispirita sanctorum_.”
[110] _The Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony relative
to Primitive Christianity._ By the Rev. W. H. Withrow, M.A.
New York: Nelson & Phillips. 1874.
[111] _Inscr. Christ._, i. c. ix.
[112] _Inscr. Christian._, i. c. x.
[113] _R. S._, ii. 305.
[114] Ib., i. 341.
[115] Epist. i. aliter 66.
[116] Bullett. 1875, pp. 17-32. Muratori, _Liturg. Rom._, i.
749, 916, 981, 996, 1002; ii. 4, 694, 702, 779, 642, 653,
646.
[117] _R. S._, ii. 305.
ON OUR LADY’S DEATH
I.
“And didst thou die, dear Mother of our Life?
Sin had no part in thee: then how should death?
Methinks, if aught the great tradition saith
Could wake in loving hearts a moment’s strife”
(I said――my own with Her new image rife),
“’Twere this.” And yet ’tis certain, next to faith,
Thou didst lie down to render up thy breath:
Though after the Seventh Sword no meaner knife
Could pierce that bosom. No, nor did. No sting
Of pain was there, but only joy. The love,
So long thy life ecstatic, and restrained
From setting free thy soul, now gave it wing:
Thy body, soon to reign with it above,
Radiant and fragrant, as in trance, remained.
II.
Yes, Mother of God, though thou didst stoop to die,
Death could not mar thy beauty. On thy face
Nor time nor grief had wrinkle left or trace:
It had but aged in God-like majesty:
Mature, yet, save the mother in thine eye,
As maiden-fresh as when, of all our race,
Thou, first and last, wast greeted “full of grace”――
Ere thrice five years had worshipped and gone by.
Mortal thy body; yet it could not know
Mortality’s decay. Like sinless Eve’s,
It waited but the change on Thabor shown.
And when, at thy sweet will, ’twas first laid low,
Untainted as a lily’s folded leaves
It slept――the angels watching by the stone.
III.
“At thy sweet will.” Then wherefore didst thou will
To pass death’s portal? To the outward ear
There comes no answer; but the heart can hear.
Thy Son had passed it. Thou upon the hill
Of scorn hadst stood beside his cross; and still
Wouldst “follow the Lamb where’er he went.” Of fear
Thou knewest naught. The cup’s last drop, so dear
To Him, thy love must share――or miss its fill.
But more. Thy other children――even we――
Must enter life through death. And couldst thou brook
To watch our terrors at the dark unknown,
Powerless to stay us with a sympathy
Better than any tender word or look――
Bidding our steps tread firmly in thine own?
AMID IRISH SCENES.
The very thought of a journey to distant lands is invigorating. We
throw off the dust of old habits, quit the routine of daily life, shut
out the customary thoughts of business, and, with hearts that in some
mysterious way seem suddenly to have grown younger, turn towards other
worlds. Even the uncertainty which is incident to travel has a
peculiar charm. The love we bear our country and friends grows warmer
and assumes unwonted tenderness when we leave them, not knowing
whether it will be given us to look upon them again; and as the
distance widens, the bonds of affection are drawn closer. Amid strange
faces we reflect how sweet it is to dwell with those who love us; a
thousand thoughts of home and friends come back to us, the heart is
humanized, and we resolve to become more worthy of blessings for which
we have been so little grateful. Indeed, I think that the chiefest
pleasure of travel is in the thought and hope of communicating to
others our own impressions of all the lovely things we see.
Who would care to look on blue mountains, or ocean sunset, or green
isles, if he might never speak of their beauty, never utter the deep
feelings which they awaken? All strong emotion, whether of joy or
sorrow, seeks to express itself. Nature is beautiful only when we
associate it with God or man. No greater torment can be imagined than
to think and feel, and yet to live alone for ever with that which has
no thought or feeling. I remained in Ireland too short a time to be
able to form well-founded opinions or to reach just conclusions
concerning the present condition or the future prospects of the
country. I was compelled to travel hurriedly, and therefore observed
superficially; and in my haste I doubtless often failed to remark what
was most worthy of attention. At least, I approached the sacred island
with reverence. Whatever I might see, I knew that my feet were upon
holy ground, and that I was in the midst of the most Catholic people
on earth; I felt that if sympathy could give insight or reveal beauty,
I should not look in vain.
And now, with the liberty and quickness of thought, passing the vast
expanse of ocean, I shall place myself at Oban, on the western coast
of Scotland, opposite the island of Mull; for though we are not here
on Irish soil, yet this whole region is so full of Irish memories and
Irish glories that we may not pass it in silence. The scenery is
sombre, bleak, and wild. It is not lovely nor yet sublime, though
there is about it a kind of gloomy and desolate grandeur; and, indeed,
this is the general character of all scenery in the Scotch Highlands.
It is rugged, harsh, and waste. It does not invite to repose. Amid
these barren moors and fog-covered hills we are chilled, driven back
upon ourselves. We involuntarily move on, content with a passing
glance at dark glens and lochs from whose waters crags and peaks lift
their heads and frown in stern defiance. The gloomy tales of murder
and treachery, of war and strife, and the ruined castles which tell of
battles of other days, deepen the impressions made by nature’s harsh
aspect. Even in summer the air is heavy with mist and fog. A day
rarely passes without rain, and in the middle of August the traveller
finds himself in an atmosphere as damp, cold, and dreary as that of
London in November. Before us is the dark sea of the Hebrides, from
whose sullen waters a hundred naked and desert islands rise in rough
and jagged outlines. As we sail through the narrow straits of this
archipelago, we see nothing but barren rocks, covered with black fog.
There is no grass, there are no pleasant landscapes, no cultivated
fields. We hear only the moaning of the waves, the howling wind, and
the hoarse cry of the sea-bird. Nothing could be less beautiful or
less attractive; and yet it is in this wild sea and among these rocky
islands that we find the sacred spot from which Scotland and northern
England received religion and civilization. During the summer a boat
leaves Oban every morning to make the tour of the island of Mull,
taking Staffa and Iona in the route. The steamer stops at Staffa to
permit tourists to visit the Cave of Fingal, of which so much has been
written. This cave, which is about seventy feet high and forty feet in
width, with a depth of two hundred and thirty feet, opens into the
ocean on the southern coast of the little island of Staffa. Its front
and sides are formed of innumerable columns of basaltic rock,
precisely similar to those which are found in the Giant’s Causeway.
They are perfectly symmetrical, and one is almost tempted to think
they must have been shaped by the hand of man. But, apart from this
peculiarity, the only thing which struck me as very remarkable in this
celebrated cave is the mighty surge of the ocean, whose angry waves,
rushing into this gloomy vault, dash against its everlasting columns,
and, with wild and furious roar that reverberates along the high arch
in tones of thunder, are driven back, to be followed by others, and
still others. And so all day long and through the night, from year to
year, this concert of the waves far from human ears chants God’s awful
majesty and infinite power.
Nine miles south of Staffa lies Iona, St. Columba’s blessed isle. “We
were now,” wrote Dr. Johnson one hundred years ago, “treading that
illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian
regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the
benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the
mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored,
and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from
the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the
future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of
thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid
philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground
which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is
little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the
plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the
ruins of Iona.”
It was in 563, more than thirteen hundred years ago, that Columkille,
a voluntary exile from Erin, which he loved with more than woman’s
tenderness, landed upon this island. Twelve of his Irish monks had
accompanied him, resolved to share his exile. Others soon followed,
drawn by the fame of his sanctity, and in a little while Columkille
and his apostles issued forth from Iona to carry the religion of
Christ to the pagans who dwelt on the surrounding islands and on the
mainland of Scotland; and from this little island the light of faith
spread throughout the Caledonian regions. All the churches of Scotland
looked to it as the source whence they had received God’s choicest
gifts, and for two hundred years the abbots who succeeded St. Columba
held spiritual dominion over the whole country. The Scottish kings
chose Iona as their burial-place, in the hope of escaping the doom
foretold in the prophecy:
“Seven years before that awful day
When time shall be no more,
A watery deluge will o’ersweep
Hibernia’s mossy shore;
The green-clad Isla, too, shall sink,
While with the great and good
Columba’s happy isle shall rear
Her towers above the flood.”
In an age of ferocious manners and continual war this holy and
peaceful isle, far removed from scenes of strife and blood, might well
be regarded not only as the fit resting-place of the dead, but as the
happiest home of the living.
Even to-day, in its loneliness and desolation, there is a calm, sweet
look about it that makes one linger as loath to quit so sacred a spot.
But the simple, great ones of old are gone; their bones lie buried
beneath our feet.
“To each voyager
Some ragged child holds up for sale a store
Of wave-worn pebbles.…
How sad a welcome!
Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir,
Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer.”
A few poor fishermen with their families dwell upon the island. They
are all Protestants. After the Reformation, the Calvinistic Synod of
Argyll handed over all the sacred edifices of Iona to a horde of
pillagers, who plundered and destroyed them. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries these ruins were given up to the ignorant
inhabitants of the island, who turned the cathedral into a stable,
used the church of the convent of canonesses as a quarry, and broke
and threw into the sea nearly all of the three hundred and sixty
crosses which formerly covered the island.
As late as 1594 the three great mausoleums of the kings were to be
seen, with the following inscriptions:
Tumulus regum Scotiæ,
Tumulus regum Hiberniæ,
Tumulus regum Norwegiæ.
But these have also disappeared, and nothing remains but the site.
Here were buried forty-eight kings of Scotland, four kings of Ireland,
and eight kings of Norway; and it is even said that one of the kings
of France found here a last resting-place. Macbeth closes the line of
Scottish kings who were buried in Iona. His successor, Malcolm
Canmore, chose the Abbey of Dunfermline as the royal cemetery.
Shakspere does not fail to send Duncan’s body to Iona:
“ROSSE. Where is Duncan’s body?
MACDUFF. Carried to Colmekill,
The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,
And guardian of their bones.”
There are still many tombs in this cemetery, most of which are covered
with slabs of blue stone upon which figures are sculptured in relief.
Here a bishop or an abbot, in cope and mitre, holds the pastoral staff
of authority, and by his side lies some famous chieftain in full
armor. On one of these slabs the traveller may behold the effigy of
Angus MacDonald, Scott’s Lord of the Isles, and the contemporary of
Robert Bruce.
In the centre of the graveyard stands the ruin of a chapel which was
built at the close of the eleventh century by St. Margaret of
Scotland, and dedicated to St. Oran, the first Irish monk who died in
Iona after the landing of St. Columba. Near by is the ancient Irish
cross which is said to mark the spot where St. Columba rested on the
eve of his death, when he had walked forth to take a last view of his
well-beloved island. A little farther north lies the cathedral, ruined
and roofless, with its square tower, which is the first object to
attract the eye of the pilgrim as he approaches the sacred isle. Iona
is but three miles in length and about two miles wide. Unlike the
islands by which it is surrounded, it has a sandy beach, which slopes
to the water’s edge, and its highest point is but little over three
hundred feet above the level of the sea. The ruins all lie on the
eastern shore, and are but a few paces from one another. Some little
care is taken of them, now that the facilities of travel have turned
the attention of travellers to this former home of learning and
religion. The chapel of the nunnery is no longer used as a cow-house,
nor the cathedral as a stable, as in the time of Dr. Johnson’s visit.
Nevertheless, many interesting relics which he saw have since
disappeared. Still, enough remains to awaken emotion in the breasts of
those whom the thought of noble deeds and heroic lives can move. In
treading this sacred soil, and walking among the graves of kings and
princes of the church, surrounded by broken walls and crumbling arches
which once sheltered saints and heroes, we are lifted by the very
genius of the place into a higher world. The present vanishes. The
past comes back to us, and throws its light into the dim and awful
future. How mean and contemptible seem to us the rivalries and
ambitions of men! This handful of earth, girt round by the sea, holds
the glories of a thousand years. All their beauty is faded. They are
bare and naked as these broken walls, to which not even the sheltering
ivy clings. The voice of battle is hushed; the song of victory is
silent; the strong are fallen; the valiant are dead, and around
forgotten graves old ocean chants the funeral dirge. Monuments of
death mark all human triumphs. And yet St. Columba and his grand old
monks are not wholly dead. To them more than to the poet belongs the
_non omnis moriar_. Their spirit lives even in us, if we are
Christians and trust the larger hope. What heavenly privilege, like
them, to be free, and in the desert and ocean’s waste to find the
possibility of the diviner life; like them, to be strong, leaning upon
God only! The very rocks they looked upon seem to have gained a human
sense; in the air is the presence of unseen spirits, and the waves
approach gently as in reverence for the shore pressed by their feet.
To have stood, though but for a moment and almost as in a dream, amid
these sacred shrines, is good for the soul. It is as if we had gone to
the house of one who loved us, and found that he was dead. The world
seems less beautiful, but God is nearer and heaven more real.
We have lingered too long among the ruins of Iona. Our ship puffs her
sail, and we must go; but our faces are still turned towards the
blessed isle; the cathedral tower rises sadly over the bleak shore,
and in a little while the rough and rock-bound coast of the Ross of
Mull takes the vision from our eyes. And now I am in Ireland. Landing
at Belfast, I went south to Dublin; thence to Wicklow, where I took a
jaunting-car and drove through the Devil’s Glen, to Glendalough,
through Glenmalure and the Vale of Avoca, and back to Wicklow.
Returning to Dublin, I went southwest to the Lakes of Killarney,
passing through nearly the entire extent of the island from east and
west. Having made the tour of the lakes and visited Muckross Abbey and
Ross Castle, I went to Cork, where I took the train for Youghal, on
the Blackwater. I sailed up this beautiful river to Cappoquin, near
Lismore. From this point I visited the Trappist monastery of Mt.
Melleray. Again taking a jaunting-car, I drove over the Knockmeledown
Mountains into Tipperary, along the lovely banks of the river Suir,
into Clonmel, thence to Cashel, to Holy Cross Abbey and to Thurles.
Returning to Cork, I of course visited Blarney Castle, and then,
sailing down the noble sea-avenue that leads to Queenstown, went
aboard the steamer which was to bring me home again.
In Rome, it has been said, none are strangers. So much of what is
greatest and best in the history of the human race centres there that
all men instinctively identify themselves with her life and are at
home. In Ireland a Catholic, no matter whence he come, forgets that he
is in a foreign land; and in proportion to the love with which he
cherishes his faith is the sympathy that draws him to the people who
have clung to it through more suffering and sorrow than have fallen to
the lot of any other. More than other races they have loved the
church; more than others they have believed that, so long as faith and
hope and love are left to the heart, misery can never be supreme. The
force with which they realize the unseen world leaves them unbroken
amid the reverses and calamities of this life. They are to-day
what they were in ages past――the least worldly and the most
spiritual-minded people of Europe.
They live in the past and in the future; cling to memories and cherish
dreams. The ideal is to them more than the real. Their thoughts are on
religion, on liberty, honor, justice, rather than upon gold. They fear
sin more than poverty or sickness. When the mother hears of the death
of her son, in some distant land, her first thought is not of him, but
of his soul. Did he die as a Catholic should die, confessing his sins,
trusting in God, strengthened by the sacraments? When he left her
weeping, her great trouble was the fear lest, in the far-off world to
which he was going, he should forget the God of his fathers, the God
of Ireland’s hope; and when in her dreams she saw him back again, her
heart leaped for joy, not that he was rich or famous, but that the
simple faith of other days was with him still.
The life that is to be is more than that which is. The coldest heart
is warmed by this strong faith. In the midst of this simple and
pure-hearted people, so poor and so content, so wronged and so
patient, so despised and so noble, one realizes the divine power of
religion. Whithersoever our little systems of thought may lead us,
whatsoever mysteries of nature they may reveal, nothing that they can
give us could compensate for the loss of honest faith and child-like
trust in God. Whatever may be, this is the best. Better to die in a
hovel, yearning for God and trusting to him, than without hope “to
walk all day, like the sultan of old, in a garden of spice.” The first
and deepest impression made upon me in travelling through Ireland was
that it is a country consecrated by unutterable suffering. The shadow
of an almost divine sorrow is still upon the land. Each spot is sacred
to some sad memory. Ruined castles tell how her proudest families were
driven into exile or reduced to beggary; roofless cathedrals and
crumbling abbeys proclaim the long martyrdom of her bishops and
priests; tenantless cottages and deserted villages speak of the
multitudes turned upon the road to die, or, with weary step, to seek
shelter in a foreign land. We pass through desolate miles of waste
lands that might be reclaimed, through whole counties that have been
turned into sheep and cattle pastures, through towns once busy, now
dead; and John Mitchel’s cry of anguish, when last year, in triumphal
funeral march, he went to meet the electors of Tipperary, strikes upon
the ear: “My God, my God, where are my people?”
Go to the abandoned ports of Wexford, of Youghal, of Waterford, of
Galway, and you will be told of ships, freighted with human souls,
that sailed away and never returned. It seemed to me on those silent
shores that I could still hear the wail of countless mothers, wringing
their hands and weeping for the loss of children whom a cruel fate had
torn from them. Was ever history so sad as Ireland’s? Great calamities
have befallen other nations――they have been wasted by war and famine,
trodden in the dust by invading barbarians; but their evils have had
an end. In Ireland the sword has never wearied of blood. “The wild
deer and wolf to a covert may flee,” but her people have had no refuge
from famine and danger. Without home and country, they have stood for
centuries with the storm of fate beating upon their devoted heads, and
in their long night of woe some faint glimmer of hope has shone out,
only suddenly to disappear, leaving the darkness blacker. True were
the poet’s words of despair:
“There are marks on the fate of each clime, there are turns in the
fortunes of men,
But the changes of realms or the chances of time shall never
restore thee again.
Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe by links which the world
cannot sever;
With thy tyrant through storm and through calm shalt thou go,
And thy sentence is――‘Banished for ever.’
Thou art doomed for the vilest to toil; thou art left for the proud
to disdain;
And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil shall be
lavished, and lavished in vain.
Thy riches with taunts shall be taken; thy valor with gibes is
repaid;
And of millions who see thee now sick and forsaken, not one shall
stand forth in thy aid.
In the nations thy place is left void; thou art lost in the list of
the free.
Even realms, by the plague or the earthquake destroyed, are revived;
but no hope is for thee.”
I stood in Glendalough, by the lake
“Whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles o’er.”
The sun was just sinking to rest behind St. Kevin’s Hill, covered with
the purple heather-bloom. There was not a sound in the air, but all
the mountains and the valley held their breath, as if the spirits of
the monks of old were felt by them in this hour, in which, in the ages
gone, the song of prayer and praise rose up to God from the hearts of
believing men, and all the plain and the hillsides were vocal with
sweet psalmody. Here, a thousand years ago and more, a city grew up,
raised by the power of holiness. To St. Kevin flocked men who sought
the better way, and the Irish people, eternally drawn to religion and
to their priests, gathered round, and Glendalough was filled with the
multitude of believers. Those were the days which St. Columba sang
when in far-off Iona he remembered his own sweet land: “From the high
prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my gray eye when I
turn to Erin――to Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and
where the monks sing like the birds; where the young are so gentle and
the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the
women so fair to wed.”
From St. Kevin to St. Lawrence O’Toole, Glendalough was the home of
saints. When the Norman came, in the twelfth century, there was a
bishop there. The hills were dotted with the hermitages of anchorets,
and above the seven churches rose the round tower in imperishable
strength. To-day there is left only the dreariness and loneliness of
the desert. The hills that once were covered with rich forests of oak
are bare and bleak; the cathedral is in ruins; the churches are
crumbling walls and heaps of stones; the ground is strewn with
fragments of sculptured crosses and broken pillars; and amid this
wreck of a world are mingled in strange confusion the tombs of saints
and princes and the graves of peasants. Still stands the round tower
in lonely majesty, like a sentinel of heaven, to watch for ever over
the graves of God’s people. What a weight of awe falls upon us amid
these sacred monuments! We speak not, and scarcely breathe. An unknown
power draws us back into the dread bosom of the past. The freshness of
life dies out of us; we grow to the spot, and feel a kinship with
stones which re-echoed the footsteps of saints, which resounded with
the voice of prayer. It seems almost a sacrilege to live when the
great and the good lie dead at our feet.
But why stop we here? Is not Ireland covered with ruins as reverend
and as sad as these? Throughout the land they stand
“As stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,
Or holding dark communion with the cloud.”
What need of history’s blood-stained page to tell the sad story of
Ireland’s wrongs and Ireland’s woes? O’Connell never spoke as speak
these roofless cathedrals, these broken walls and crumbling arches,
these fallen columns and shattered crosses. The traveller who in
Jerusalem beholds the weary and worn children of Israel sitting in
helpless grief amid the scattered stones of Solomon’s Temple, need not
be told how the enemies of the Holy City compassed her about; how the
sword and famine and the devouring flame swallowed up the people; how
her walls were broken down, her holy of holies profaned, her priests
slaughtered, her streets made desolate, until not a stone was left
upon a stone.
The massacres of Wexford and Drogheda; the confiscation in a single
day of half the land of Ireland; the driving her people into the ports
of Munster to be shipped to regions of pestilence and death; the
expulsion of every Catholic from the rich fields of Ulster; the exile
of the whole nation beyond the Shannon; the violated treaty of
Limerick, are but episodes in this tragedy of centuries. Even the
Penal Code, the most hideous and inhuman ever enacted by Christian or
pagan people, tells but half the story.
That the Irish Catholic had for centuries been held in bondage by a
law which violated every good and generous sentiment of the human
heart, I knew. He could not vote, he could not bear witness, he could
not bring suit, he could not sit on a jury, he could not go to school,
he could not teach school, he could not practise law or medicine, he
could not travel five miles from his home; he could own nothing which
he might not be forced to give up or renounce his faith; he could not
keep or use any kind of weapon, even in self-defence; his children
were offered bribes to betray him; he could not hear Mass, he could
not receive the sacraments; in his death-agony the priest might not be
near to console him. All this I knew, and yet I had never realized the
condition to which such inhuman legislation must reduce a people. That
this Code, which Montesquieu said must have been contrived by devils,
and which Burke declared to be the fittest instrument ever invented by
man to degrade and destroy a nation, had failed to accomplish its
fiendish purpose, I also knew. The Irish people, deprived of
everything, and almost of the hope of ever having anything in this
world, remained superior to fate. With a fidelity to religious
conviction without example in the history of the world, they retained
the chastity, the unbroken courage, the cheerful temper and generous
love which had always distinguished them; and that in travelling among
them I should find it more and more impossible to doubt of this was
but what I had expected. But the generous, pure, and simple character
of the people only made the impression which I received of the
frightful wrongs and sufferings which have been and are still
inflicted upon them the more painful.
There is not in the civilized world another country where the evils of
tyranny and misrule are so manifest. One cannot help but feel that
Ireland does not belong to the Irish. It is not governed in their
interest; it is not made to contribute to their welfare or happiness.
They are not taken into account by its rulers; their existence is
considered accidental; a fact which cannot be ignored, but which it is
hoped time, with famine, poverty, and petty persecution such as the
age allows, will eliminate. The country belongs to a few men who have
no sympathy with the mass of the people, who do not even desire to
have any. They are for the most part the descendants of needy
adventurers who, under Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange,
obtained as a reward of their servility or brutality the confiscated
lands of Ireland; or if they belong to the ancient families, they
inherit their wealth from ancestors who owed it to a double apostasy
from God and their country. It was these men, and not England, who
enacted the Irish Penal Code. They are the traditional enemies of
Ireland, sucking out her lifeblood and trampling in contempt upon her
people. They have filled the land with mourning and death, with the
wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan; they have freighted the
ships which have borne the Irish exiles to every land under heaven;
they have within our own memory crowded her highways with homeless and
starving multitudes; have pushed out her people to make room for sheep
and cattle; in ten years have taken from her three millions of her
children. My heart grew sick of asking to whom the domains through
which I was passing belonged. It seemed to me that the people owned
nothing, that the _paucis vivitur humanum genus_ was truer here than
ever in ancient Rome. The very houses in which the Irish peasantry
live tell the sad tale that in their own country they are homeless.
Like the Israelites in Egypt, they must stand with loins girt and
staff in hand, ready to move at a moment’s warning. If the little hut
shelter them for a season, it is enough; for another year may find
them where rolls the Oregon or on the bitter plains of Australia. Ask
them why they build not better houses, plant not trees and flowers, to
surround with freshness and beauty that family-life which to them is
so pure and so sweet; they will answer you that they may not, they
dare not. The slightest evidence of comfort would attract the greedy
eye of the landlord; the rent would be raised, and he who should
presume to give such ill-example would soon be turned adrift. The
great lord wants cabins which he can knock down in a day to make room
for his sheep and cattle; he wants arguments to prove that the Irish
people are indolent, improvident, an inferior race, unfit for liberty.
I know that there are landlords who are not heartless. The people will
tell you more than you wish to hear of the goodness of Lord
Nincompoop, of the charity of Lord Fiddlefaddle. The intolerable evil
is that the happiness or misery of a whole people should be left to
the chance of an Irish landlord not being a fool and yet having a
heart. To any other people who had suffered from an aristocracy the
hundredth part of what has been borne by the Irish, the very name of
“lord” would carry with it the odium of unutterable infamy; among any
other people the state of things which, in spite of all the progress
that has been made, still exists in Ireland, would breed the most
terrible and dangerous passions. For my own part, I could not look
upon the castles and walled-in parks which everywhere met my view
without feeling my heart fill with a bitterness which I could rarely
detect in those with whom I spoke. What it was possible to do has been
done to hide the land itself from the eyes of the people. Around
Dublin you would think almost every house a prison, so carefully is it
walled in. The poor, who must walk, are shut in by high and gloomy
walls which forbid them even the consolation of looking upon the green
hills and plains which surround that city. In the same way the
landlords have taken possession of the finest scenery of the island.
If you would see the Powerscourt waterfall, you must send your card to
the castle and graciously beg permission. People who have no cards are
not supposed to be able to appreciate the beauty of one of the most
picturesque spots in Ireland. At the entrance to the Devil’s Glen the
traveller is stopped by huge iron gates, symbolical of those which
Milton has described as grating harsh thunder on their turning hinges;
and when he thinks he is about to issue forth again into the upper
air, suddenly other gates frown upon him to remind him of the
_lasciati ogni speranza voi ch’entrate_, of Dante. Mr. Herbert has
taken possession of half the Lakes of Killarney, and exacts a fixed
toll from all who wish to see what ought to be as free to all as the
air of heaven. If ten thousand dollars added to his annual income be a
compensation for such meanness, he is no doubt content. It is on the
demesne of this gentleman that lies the celebrated ruin of Muckross
Abbey. It stands embosomed in trees on a green slope, overlooking the
Lower Lake, and commanding one of the loveliest views to be had
anywhere. The taste of “the monks of old” in selecting sites for their
monasteries was certainly admirable. A church was erected on this spot
at a very early date, but was consumed by fire in 1192. The abbey and
church, the ruins of which are now standing, were built in 1340, by
one of the MacCarthys, Princes of Desmond, for Franciscan monks, who
still retained possession of them at the time of Cromwell’s invasion.
A Latin inscription on the north wall of the choir asks the reader’s
prayers for Brother Thadeus Holen, who had the convent repaired in the
year of our Lord 1626. That such a place should have remained in the
possession of the monks for more than a century after the introduction
of Protestantism is of itself enough to show to what extent the
Catholic monuments of Ireland had escaped the destroyer’s hand
previous to the incursion of the Cromwellian vandals. The ruins of
Muckross Abbey have successfully withstood the power of Time’s
effacing finger. The walls, which seem to have been built to stand for
ever, are as strong to-day as they were five hundred years ago; and to
render the monastery habitable nothing would be required but to
replace the roof.
The library, the dormitories, the kitchen, the cellars, the refectory
with its great fire-place, seem to be patiently waiting the return of
the brown-robed sons of St. Francis; and in the corridors the silence,
so loved of religious souls, is felt like the presence of holy
spirits. In the centre of the court-yard there is a noble yew-tree,
planted by the monks centuries ago. Its boughs droop lovingly over the
roofless walls to shelter them from the storm. In the church the dead
are sleeping, and among them some of Ireland’s princes. In the centre
of the choir a modern tomb covers the vault where in ancient times the
MacCarthys Mor, and later the O’Donoghue Mor of the Glens, were
interred. These are the opening lines of the lengthy epitaph:
“What more could Homer’s most illustrious verse
Or pompous Tully’s stately prose rehearse
Than what this monumental stone contains
In death’s embrace, MacCarthy Mor’s remains?”
This abbey, like most of the other sacred ruins of Ireland, is now
used as a Catholic cemetery. No Protestant is buried here. Mr.
Herbert, however, has got possession of it, and has secured the
entrance with iron gates, which open only to golden keys. The living
who enter here pay this needy gentleman a shilling, the dead half a
crown. Elsewhere we find the same state of things. Even the most
sacred relics of Ireland are in the hands of Protestants. It is not
easy to find a more interesting collection of antiquities than that of
the museum of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin; but the pleasure
which we experience in contemplating these evidences of the ancient
civilization of the Irish people is mingled with pain when we see that
even their holiest relics have been taken from them and given to those
who have no sympathy with the struggles and triumphs with which these
objects are associated. We have here, for instance, the
“Sweet-sounding” bell of St. Patrick, together with its cover or
shrine, which is a fine specimen of the art of the goldsmith as it
flourished in Ireland before the Norman invasion. Here, too, is
preserved the famous “Cross of Cong,” upon which is inscribed the name
of the artist by whom it was made for Turlough O’Conor, father of
Roderick, the last native king of Ireland. No finer piece of work in
gold is to be found in any country of Western Europe. Those who
examine it will be able to form an opinion of the state of the
metallurgic and decorative arts in Ireland before she had been blessed
by English civilization. Another object of even greater interest is a
casket of bronze and silver which formerly enclosed a copy of the
Gospels that belonged to St. Patrick. The leaves of this, the most
ancient Irish manuscript, have become agglutinated through age, so
that they now form a solid mass. Another manuscript, almost as ancient
and not less famous, is a Latin version of the Psalms which belonged
to St. Columba. This is the copy which is said to have led to the
exile of the saint and to the founding of his monastery. This was the
battle-book of the O’Donnells, who in war always bore it with them as
their standard.
One cannot contemplate the exquisite workmanship and precious material
of these book-shrines without being struck by the extraordinary care
with which the ancient Irish preserved their manuscripts. These sacred
relics bear testimony at once to their religious zeal and to their
love of learning. They carry us back to the time when Ireland was the
home of saints and doctors; when from every land those who were most
eager to serve God and to improve themselves flocked to her shores, to
receive there the warm welcome which her people have ever been ready
to give to the stranger who comes among them with peaceful purpose.
Those were the days of her joy and her pride; the glorious three
centuries during which she held the intellectual supremacy of the
world; during which her sons were the apostles of Europe, the founders
of schools, and the teachers of doctors. Never did a nation give more
generously of its best and highest life than Ireland in that age.
These emblems of her faith and her science are in the hands of her
despoiler.
The great schools of Lismore and Armagh are no more. No more in the
streets of her cities are heard all the tongues of Europe, which at
matin hymn and vesper song lose themselves in the unity and harmony of
the one language of the church. They who were eager to teach all men
were forbidden to learn. Knowledge was made impossible, and they were
reproached with ignorance. But the end is not yet. In contemplating
the past we must not forget the present, nor the future which also
belongs to Ireland. The dark clouds which so long have wrapped her
like a shroud are breaking. In the veins of her children the full tide
of life is flowing, warm and strong, as in the day when Columba in his
wicker-boat dared the fury of the waves, or Brian drove the Dane into
the sea, or Malachi wore the collar of gold. They are old and yet
young; crowned with the glories of two thousand years, they look with
eyes bright with youthful hope to a future whose splendor shall make
the past seem as darkness.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
JUNE 1, 1868.
What a beautiful Whitsuntide, _carissima_! Only a minute ago Marcella
was singing to me the _Tarantella della Madonna, “Pie di Grotta.”_ Do
you recollect the pretty child in rags who used to make such long
trills and quavers as she tossed back her dark tresses? How far off
now, dear Kate, seems our time at Naples!
Margaret sends me a _summons_ to go to her. I answer by telling her
how it is that we are detained in Brittany until July. You can
understand what the family journey will then be. Oh! it is so sweet
and good a thing to be together that it costs much to each one of us
to absent ourselves from the rest even for a day.
We have had High Mass and Vespers worthy of a cathedral. On leaving
the chapel Anna, whose musical organization leaves nothing to desire,
threw herself into my arms, exclaiming: “It must be like that in
Paradise!” We all had the same impression. What worldly festivities
are worth ours?
This morning a walk with René in the woods, among the thyme and early
dew. Made a resolution to go out in this way every day, quietly,
before a single shutter is opened. We pray and meditate. René draws me
on to heights of faith and love. If you heard him when he walks out
with the twins! And how they listen to him, with their large eyes
fixed on his!
Would you like to have news of Isa? “She is very thin,” Margaret tells
me, “but is still beautiful; she personifies the angel of charity. The
good she does all around her will never be known. Make haste, then,
dear, and come; it is not good of you thus to refuse yourself to our
desires.”
God keep you, my dear Kate!
LA TARANTELLA DELLA MADONNA, PIE DI GROTTA.
(_Neapolitan Ballad._)
O lark that singest sweetly
At the rising of the sun,
Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly
To where the day’s begun!
Rise, rise through rosy skies
To the gate of Paradise.
At that gate so fair
What should be my quest?
Shall I enter Paradise
With the angels blest?
Thou shalt pray our Mother fair,
With azure eyes and golden hair,
To touch our fruits with ripening hand,
And bless the harvests of our land.
By her soft eyes bending down,
Watching over field and town――
Eyes more fair than fairest day
That from heaven hath strayed away――
Entreat her from her throne above
Thus to recompense our love.
O my friends! I will do so,
At the gate of Paradise:
To Mary with the brow of snow
I will breathe your ardent sighs.
O lark that singest sweetly
At the rising of the sun,
Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly
To where the day’s begun!
Rise, rise through rosy skies
To the gate of Paradise.
While at that gate so dear
Your Mother I do pray
To bless your hopes alway,
Friends, what will appear?
Thou shalt see our Mother there,
On her throne of rubies rare;
On her head the diamond crown
Set thereon by Christ, her Son;
Queen is she of Paradise.
Mercy raineth from her eyes,
Pity flows from out her hands
Unto all the furthest lands.
Heaven makes music round her throne,
Happiness dwells there alone.
Thou shalt see her shining fair,
More bright than envied princes are――
Our Queen all powerful, yet all sweet,
With the sun beneath her feet.
O friends! my heart would leave its place,
The brightness daze my eyes.
Were I to look on Mary’s face,
The Queen of Paradise.
O lark that singest sweetly
At the rising of the sun,
Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly
To where the day’s begun!
Rise, rise through rosy skies
To the gate of Paradise.
And at that threshold dread
Where all the angels throng,
When the golden gates are open spread,
What theme shall wake my song?
To our Mother shalt thou say
That for her hearts burn alway;
That to us her love’s more sweet
Than native flowers to exiles’ feet;
That her image graven deep
On our hearts doth never sleep;
That gazing from this earthly shore,
Above its tumult and its roar,
In dreams that come like blessed balm,
We see her heaven’s unshaken calm.
I go, I go! Sweet friends, good-by;
For you to Paradise I fly.
Dearest, the French is not equal to the naive language of the brown
little Neapolitan girl.
JUNE 12, 1868.
I have been ill, my beloved sister. What trouble they have all been
giving themselves on my account! Happily, it was nothing――fever,
headache, and general indisposition. The doctor orders much exercise,
and from to-morrow we organize a cavalcade. Adrien has had some superb
horses brought here; what riding parties we shall have!
But sadness mingles with joy. Lucy’s mother is very ill. They have
just set out; will they arrive too late? Oh! this journey, how full it
will be of anxiety and apprehension.
A despatch.… Poor Lucy! the goodness of God has spared her that last
moment, so full of cruel distress and yet of ineffable hope――she did
not see her mother die! What mourning! Why is death like our shadow,
pitilessly mowing down the existences which are dearer to us than our
own? But to what purpose is it to ask _why_? There is more true wisdom
in a _fiat_ than in curious researches. On Whitsunday, at the
“drawing” of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, my lot was the _Gift of
Piety_――love of God and of all that belongs to his service; and the
_Fruit of Patience_――generous acceptance of the crosses God sends us.
Must I own to you that this gift made me afraid? Oh! if my happiness
were to be destroyed. You will be scolding me for this dreaming, and
you will say to me with Mgr. Landriot: “If you would keep mind and
body in a healthy condition, avoid with extreme care these states of
reverie――the habit of taking aerial flights in which the heart and
understanding exhaust themselves on emptiness.” Dear Kate, my dreams
speak but of heaven.
Marcella, so long a captive beneath the yoke of others, regards
independence as the first of terrestrial benefits; on this subject our
opinions differ. The poor _Prisoner_ was quite right when he said to
the swallows:
Il n’est dans cette vie
Qu’un bien digne d’envie:
La liberté![118]
Yes, assuredly, liberty is a great good, and therefore it is that our
soul has been made free, perfectly free. And how sweet it is to feel
one’s self free, and to bend generously beneath the yoke of love and
sacrifice! One of our first instincts is the need of liberty, and even
the word alone has in it a magic which carries the mind away with it,
and at critical times becomes the rallying word of revolutions. O my
God! grant that I may love only the holy freedom of thy children――that
freedom which can never be taken from me. Deliver the captives――the
captives of the world, and above all of sin! Deliver also Ireland!
Visits: an entire family, antique in dress and appearance, but modern
in language, grace, and heart. Good Bretons!――I love them. This
valiant faith, this sublime indignation, these courageous
protestations for the church and her Head in a race of granite, is an
incomparable spectacle. Brittany has indeed done well to preserve its
customs, its manners, and its ancient faith eternally young and
living. One of these ladies questioned us about Paris, whither she
wishes to accompany her son, who is attacked by the fever of the
times. I admire her maternal devotion. Imagine the astonishment of
this _Bretonne_ in the capital of _mud and gold_!
Dear Kate, Marcella and René have some _secrets_ to tell you. Love
from us all.
JUNE 16, 1868.
Our first ride has been most prosperous, dear sister. It was a
nineteen――an unlucky day, declares the superstitious Marianne. What
matters?――God protects us. “Who loves me follows me!” cried Adrien,
and away we went, cantering after him through the thickets. Don’t
suppose our expedition was for nothing but pleasure, however
legitimate, but to make a wide circuit of poor. What store of
benedictions we gathered on our way! A worthy _tad coz_[119] in his
enthusiasm kissed the hem of Marcella’s riding-habit, saying: “It is
certainly a saint who is come to us.” (Marcella already speaks Breton
as if it were Italian.)
We had taken provisions with us, and did not get home until nine
o’clock, tired out, but so happy! My mother followed us in the
carriage. She must be interested and have a little variety at any
price; the death of her friend (the mother of our sister) has greatly
impressed her. “It is,” she says, “the herald to warn me of the
approach of my own death.” May God spare her to us!
Yesterday, soon after day-break, the carriages were in readiness in
front of the entrance for a visit to the old _divor_, as the Poles
would call it: a sort of pilgrimage … to the _saint of the sea-coast_.
It is so distant that we accepted an invitation to stay the night, and
are come home this evening, not at all fatigued. We are to go there
again, but have meanwhile obtained a kind promise. The _châtelaine of
the lake_ will be here on the 2d of July. How shall I describe her to
you? On our way back we were speaking of the _prestige_ of beauty, and
Adrien quoted the words of an educational professor who says: “I have
passionately loved both nature and study; the fine arts have also made
me feel the power of their charms; but among all things under the sun
I have found nothing comparable to man when he unites noble sentiments
to physical beauty. He is truly the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the creation.”
“I have often thought,” observed René, “that, God being infinite and
sovereign Beauty, physical beauty is a reflection of the divine.
Without sin man would never have been ugly or plain. We have in the
soul the instinct of beauty, the love of the beautiful under every
form; and although we say and know very well that human beauty passes
in a day, that it is nothing, nevertheless there is no one living who
has not some time in his life experienced the unique and irresistible
charm which is shed around her by a creature who to high qualities of
mind and heart joins the attraction of beauty and regularity of
countenance.” And my mother: “The saints have a kind of beauty which I
prefer to every other; it is like a transfiguration. This miserable
mortal envelope which covers the soul becomes in some sort
transparent, so that one can see the peace, the calm and serenity, of
this interior in which God dwells by his grace and love. The sight of
a saint is a foretaste of Paradise. Oh! how beautiful must the angels
be. Why cannot our mortal eyes behold those who are here, near to us?”
“As Lamartine says,” added Marcella:
“Tout mortel a le sien; cet ange protecteur,
Cet invisible ami veille autour de son cœur;
L’inspire, le conduit, le relève s’il tombe,
Le reçoit au berceau, l’accompagne à la tombe,
Et portant dans les cieux, son âme entre ses mains,
La présente en tremblant au Maître des humains.”[120]
Dear Kate, do you not love these pious natures amongst whom God has
placed me? “Great souls, great souls,” exclaimed a bishop――“I seek
them, but I find them not; I call them, and none answer!” Yet some
there are in France, and especially in Brittany.
In the midst of the refinement of luxury and effeminacy of the times
in which we live, everything dwindles and diminishes; people act in
the midst of narrow and despicable interests; the life of the heart is
daily deteriorating, and “soon we shall know no longer how to love
with that generous love which thinks not of self, but whose
self-devotion places its happiness in the felicity of others.” How
happy a thing, then, is it to take refuge near to God, and within a
circle where he is loved!
I spoke of you to the _saint of the sands_. Let us love each other,
dear Kate.
JUNE 22, 1868.
Fénelon said: “Education, by a capable mother, is worth more than that
which is to be had at the best of convents.” This often comes into my
mind when I see Berthe cultivating with so much care the two choice
plants whose fragrance mounts so sweetly up to God. The surname of
_duchesse_ is abandoned for ever. At Mass, on the 1st of January,
Thérèse made the resolution to acquire humility; and she has attained
it. How many charming actions the angels must have seen with joy! Her
countenance, naturally haughty and self-asserting, has gained an
expression of sweetness and gentleness. She is delightful; and what
efforts it has cost her! Her mother has seconded, helped, and
sustained her. Raoul, the greater part of whose time is absorbed in
his literary labors, has not transferred to any one his own share in
the education of his daughters. Kate, since my marriage I have
regretted more deeply than ever that I never knew my father. I did not
know before from what strength of affection we had been severed. Thank
God! so long as my mother lived her heart was enough for us. Kind,
saintly mother! how I bless her memory. The twins no longer wear
anything but white. It reminds me of the early Christians’ preparation
for baptism. Their thoughtfulness is my admiration. They count the
days with a holy eagerness; they ask us for the hymns of Expectation.
We are making a retreat with them, and all our friends of Brittany
will fill the chapel on the 2d of July. This is a memorable date in
the family――the birthday of Raoul, Berthe, and the twins. What a
coincidence!――the wedding-day of the former, and the anniversary of
our mother’s First Communion. Marcella is singing:
“O jour trois fois heureux! O jour trois fois béni!
Viens remplir tous nos cœurs d’un bonheur infini!”[121]
Anna has this year shared in the life of the twins; she is only eleven
years old. Her mother hesitated, but M. le Curé has just given his
decision, and the delicate child embraced me with transports. She also
will be at the holy table; she also, clothed in white. “Entreat Mme.
Kate to pray for me.” Sweet little dove!
_Evening._――Do you know what I have just heard? The good little
hearts! Unknown to every one, even to the vigilant Berthe, the twins
and Anna rise every night to pray; and, besides this, they regularly
deprive themselves of their _goûter_[122] for the benefit of a poor
child who is also preparing herself for her First Communion. This
child has on her arm a horrible wound, and our little saints kiss it
on their knees. Do you not think you are reading the _Acta Sanctorum_?
Of the three, Picciola is still the most fervent. I am suspected of
partiality with regard to her. Oh! if you saw her kneeling in the
chapel, when a ray of sunshine plays upon her fair locks, you would
say she was an angel. Dearest Kate, the great day draws near! I say
nothing about our processions, our lovely _reposoirs_, the babies
scattering roses――I should write until to-morrow. Pray with me.
JUNE 26, 1868.
Dearest, I feel tired after my walk on the sands, and would fain rest
myself with you, and talk to you again of the twins and of Anna, whose
joy makes me fear for her, so fragile is her pretty frame. Marcella
has given me a holiday from my Greek; she and Berthe no more quit
their darlings. And I, who have no maternal rights over these almost
celestial souls, leave them a little to their mutual happiness, and
isolate myself the more with René. Our subjects of conversation are
always grave――God, heaven, eternity. We had visitors on the 24th;
beautiful fires of St. John in the evening. O son of Elizabeth and
Zacharias, voice of one crying in the desert, the greatest among the
children of men! give me of your humility, your love of penitence and
sacrifice.
Isa sends me a few lines, all enkindled with the love of God. Sarah,
returned from Spain, is much amused at certain _hidalgos_, and quotes
me the words of Shakspere: “Were it only for their noses, one would
take them for the counsellors of Pepin or Clothair, so high do they
carry them and so imposing is their mark.”
I have not told you of our _fête_ on the 19th for the twenty-second
anniversary of the elevation of the holy and venerated Pius IX to the
pontificate. What will arise out of all the trials of the Papacy?
Solomon, after tasting every kind of enjoyment and happiness,
exclaimed: “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity.” It is deeply sad
hitherto, but consolation will come at last; it is like a ray from
heaven. “All is vanity, except to love God and serve him.” Let us
love, then, let us serve, God, who is so full of love. Everything is
there! Isa writes to me: “When shall we say, _Quotidie morior_?” Alas!
I have not arrived at this perfection.
My good René has published, in an English periodical, a remarkable
article, about which I want to have your opinion. We are convinced
here that no means ought to be neglected that may serve the cause of
God, and that every Catholic’s sphere of action is wider than he
thinks. Oh! how right you are, dear Kate. “All our actions ought to
preach the Gospel.”
Was present at a funeral yesterday evening――a young girl of fifteen. I
thought of the beautiful verses by Brizeux on the death of Louise.
What a picture!――the poor and lowly funeral train amid the
magnificence of Nature, who gave to the youthful dead that which was
not afforded her by men. I seem still to behold the scene. The place,
also, is suitable. I am in presence of God’s fair creation; a thousand
birds are singing around me. Oh! these nests, these poor little nests,
_chef-d’œuvres_ of love. They showed me lately a goldfinch’s nest
suspended as if by miracle at the extremity of a branch at an immense
height.
Ce nid, ce doux mystère,
C’est l’amour d’une mère,
Enfants, n’y touchez pas![123]
Children have an innate inclination for destruction. There are very
few who think of the mother of the nestlings when they take possession
of the nests; and the poet has reason to say to them:
Ne pouvant rien créer, il ne faut rien détruire,
Enfants, n’y touchez pas![124]
May the angel of mercy spread his wing over the cradles and the nests,
and may he protect you also, my beloved, and all of us with you!
JUNE 30, 1868.
The retreat and the singing take up all my time, dear Kate, but I want
to tell you that Lucy has come back to us, pale and weak, and
recommends herself to your prayers. Gaston was asking for me down
there. There is something so sad in this deep mourning; but Lucy looks
above this earth. Edouard’s voice was wanting to our choir; it will be
complete after to-morrow. Three poor children, clothed by your
Georgina, will accompany our chosen ones.
The SAINT OF THE SEA-COAST arrives to-morrow. She will be lodged near
to me. I wish she could be there always! Why cannot one gather
together in one same place those whom one loves?
Kate dearest, René and all _Brittany_ are for you.
JULY 2, 1868.
_Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine!_
O Kate! what a day. And the vigil――the pious tears, the pardons, the
benedictions, the _watching of the arms_ in the chapel――how sweet it
was! This morning Berthe asked me _to be the mother_ of Madeleine. The
sweet child was clad in her virginal robes in my room. She was
touched, but not afraid. When ready to go down, she asked my blessing.
Oh! it is I rather who would have wished for hers. Then the Mass, the
hymns, the exhortations; then, as in a dream, these fair apparitions
prostrate before the altar, and God within our souls. What happiness
for one day to contain!
The saintly _châtelaine_ was there, absorbed in God. The day has gone
by like a flash of lightning. It is now eleven o’clock, and I say with
you the _Te Deum_. One of our neighbors was telling me this evening of
a lady whose little daughter, pious as an angel, shed tears, the
evening of her First Communion, for regret that the day was at an end.
This circumstance inspired the happy mother to write a charming poem,
which ended something as follows:
Peu de jours dans la vie offrent assez de charmes
Pour qu’on pleure le soir en les voyant finir![125]
Marcella wept in the chapel. Happy mother; beloved children; blessed
house; incomparable day!
_The saint_ is really a saint. Hear this: “Jesus in the Blessed
Sacrament visits me every morning; I know not how it is that I do not
die of love. God has allowed me everywhere to meet with souls who
understand mine, and who have loved me!”
Good-night, my sister.
I whispered to _my daughter_:
My own sweet child, O soul all pure and fair!
Pray, pray with me where holy feet have trod,
And let thy sinless pleading on the air
Mount like a perfume upwards to thy God!
For the poor mother who her son doth weep
A last farewell in tears that rain like blood,
Let thy prayer, angel, mount the starry steep――
Mount like a perfume upwards to thy God!
For the poor orphan, who in dire distress
Alone by fireless hearth hath famished stood,
Oh! let thy prayer, with sister’s tenderness,
Like a sweet perfume mount towards thy God!
For the poor sinner who from God would flee,
Who dies and turns him from the saving Rood,
Oh! let thy prayer rise upward pleadingly――
Like a sweet perfume mount towards thy God!
For all the weary souls who weep and wail
To the sweet Virgin raise thy voice aloud;
Let thy clear tones for those who die and fail
Like saving perfume rise towards thy God!
I used to say this at Venice to the pretty little Rutti, the little
American girl; do you remember her? Oh! how well she used to pray,
this little dove from the New World. Dear, I should like to cross the
ocean to have a nearer view of that unknown land which attracts me so
much, with its freedom, its immense spaces, its splendid vegetation,
and its beautiful sun! But, nevertheless, it is not Ireland, my
country, and the land of memories!
God keep you!
JULY 6, 1868.
Dear Kate, in two days we start for my dear green Erin, to the great
joy of Marcella, who is an enthusiast about O’Connell. Margaret feels
a _thrill_, she tells me, at the sound of a carriage. It is high time
to make acquaintance with the handsome baby. René has left me to
accompany _the saint_, whom I would fain have taken with us. She
smiled sadly in answer to my proposal: “The aged tree that grows in
lonely places cannot thus be rooted up.”
The _Annales Orléanaises_ speak of nothing but deaths: the Abbé
Debeauvais, Curé of St. Thomas d’Aquin, has just died at Mgr.
Dupanloup’s; Madame de Bannand; the Abbé Rocher, almoner of the
prisons, etc., etc. Prince Michael of Servia has been assassinated: it
is almost ancient history. I must see to my packages; so good-by for
the present, until we are with _la belle Anglaise_.
JULY 19, 1868.
It is from England, and from Margaret’s magnificent residence, that I
now think of you, dear Kate. A quick passage, splendid weather,
everybody well and strong, including baby Gaston. Lord William was
waiting for us on the pier; we were soon in the carriage, and next day
in the arms of Margaret, who cannot _fête_ us enough. The children
have already become used to English ways, to this people of many
footmen, to this pomp and splendor, and to the beauties of the _Isle
of Saints_. Margaret is in the full bloom of her happiness; her child
is superb, and resembles her.
Dear, dear Kate, how much I enjoy being here! What emotion I felt on
setting foot on this soil, Breton also, but different from the other!
I wept much, and feel ready to weep again. What is wanting to me? You,
you, and the best beloved of mothers! But you are both of you with
God――my mother in the heaven of heavens, and you in the heaven upon
earth! _Laus Deo_, nevertheless, and for ever.
Marcella understood the inward grief I felt, and delicately offered me
her friendly consolations. We shall soon see Isa. I shall undertake
the _pilgrimage of friendship_ with René, in which all the family will
join us: Mme. de T―――― has so arranged it, you can imagine with what
thought. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Margaret’s splendid hospitality.
Her mother-in-law pleases me. These few lines are only to say good-day.
JULY 24, 1868.
Adrien has brought here the numbers of the magazine containing the
articles on “Notre Dame de Lourdes,” by Henri Lasserre. We want to
persuade our dear English friends to make this pilgrimage with us in
November.
We have just come from London. How many things to see and to show!
This morning, our dear convent of ――――. I was very happy and
delighted; I love so much to meet friends again, and especially these
convent meetings――there is something so heavenly about them. Under
these black veils it seems as if nothing changes. When a child I used
to wonder because nuns did not seem to me to grow older.
Ici viennent mourir les derniers bruits du monde:
Nautonniers sans rivage, abordez, c’est le port.[126]
This life of union with God, and devotion to souls, has within it
something divine. We know not how great is the calm and serenity
resulting from the lofty choice of these hearts. To belong to God in
the religious life is heaven begun. Doubtless there, as elsewhere,
there are sufferings, trials, and crosses; the separation from all
those most dear to one, the crushing of nature, the complete and
absolute separation from everything which can charm in this world, to
give one’s self exclusively to God, in prayer and love, is a beautiful
thing, but no one, I think, can say that it is free from pain.
Assuredly the exchange of terrestrial affections for those which are
imperishable cannot be regarded as a loss, and yet what tears there
are in this last farewell of the religious, who while living consents
to die to all her affections!
Dear Kate, we spoke of you. How they love us in this peaceful place of
refuge!
Oui, c’est un de ces lieux, où notre cœur sent vivre
Quelque chose des cieux qui flotte et qui l’enivre;
Un de ces lieux qu’enfant j’aimais et je rêvais,
Dont la beauté sereine, inépuisable, intime,
Verse à l’âme un oubli sérieux et sublime
De tout ce que la terre et l’homme ont de mauvais![127]
16th.――Prayed much for France. “Since this morning,” my mother said to
me, “I have continually before my eyes the scaffold and the pale and
noble countenance of Marie Antoinette.” Poor saintly queen! what a
life and what a martyr’s death. After the first days of enchantment
which followed her arrival in France, what a long succession of
troubles! This Dauphine of fifteen years old was so exquisitely
beautiful that the Maréchal de Brissac could say to her, in his
chivalrous language: “Madame, you have there before your eyes two
hundred thousand men enamored of your person”; and a few years later
the people cried, “Death to the Austrian!” Never had woman such a
destiny. The Greeks could not imagine a great soul in a body that had
no beauty, nor beauty of person without a noble soul. Marie Antoinette
would have been their idol, their goddess. O holy martyrs of the
Temple! pray for France.
The magazine contains a story still more interesting than _Fabiola_,
if that is possible: _Virginia; or, Rome under Nero_.
19th.――Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, this man of miracles, this humble
and great saint, whose memory will live as long as the world, who
founded admirable works, who created the Sister of Charity――this
marvel, whom even the impious admire, whom the poor and needy, the
aged, the infirm, the wounded, call “sister”; whom one finds tending
abandoned children; at the asylum, the hospital, on the field of
battle, and in the prison. O charity!
Letter from Sister Louise, who is, it seems to me, drawing near to her
Eternity. She tells me that labor has worn out her strength, that she
cannot write any more, and sends me two very beautiful little
pictures, which have a sacredness in my eyes as the gift of a dying
person. Is Heaven so soon about to claim this sweet cloister-flower?
Kate, darling, you see that I cannot lose my favorite habit of
confiding to you my thoughts. Oh! why are you not here, admiring
Margaret, resplendent with youth, freshness, and joy? She is going to
write to you, to ask news of Zoë, etc.
God keep you, my beloved sister!
JULY 29, 1868.
Have I said anything to you about Margaret’s park? of her
conservatory, worthy of Italy, and where Marcella would like always to
remain? of her birds? of all the fairy-land which she knows so well
how to make us enjoy? Lucy’s mourning prevents our hosts from issuing
many invitations; but how much I prefer our home-party as it is!
Long excursions among the mountains. Many projects for next year.
Margaret desires that a friendly compact should be agreed to, which
would be a continual interchange of visits: Brittany, England,
Ireland, Orleans, and Hyères would by turns receive our Penates. O
dreams of youth, O balmy days, which never will return! stay with us
long.
Yesterday Lord B――――, who had heard of my arrival, hastened to come
and see us. “What! so soon grown up, Miss Georgina?” he exclaimed, to
the exceeding amusement of Alix.
To-morrow we start for Ireland, for my own home, where everything is
in readiness for our arrival. What a sorrowful happiness! Gertrude
lets me look through her manuscript books; the following lines which I
found there you will read with as much admiration as myself:
“This morning Hélène asked to speak with me, and this day and hour I
shall ever remember. The beloved child of my soul, of my thoughts, and
of my heart desires to become a daughter of St. Teresa; she wishes to
go, and speedily. I shall, then, see her no more but at long intervals
and behind a threatening grating; another mother will give her her
love, other hands than mine will guide her towards God. But she will
be thine, O Lord! and, while yet young, I have felt too much the
sorrows of this world not to be happy at seeing thee give to her the
better part. Her avowals, her innocent confidence, her purity of soul
and intention――all these appeared to me so peaceful that I also
experienced an ineffable sense of inward peace. Go, then, since God
calls thee, sweet angel of this home, in which thou wilt leave so
great a void――go; father and mother will not refuse thee to God, and
our prayers and blessings will follow thee!”
After these heavenly thoughts, dear Kate, I leave you.
AUGUST 6, 1868.
I have received your letter, dear sister, joy of my soul, and to-day
must not pass away without my writing to you. _O deliciosa!_ I behold
Ireland again, my country, my universe, the first place in my heart,
where I have loved my mother and you. O these memories!――the past and
present uniting their happiness, their harmonies, and their sweetness.
The house is the same as ever――a bit of heaven fallen upon the earth!
Prayed on our dear tombs. The rose-trees flourish which you planted
there. The good Reginald does everything as well as possible, as he
always does. But oh! to live here without you, to see your room――a
reliquary which no one enters without me, and where I have put
together whatever belonged to you. Dear, dear Kate, you say well that
God has given me other sisters――sisters loving and beloved, but who
cannot replace my Kate.
All the village came out to meet us. There were no songs――there were
tears: the Irish understand one another. Poor martyr-country! I am
seized with a longing desire to stay here to console these poor
people. Our dogs were wild with delight, like that of Ulysses. Dear
friend and sister, do not be uneasy; that which surmounts all else in
my heart is peace, and peace founded on hope, as on a foundation of
gold. God will deliver Ireland! He will give us back our forests and
our hills, and we shall no more return to the condition of the
proscribed. Do you remember the last book we read together, in the
great drawing-room on the venerated spot where we used to see our
mother? This book is still on a side-table, marked at the last page.
It is Rosa Ferrucci, the charming Italian, who so loved Milton.
Nothing is changed; the wide meadows, the splendid landscape, the
sunsets behind the _giants of the park_, the gold-dust gleaming
through the foliage, the decline of day which we used so to admire
together――I have seen it again in its fantastic magnificence――all is
there, even to the smallest tufts of ivy: but the absent and the dead!
“And they also are present,” René assures me. “They wish you to be
courageous and truly Christian. Death does not separate souls.”
A fraternal letter from Karl. “My heart feels all the impressions of
yours in Ireland. I pray God that he may shed happiness upon your
path, and I join in all your memories.”
Isa, Lizzy, Mme. D――――, and all our friends must come in turn, and all
together. Isa is with me, pale as a marble Madonna, with a heavenly
expression in her eyes. Her mother almost adores her, and clings to
her in order to live. Mme. D―――― fainted away on seeing me. Lizzy has
recovered her gayety and petulance, and would fain enliven Isa. Where
have I read some words of a Breton who, in speaking of a young girl
called to the religious life, says, “Her heart is like a desert”? Such
is Isa, athirst for God, in love with the ideal, a soul wounded with
the thorny briers of life.
Margaret takes in several French newspapers. We are reading in the
_Ouvrier, Les Faucheurs de la Mort_――the “Mowers of Death”――a
historical drama of unhappy Poland. It is heartrending. Poland and
Ireland, the two martyrs, understand each other. Will not God raise
them up a liberator?
Darling Kate, what benedictions are showered upon you in return for
your liberalities! What touching questions are put to me! O these good
people! how I love them.
For the _first time_ I am mistress of the house. René calms my
scruples, and tells me that he is proud of me. O the evening prayers
in our own tongue! Yesterday I thought I saw you in your old place,
and nearly cried out.
Send me your good angel, O best-beloved of sisters! Send him to me in
the land of O’Connell――
“First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea.”
Dear Kate, I am going to enclose in my letter some beautiful lines by
Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess who delights me so much. This poetry is
almost _Irish_ to my heart:
LE RETOUR.
Oui, je te reconnais, domaine de mon père,
Vieux château, champs fleuris, murs tapissés de lierre,
Où de mes jeunes ans s’abrita le bonheur;
Votre image a partout suivi le voyageur.…
Vous souvient-il aussi des quatre têtes blondes
Qui si joyeusement formaient de folles rondes?
De nos rires bruyants, de nos éclats de voix,
Nous faisions retentir les échos des grands bois,
Sans craindre d’offenser leur majesté sereine,
Et plus insouciants que l’oiseau de la plaine.
Mais, ainsi qu’un parfum goutte à goutte épanché,
Le bonheur s’est tari dans mon sein desséché.
De ces bois, chaque été rajeunit la couronne,
La mienne est pour toujours flétrie au vent d’automne;
Au murmure des vents dans leurs rameaux touffus,
Au concert gracieux de leurs nids suspendus.
Au doux bruit du ruisseau qui borda leur enceinte,
Aujourd’hui je n’ai rien à mêler qu’une plainte:
Je ne ris plus.…
Puis sous le marronnier voici le banc de pierre
Où, pour nous voir de loin, s’asseyait notre mère.
Oh! comme elle était belle et comme nous l’aimions!
Oh! comme son regard avait de chauds rayons!
J’étais le plus petit: souvent lorsque mes frères
Gravissaient en courant les coteaux de bruyères,
Bien las, traînant des fleurs et des branches de houx,
Je revenais poser mon front sur ses genoux.
Alors en doux accents vibrait sa voix chérie,
Et dans mon sein d’enfant tombait la rêverie.
Et maintenant traînant mes pas irrésolus,
Parmi les chers débris de mes bonheurs perdus,
Et les pieds tout meurtris des cailloux de la route,
Je me retourne encor, je m’arrête et j’écoute:
Je n’entends plus.…
Et ce vieux monument, c’est toi, ma pauvre église,
A l’ombre d’un sapin cachant ta pierre grise.
J’ai salué de loin le sommet de ta croix
Qui scintille au soleil et domine les bois.
Ici, je m’en souviens, j’eus de bien belles heures,
Qui me faisaient rêver des celestes demeures;
Je contemplais, ravi, les séraphins ailés,
Les gothiques vitraux, les lustres éloignés.
J’entendais à la fois la prière du prêtre,
Et les petits oiseaux jasant à la fenêtre,
Les cantiques de l’orgue et des enfants de chœur,
Et l’ineffable voix qui parlait dans mon cœur.…
Oh! que Dieu soit béni! que les mains de l’enfance
Au pied de son autel, sainte arche d’alliance,
Des fleurs de nos sentiers répandent le trésor!
Qu’on brûle devant lui l’encens des urnes d’or!
Que tout vive et tressaille et chante en sa présence!
Le bonheur en fuyant m’a laissé l’espérance:
Je prie encor.…[128]
_Translation of the foregoing._
Yes, domain of my father, well I know thee again――
Old _château_, flowery fields, walls tapestried with ivy,
Which sheltered the happiness of my youthful years;
Everywhere your image has followed the wanderer.…
Also, remember ye the four flaxen headed children
Who danced so joyously their merry rounds?
Our noisy laughter and our cries and shouts
Made the wide woods re-echo; nor did we fear
Thus to offend their majesty serene.
More careless we than wild birds of the plain;
But like a perfume poured out drop by drop,
So happiness is dried up in my breast.
Each summer, of these woods renews the crown,
The autumn winds for ay have withered mine.
With the breeze murmuring in their tangled boughs,
With the sweet warblings from their hanging nests,
With the soft ripple of their engirdling stream,
Now can I mingle nothing but a moan:
I laugh no more.
See the stone bench beneath the chestnut shade,
Where mother sat, and watched us from afar.
How beautiful she was, and how we loved her!
And what warm rays beamed on us from her eyes!
I was the youngest; often, when my brothers
Climbed up and ran upon the heathy banks,
I, wearily dragging my flowers and holly boughs,
Would go and lean my head against her knees,
And hear the gentle accents of her voice,
While on my childish heart a reverie fell.
Now I return again, I stop and listen;
But hear no more.…
And this old building――it is thou, poor church,
Hiding thy gray stones ‘neath the pine-tree’s shade.
The summit of thy cross I hailed from far,
In sunshine gleaming, rising o’er the wood.
Here, I remember, happy hours I spent,
Which made me dream of heavenly abodes;
I gazed, admiring, at the cherubim,
The Gothic windows, candelabra high.
I heard, together with the prayer of the priest,
The little birds about the windows chirping,
The organ, and the children of the choir,
And the ineffable voice within my heart.…
Blessed be God! Ever may childhood’s hands,
Before his altar, the sacred Ark of the Covenant,
Scatter the treasure of our way-side flowers!
May incense burn in golden urns before him!
May all things live, sing, gladden in his Presence!
Happiness, fleeing, still has left me hope:
And still I pray.…
I have wept over every line, dear sister; but as for me, I laugh
still, alas! Oh! what a treasure of memories hoarded within my soul of
those fair years which your love made so sweet.
Would you like to have one of my relics, dearest?
SOUVENIR D’ENFANCE.
C’était dans un bois, à l’ombre des chênes
Et de nos sept ans, fières toutes trois,
N’ayant pas encor ni chagrin ni peines,
Nous remplissions l’air du bruit de nos voix.
Nous chantions toujours, cherchant l’églantine,
La fraise sauvage et le joyeux nid,
Jouant follement sur la mousse fine,
Et dans ces ébats la nuit nous surprit.
Tremblantes de peur, dans la forêt sombre,
Et pleurant tout bas, craignant de mourir,
Quand autour de nous s’épaississait l’ombre,
Nous ne songions plus à nous réjouir.
Dieu! quelle terreur! Tout faisait silence.
Sur le vert gazon tombait par instants
Un rameau jauni, pour nous chute immense!
Ah! quelle épouvante et quels grands tourments!
Mais un cri lointain, le cri de nos mères,
Un appel du cœur parvint jusqu’à nous;
Nous vîmes là-bas briller des lumières.
Oh! que ce moment pour toutes fut doux!
Quels tendres baisers, quels aimés sourires
Calmèrent soudain nos folles terreurs!
Après les sanglots nous eûmes les rires,
Et de nos récits tremblèrent nos sœurs.
Seigneur, que toujours, à l’heure d’alarmes,
Quand gronde l’orage, un ange gardien,
Une mère tendre arrête nos larmes,
Et pour nous guider nous donne la main![129]
What memories, dear sister! I had lost my way with Lizzy and Isa. My
mother was living then! How pale and trembling she was when I fell
into her arms! And you――you, my Kate!
AUGUST 12, 1868.
You have comforted me, dear sister. This place pleases me: everybody
likes it. Saw yesterday Karl’s family, as well as that of Ellen; the
day before yesterday, the W――――’s. Fanny is going to marry a German
with a great name, a fervent Catholic, in love with England, where he
intends to remain.
Our evenings are delightful. I had promised Margaret not to read _Père
Lacordaire_, by the Père Chocarne, without her. It is admirably fine.
The introduction is the definition of the priest such as is given by
the great orator of Notre Dame himself: “Strong as the diamond,
tenderer than a mother.” There are a thousand things in this book
which make my heart beat: “O paternal home! where, from our earliest
years, we breathed in with the light the love of all holy things, in
vain we grow old: we return to you with a heart ever young; and were
it not Eternity which calls us, in separating us far from you, we
should be inconsolable at seeing your shadow daily lengthen and your
sun grow pale!” “There are wants for which this earth is sterile.”
What a spring there is of faith and love in words like these: “Riches
are neither gold nor silver, nor ships which bring back from the ends
of the earth all precious things, nor steam, nor railways, nor all
that the genius of men can extract from the bosom of nature; one thing
alone is riches――that is love. From God to man, from earth to heaven,
love alone unites and fills all things. It is their beginning, their
middle, and their end. He who loves knows; he who loves lives; he who
loves sacrifices himself; he who loves is content; and one drop of
love, put in the balance with the universe, would carry it away as the
tempest would carry away a straw.” The Père Lacordaire speaks
admirably of cloisters: “August palaces have been built, and
magnificent tombs raised on the earth; dwelling-places well-nigh
divine have been made for God: but the wisdom and the heart of man
have never gone further than in the creation of the monastery.” The
first disciple and brother of Père Lacordaire, the saintly young
Hippolyte Réquédat (whose soul was so pure that when, at twenty years
of age, he threw himself at the feet of a priest, owning that he had
never, since his First Communion, been to confession, having nothing
of which to accuse himself, unless that he wished much evil to all the
enemies of France) used every day to say to the Blessed Virgin:
“Obtain for me the grace to ascertain my vocation――to learn the way in
which I could do the greatest possible amount of good, lead back the
greatest number of souls to the church, and be most chaste, humble,
charitable, active, and patient.”
He died of consumption at the age of twenty-two, and his death made a
deep wound in the heart of the Père Lacordaire. “Réquédat was a soul
as impassioned in its self-devotion as others are in selfishness. To
love was his life, but to love to give rather than to receive; to give
himself always, and to the greatest number possible――this was his
dream, his longing, his martyrdom. Devoted to an ardent pursuit of
that which is good, tyrannized over by this noble love, he had not
time to see any evil.” A friend of his was Piel, an eminent architect,
who joined him to become also a son of St. Dominic――“A lofty soul, an
heroic heart, incapable of a divided affection, and from the first
moment aspiring after the highest perfection, admirably formed to be a
great orator as well as a saint, of whom his friends used to say that
his language reminded them of the style of Pascal.” With the Père
Lacordaire was also Hernsheim, a converted Jew, a frank, intelligent,
and profound mind, from whence issued from time to time thoughts which
had a peculiar charm about them, mingled with a sweet and penetrating
unction. The Père Besson, an artist like Piel, and the _Fra Angelico_
of France, was also of the number; and, lastly, the Père Jandel, now
general of the order. Mme. Swetchine was like the good genius of Père
Lacordaire: “Who does not know this, now?” asks the Père Chocarne.
“Who has not read the life and works of this woman, whom death has
crowned with a glory all the more pure and radiant because she had so
carefully concealed it during her life? Who does not know this Russian
with a heart so French, this convert to the Catholic faith, so gentle
towards beliefs and opinions differing from hers, the masculine
understanding in the woman’s heart, the spirit of Joseph de Maistre in
the soul of Fénelon, the charity, so delicate and tender, of this
woman who said of herself: ‘I would no more be made known to the
children of men but by these words: She who believes; she who prays;
she who loves’!”
This is beautiful. Can you picture to yourself the impression made
upon us while Adrien is reading this aloud? Every one is breathless;
the twins and Anna, their eyes wide open, their hands joined, seem to
_devour_ this eloquence. The soul of the orator of Notre Dame has
passed into that of his son in Jesus Christ. All is magnificent, and
makes one deeply regret that the grand figure which appeared among us
with the double aureole of sanctity and genius so soon disappeared
from the world. A great and wonderful history is this, too little
really known! Have we not heard the most absurd fables told in
reference to Père Lacordaire?
I want your prayers, dear Kate, for a grand project: we wish to bring
Isa’s mother to agree to live with her sister. Lizzy would be the
daughter of the two, and the Lord’s dear chosen one would go to “the
place of repose which she has chosen.” It will be difficult to manage,
but I have a presentiment of victory.
Good-by, dear Kate, for the present.
AUGUST 20, 1868.
O Temps! suspends ton vol, et vous, Heures propices,
Suspendez votre cours;
Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices
Des plus beaux de nos jours.[130]
We have been singing this while floating on the lake. Picciola
proposes to take up her abode for a year at Aunt Georgina’s. I have
installed her as dame and mistress of my little school. What joy!
Isa’s mother is beginning to understand. I have been getting so many
prayers for this! She yesterday said, after having listened very
calmly to what I had to say: “Dear Georgina, I feel that God inspires
you; but only think how I have been broken down, and what need I have
of Isa!” Poor mother! O these vocations!――a terrible secret which
rends so many souls. “Let the dead bury their dead!” I need all my
faith in the Gospel to admit that these words were said by our
merciful Saviour. St. Bernard, the _saint of Mary_, the _honey of
Mary_, will succeed in gaining this material heart, which hesitates
before the greatness of the sacrifice.
We have finished our splendid reading. This evening we shall take
_Klopstock_. We all find that nothing equals this intellectual
pleasure of interchanging our impressions while reading together. We
separate at eleven. I am taking some views, being desirous of
transporting my part of Ireland into France.
Margaret has written to Mistress Annah to offer her the post of
governess to the charming baby. We expect her answer to-day. The
baptism took place on the 15th. It was splendid.
Have seen Sarah, whose son has been ill――always amiable, with a tinge
of melancholy, caught, no doubt, by the side of the cradle.
My _duties_ are so multiplied that I should be quite unequal to them
without René. What a pleasure it is to do for others what they have
done for me!
Send me always your good angel, my best beloved.
AUGUST 26, 1868.
What a _fête_ for my mother, the evening of the 24th! All the echoes
resounded with it. In two days hence we are to go to Fanny’s marriage,
which takes place in Dublin. Great preparations; but Anna is unwell,
and this spoils our joy. Marcella has suffered so much that she
trembles at the least shock. Lucy will remain here with our Italians;
we cannot return for a week. But the great piece of news I have to
tell you is this: Isa enters the convent of ―――― on the 8th of
October. I have obtained this exchange. Carmel alarmed the poor mother
too much; and, besides, the health of our friend is too much shaken to
be able to support the austerities of St. Teresa. The two families of
the D―――― will go with us to Dublin, and we shall accompany Isa. What
a _Te Deum_ we ought to sing! The timid child had never owned to her
mother the ardor which consumed her; the death of George――the nephew
so passionately loved, sole heir of so noble a name, and betrothed to
Isa from childhood――appeared to Mme. D―――― the death of everything,
and she lived “_extinguished_.” Oh! how I rejoice at this success.
Margaret and Isa, both once so sad, and now with their hearts in an
eternal spring!
Let us bless God together, dear Kate! Do you recollect Mgr.
Dupanloup’s words: “One breathes, in this land of Ireland, I know not
what perfume of virtue which one finds not elsewhere.”
AUGUST 31, 1868.
René is writing to you. We know that Anna is well, and we are enjoying
the _worldlinesses_ of Dublin. Fanny was touching under her veil. Your
dear name, my beloved Kate, was mentioned, I know not how often. O
kind Ireland! If I had to tell you all the graceful things that were
said to me, I should fill my paper. How pleasant it is to be loved!
Fanny did not weep on seeing me; she and her mother are unequalled in
their serenity; consolation has been sent them from on high. A
_vision_ is spoken of. I did not like to ask any questions, but it is
certain that something extraordinary has occurred.
O dear Kate! how fair is life. I was saying so yesterday to René while
we were looking at the stars; for the night was splendid. Do you know
what he answered? “Heaven is fairer; earth is but its echo, its
far-off image, its imperfect sketch; and it is death which opens
heaven to us.” Words like these from the lips of René make me shudder.
Oh! to die with him would be sweet, but not to live without him. Père
Lacordaire said: “Death is man’s fairest moment. He finds assembled
there all the virtues he has practised, all the strength and peace he
has been storing up, all the memories, the cherished images and sweet
regrets of life, together with the fair prospect of the sight of God.
If we had a lively faith, we should be very strong to meet death.”
Fanny starts to-morrow for France, Switzerland, and Germany――a long
journey; we remain at present, so as in some measure to fill up the
void a little. Why are you not here to witness our reunion? Oh! how
strong is the love of one’s country. I am _inebriated_ with my native
air; we sing our old ballads; we turn over with Adrien the history of
the past. Ask of our good God that this may last a long time, dear
Kate! _Erin mavourneen! Erin go bragh!_
SEPTEMBER 6, 1868.
Mistress Annah is come, dear sister. I wept with all my heart on
embracing her. Dear old mistress Annah! how wrinkled and thin she has
become; always upright and stiff as an Englishwoman, and her memory
enriched with Italian stories which will charm baby’s childhood.
Margaret has chosen for the beautiful innocent the name of
_Emmanuel_――a blessed name, which well bespeaks the happiness of our
friend. Lord William made royal largesses to the poor in the name of
the new-born heir. Twelve orphans will be provided for at the expense
of _Emmanuel_. Mistress Annah is longing to see and hear you. Margaret
promises her this happiness for next spring. You may be sure that no
fatigue will be imposed on the dear old lady. The pension given her by
Lord William made her independent; but our _belle Anglaise_ feared the
isolation of old age for her devoted heart, and it will be a happiness
to both to watch the growth of baby. A messenger has just arrived. _Te
Deum_, dear Kate!――a little daughter is born to Lizzy. Everybody is
delighted; they have sent for us; I am going with René.
7th _September_.――In an hour the baptism, so that Isa may be present;
then she says farewell to her family, and we take her away. The angel
fallen from heaven is to be called Isa. Marcella, Adrien, and Gertrude
have joined us. Joy and grief meet at this moment. You will be
astonished at the sudden departure of our Isa; but Lizzy wishes it
thus, hoping that the poor mother will let herself be interested by
the festivities and the visitors.
The last number of the magazine has caused me a sensation. In it is an
account of the beautiful scene on the Pincio, in October, 1864, “at
the hour when the sun, sinking towards the sea of Ostia, lights with a
golden gleam the cross which surmounts the dome of St. Peter.” Do you
remember, dear Kate, the Pope appearing in the midst of the crowd,
which bent before him with so much reverence, and the long shouts of
_Viva Pio Nono_ which saluted his departure? O Rome, Rome, my other
country, the eternal country of those who believe, hope, and
love――Rome of St. Peter and of Pius IX.――I salute thy image and thy
memory!
Dear sister, Lizzy requests your prayers. She is well, radiant, and
full of gratitude to God. Her good husband is in transports, and the
little one so pretty under her gauzy curtains. She has not cried yet,
so we think she will resemble Isa, her godmother. Do you not like this
prognostic?
Let us both pray, dear Kate! Adrien has again read us the two _fair
contemporary pages_ about Ireland――Mgr. Dupanloup at St. Roch, and
Mgr. Mermillod at St. Clotilde. O these words!――“The first powers of
our time, the two most illustrious and rich, are a Prince despoiled
and a people in rags――Pius IX., who extends to you his royal hand, and
Ireland, who asks you for bread!”
[118] There is in this life but one possession worthy of
envy――Liberty.
[119] Good or worthy father (old).
[120] Each mortal has his own; this protecting angel,
This invisible friend, keeps watch around his heart;
Inspires and guides, uplifts him if he fall,
Receives him at the cradle, stays by him to the tomb,
And, bearing up to heaven his soul within his arms,
Presents it, trembling, to the Lord of all.
[121] O thrice happy, thrice blessed day! come to fill all
our hearts with infinite happiness.
[122] A slight refreshment taken by French children between
the morning and evening meal.
[123] This nest, this soft mystery, is a mother’s love.
Children, touch it not!
[124] Being unable to create anything, you must destroy
nothing. Children, touch it not!
[125] Few are the days in life which offer charms enough
To make us weep when evening brings their close.
[126] Hither the world’s last echoes come to die:
Land, shipwrecked mariners; the port is here.
[127] “Yes, ’tis one of those abodes where our heart feels
itself enlivened by something of heaven which floats around
it――one of those abodes which as a child I loved and of
which I used to dream, whose beauty, serene, inexhaustible,
penetrating, sheds upon the soul a serious and sublime
forgetfulness of all that is evil on earth or in man.”
[128] Marie Jenna, _Elévations Poétiques et Religieuses_.
[129] MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD.
’Twas in a wood, in the shadow of the oaks,
We children three, all proud of our seven years,
Unknowing yet of trouble or of care,
With our resounding voices filled the air.
Singing we wandered seeking the eglantine,
Wild strawberries, and nests of singing birds,
Gambolling wildly on the fine, soft moss,
Till night o’ertook us in our careless play.
Trembling with fear, within the forest dark
We wept in silence, fearing we should die;
And when around us thicker shadows fell,
Never, we thought, should we see joy again.
Heavens! what terror. Everything was still.
On the green, mossy turf at times there fell
A withered branch, to us a fall immense;
For oh! what fear and torment were we in.
But hark! a distant cry, our mother’s call,
And loving voices reached our listening ears,
While through the wood we saw the gleam of lights――
Oh! to us all what sweet relief and joy.
What tender kisses, and what welcome smiles,
Now quickly tranquillized our foolish fears!
After our sobs, we laughed for very joy,
E’en while our sisters trembled at our tale.
Lord, grant that ever, in our anxious hours
And stormy days, an angel guardian,
A tender mother’s hand, may dry our tears,
And guide our steps along the path of life.
[130] O Time! suspend thy flight, and ye, propitious Hours,
Suspend your course;
Suffer us to enjoy the swift delights
Of these our fairest days.
APHASIA IN RELATION TO LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT.
The relation of language to thought as a theme of discussion has
busied the pens of philosophical writers from very early times, and
the later aspects of the controversy do not promise a speedy agreement
of views. Whatever new light, therefore, recent discoveries in science
may shed on this much-vexed question ought to be welcomed as helping
to increase of knowledge concerning a matter which cannot escape the
serious consideration of the teachers of philology. At present Messrs.
Max Müller and Whitney most strongly incline to opposite views; and
before coming to the subject of aphasia as affecting the question, it
may be well to take a cursory view of the field of controversy.
The old or scholastic belief is that language was in the first
instance divinely communicated, and this opinion its upholders strove
to maintain by a variety of reasons. Authority and tradition were
chief among these, though they did not by any means neglect
philological and ethnological considerations. In France the Vicomte de
Bonald undertook the support of this view on the same line as that now
held by Max Müller――viz., that it is impossible to have a purely
intellectual conception without a corresponding word or series of
words to represent it; whence, according to him, it follows that the
word must have accompanied the thought, and, man being unable to
originate the one without the other, both must have been originally
communicated. Max Müller says: “As a matter of fact, we never meet
with articulate sounds, except as wedded to determinate ideas: nor do
we ever, I believe, meet with determinate ideas, except as bodied
forth in articulate sounds.” He strongly insists on the correctness of
this view, and argues it at length. Professor Whitney takes direct
issue with him, and maintains that there is the widest separation
between language and thought. According to him, language can be said
to be of divine origin only in so far as man was created with the
capacity for its formation just as he was created capable of making
clothes for himself, and of wearing them. Such being the state of the
question, we will proceed to consider that abnormal condition of the
nervous system which has been denominated aphasia, and afterwards
indicate our opinion as to which view the facts established by it go
to sustain.
Aphasia, defined by Dr. Hammond as a diseased condition of the brain,
was not understood till quite recently. It is an affection of that
organ by which the idea of language or of its expression is impaired.
It is not mere paralysis of the vocal chords, nor of the muscles of
articulation, nor the result of hysteria――which conditions are
denominated aphonia, or voicelessness――but depends on a lesion or
injury wrought in that portion of the brain which presides over the
memory of words and their co-ordination in speech. The loss of the
memory of words is styled amnesic aphasia, the other ataxic
aphasia――two Greek derivatives which explain very clearly the two
separate conditions. A single typical case will exhibit the usual
manner of the approach of this trouble, its development and
termination. An English banker, a resident of Paris, recently went out
in his carriage well as usual, and on his return, as he was stepping
to the sidewalk, fell heavily forward, but did not lose consciousness.
His whole right side was paralyzed, and, on attempting to speak, he
could not articulate a word; he barely succeeded in uttering a few
unintelligible sounds. During twelve days the paralysis continued, but
after that gradually subsided, till in the course of a few months he
was able to move about. Strange to say, however, the power of speech
did not return, and for eight months he could no more than articulate
a few words incoherently. Nothing in the case of this gentleman openly
indicated an impairment of the intellect; for he could neither read
nor write in consequence of his paralyzed condition. There was
undoubted loss of the memory of words, since his vocabulary was
limited to two or three; and there was likewise ataxic aphasia, since
his words were jumbled unmeaningly together. The recorded cases of
this disease are very numerous, many of them differing in their
individual features, but all exhibiting a greater or less degree of
both forms mentioned. The case just cited will suffice to enable the
reader to understand the interest felt by psychologists and
physiologists alike to ascertain whether, by the discovery of a
uniform and constantly-recurring lesion in a certain portion of the
brain, the seat of language in that organ might be determined. Dr.
Gall, with the view of completing his system of phrenology, referred
speech-function to that part of the brain lying on the supra-orbital
plate behind the eye. Spurzheim, Combe, and others of the
phrenological school held the same view. But this was a mere
conjecture on their part, and it was not till minute anatomy had
already localized several other important functions that a fair
promise was held out that the brain-organ of speech might be likewise
located. Experiments without number were made by Bouillaud,
Cruveilhier, Velpeau, Andral, Broca, and Dax in France; Hughlings,
Jackson, Sanders, Moxon, Ogle, Bateman, and Bastian in England; Von
Benedict and Braunwart in Germany; Flint, Wilbur, Seguin, Fisher, and
Hammond in America――all tending to confirm the localization of the
function, though not agreeing as to the exact spot. The mode of
procedure usually consisted in making a post-mortem examination of
those who during life had suffered from aphasia; and though it was an
extremely difficult matter to bring all the cases under a uniform
standard, enough was discovered to assign the function in question to
the left anterior lobe of the brain. We do not pretend to regard the
question as settled; for no less authorities than Hammond in our own
country, and Prof. Ferrier in England, seem to consider both
hemispheres of the brain as equally concerned. Still, it is
significant that out of 545 cases examined by different authorities,
514 favor the left anterior lobe of the brain, while but 31 are
opposed to such a conclusion. Assuming, then, as amply demonstrated
that some portion of the anterior convolutions of the brain is the
seat of the faculty of speech, the question arises, Can that part of
the brain which is concerned in the process of ideation continue to
perform its functions――_i.e._, originate true ideas of which the mind
is conscious――without the memory of the words which usually represent
those ideas or the power to co-ordinate them? It is evident that, no
matter how the question may be met, we possess in the discoveries to
which aphasia has led a most important contribution to the controversy
concerning the relation of language to thought; for if it can be shown
that the mental faculties are unimpaired during the existence of the
aphasic condition, the conclusion would go to favor Prof. Whitney’s
view that thought is independent of speech; whereas if it can be shown
that during the same condition the mental powers are very much
debilitated or frequently suspended, we find an unexpected support
given to Max Müller’s opinion that without language there can be no
thought. We would state in advance that the portion of the cerebral
substance which is concerned in the production of thought――or, as
neurologists have it, is the centre of ideation――entirely differs from
that which is the reputed seat of the faculty of speech; so that the
question may read: Does the centre of ideation continue to operate
while the speech-centres are in a diseased condition? Aphasic
individuals usually retain all the appearances of intelligence: their
eyes are full of expression; their manner of dealing with surrounding
objects is quite the same as if they were in possession of all their
faculties; when asked to point out material objects, they
unhesitatingly do so――in a word, to the extent that objects are their
own language their intellect remains unimpaired. But they exhibit a
remarkable deficiency in the power of co-ordination, since this is a
pure relation not symbolized by anything material. Material objects
possess in their outlines and sensible qualities enough to
discriminate and individualize them; and hence, through perception,
they reach the centres of ideation, and are as readily understood by
the aphasic as though their names were fully known. This is made
manifest in their writing when, as occurs only in a few cases, the
aphasic retain the power of using the pen. Thus we read in Trousseau
of the case of an aphasic named Henri Guénier, who could not write the
word “yes,” though capable of uttering it in an automatic way without
seeming in the least to understand its meaning. Yet he could write his
own name, though nothing else, evidently for the reason that the τὸ
ἐγώ was the object of most frequent recurrence to his mind, and that
which consequently he could most readily apprehend through its
sensible characteristics, and could thereby connect with his own name;
whereas “yes,” as the symbol of affirmation, found no counterpart in
the sensible order. The same author relates the case of a man who, so
far as he could make himself intelligible, boasted of retaining his
intellective and memorative powers unimpaired, and yet, on being put
to the test, he could not construct the shortest sentence coherently.
When a spoon was held before him, and he was asked what it was, he
gave no answer; when asked if it was a fork he made a sign of denial,
but when asked if it were a spoon he at once replied in the
affirmative. It must be remembered that in all these cases the power
of utterance, so far as it is a muscular process, remained unimpaired,
but there was true amnesic aphasia――_i.e._, the recollection of the
words was lost.
There are some cases of partial aphasia which possess an interest
quite peculiar, since its victims frequently regain the entire power
of speech, and are able to relate the results of their experience. A
celebrated professor in France spent a vacation-day reading
Lamartine’s literary conversations, when towards evening he was
attacked with partial aphasia. Fearing lest he was threatened with
paralysis, he moved his arms and walked up and down the room, in doing
which he experienced no difficulty; but when he resumed his reading,
he found it scarcely possible to understand a sentence. The individual
words were intelligible enough, but he could not follow out the
sequence of the thoughts. Of course during the attack he could not
utter a word, though able partially to comprehend what was said to
him, as he afterwards declared. Here indeed is a most instructive
instance of impaired intellect, occurring as it did in a man whose
brain was usually in a very active state, and whose mind was highly
cultivated. Does it not strongly confirm the belief that, even while
the organic instrument of thought was unimpaired, its functions were
temporarily suspended?
Another case is that of a man of good literary attainments, who
pretended that he could still understand what he read, but who could
not discover the mistake when the book was presented to him reversed.
There can be no doubt, then, that aphasia unerringly points to a most
intimate dependence between language and thought, and that, as Max
Müller says, without language there can be no thought.
But why is it that in regard to objects possessing sensible qualities
aphasic individuals exhibit no impairment of intellectual power? We
will answer, Because with regard to such objects these are their own
language, and the functions of the perceptive and ideational centres
are as active in their regard as though the faculty of speech were
intact. A tree is known by its branches and leaves to the deaf mute as
well as it is by its name to those possessing all their faculties.
Whatever circumscribes and differentiates an object of thought is its
language. For, after all, is not language conventional and arbitrary,
the outer symbol of a subjective phenomenon? The symbol may be of any
sort whatsoever, but the thought cannot be known without a symbol of
some sort. Now, the qualities of sensible objects, in so far as they
serve to circumscribe the objects and to discriminate them from all
others, become their language. This is rendered more evident when we
reflect that Locke’s theory, according to which sensible objects are
but an aggregate of sensible qualities, is generally rejected, and the
opinion admitted that under these qualities there resides a true
substance impervious to the senses and known to us only as inference
from the former. Therefore the sensible qualities are the symbol of
the substance identified with it; of course in so far these are but
the substance modified in such or such a manner. This is why aphasics
find no trouble in forming ideas of material things, though they may
forget their names. But why is aphasia ataxic――that is, incapable of
co-ordinating words? Because co-ordination expresses the relation
between the objects co-ordinated, and relation is not represented, and
cannot be represented, by anything in the sensible order. They belong
to the purely intellectual order, and the only symbol that existed by
which they were known being lost, there remains no longer any means of
circumscribing and differentiating them. Paul and Peter may be well
known to the aphasic――Paul as such, and Peter as such――because the
sensible qualities of both render them recognizable; and not only
that, but the different qualities pertaining to both enable him
clearly to distinguish the one from the other. But if he is told that
Peter is taller than Paul, he understands nothing. And why? Because
the proposition implies the relation of comparison, in which there is
nothing sensible. Indeed, he perceives Peter to be tall and Paul to be
diminutive, but he does not perform the intellectual process called
judgment, which is interpreted in the proposition, Peter is taller
than Paul. In like manner, when there is question of purely
intellectual conceptions which can be symbolized by nothing sensible
except names, the aphasic are incapable of reaching them. Virtue,
power, and malice are meaningless sounds in their ears, and equally
unintelligible is what these words represent. The reason is because
the symbols by which these ideas were conveyed to the mind are lost,
and there is nothing left by which virtue can be known or
discriminated from power and malice. Whatever circumscribes and
differentiates a thought is its language, and this can be done only by
a symbol. Now, if we consult our own consciousness, we will find
that it is impossible for us to conceive of what is purely
intellectual――_i.e._, possessing no sensible traits――if we lose sight
of the word which represents it. Affirmation and negation are of this
sort, and it is entirely impossible to disconnect the idea of either
from some word or series of words. The idea, indeed, is not the spoken
word, but is painted by it as it were on the canvas of the mind, and
hence was called by Aristotle the word of the mind. All this is
attested in the case of aphasics. The language-mechanism of the brain
is disarranged; there is forgetfulness of words, accompanied by
inability to arrange them in proper order so as to be remembered; the
ideational centre remains intact, but is inoperative with regard to
such thoughts as have their sole symbol in words.
It is true that some aphasic individuals retain for a time certain
impressions which belong to the purely intellectual order; but this
can be accounted for only by supposing that the brain centres of
ideation are endowed with certain registering powers capable of
retaining impressions for a short while after their active operation
is suspended. But when the disease is of long continuance those
impressions gradually fade, and the patient is reduced to the
condition of an untaught deaf mute. He has lost the formulæ of
thought, and therefore cannot think. Trousseau says: “A great thinker,
as well as a great mathematician, cannot devote himself to
transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand
material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and
impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision.”
But where the sole “material accessory,” as Trousseau calls it, is
absent, how can a person think? We use the word in a higher sense; for
children incapable of speech, and animals, exercise a certain amount
of thought in respect to surrounding objects; but thinking, in the
sense of reasoning, abstracting, and comparing, outlies their
capacity, just as it does that of aphasic individuals. “Without
language,” says Schelling, “it is impossible to conceive
philosophical, nay, even any human, consciousness; and hence the
foundations of language could not have been laid consciously.
Nevertheless, the more we analyze language, the more clearly we see
that it surpasses in depth the most conscious workings of the mind.”
And Hegel says: “It is in names that we think.” This exactly explains
what occurs in the case of aphasics. The principles of science, the
sequence of ideas, the links of an argument, are not understood by
them; for they are, as children and animals, capable merely of
receiving the impressions which material objects make on their sensory
organs. It is true that a few aphasics have been known to be expert
chess-players; and though this is as hard to account for as the
apparent feats of reasoning accomplished by animals of the lower
order, still we would no more rank expertness at such a game among the
higher attributes of reason than we would the sagacity of a dog or of
an elephant.
This point is well touched upon by Trousseau, who says: “I believe
that the same thing obtains in metaphysics as in geometry. In the
latter case a man may vaguely conceive space and infinity without any
precision or measure; but if he wishes to think of the properties of
space, and more particularly of the special properties of the figures
which bound space――as, say, conic sections――it is impossible that his
mind does not immediately see the curves proper to a parabola, a
hyperbola, and an ellipse. In metaphysics, on the other hand, I
believe that a man cannot think of the special properties of beauty,
justice, and truth, for instance, without immediately giving a
material form, as it were, to his thoughts, by using concrete
examples, and without associating words together――words which
represent concrete ideas, and which then stand in the same relation to
particular metaphysical ideas as figures do to determinate geometric
ideas.”
The same may be said of universal ideas. These are, subjectively
viewed, mere concepts of the mind; objectively they have a foundation
in the object. Now, that object is present to the aphasic, and he
recognizes it by its sensible properties; but when there is question
of viewing one or two properties as possessed in common by a number of
objects, he finds himself unequal to the task. In a word, he cannot
generalize, and this is one of the highest acts of reason.
We would insist upon the distinction between words representing purely
material objects and those which interpret to us supersensible
thoughts; for not a few physiologists have fallen into error by not
observing this distinction. Thus Prof. Ferrier, of the West Riding
Lunatic Asylum, says: “In aphasia, consequent as it usually is on
disease of the left hemisphere, the memory of words is not lost, nor
is the person incapable of appreciating the meaning of words uttered
in his hearing.” From this it is evident that the learned professor
neglected to note the distinction alluded to; and because an aphasic
did not fail to appreciate the meaning of certain words representing
material things, therefore he concluded in a general way that he did
not fail to appreciate the meaning of words. Indeed, we have nowhere
noted the distinction, and it is curious that, in all the cases
recorded of the clinical history of this disease, physicians have
invariably propounded to their patients as test-words such words as
fork, spoon, pen, boots, and all such as pertain to the material order
of things. Prof. Whitney certainly did not take note of these facts
when he asserted the entire independence between language and thought.
He regards man as capable of conceiving new thoughts apart from all
representative symbols, and then finding for them a vocal expression.
This, as we have seen, is in direct antagonism with the data of
aphasia. The chief flaw in Prof. Whitney’s reasoning is that he starts
from false premises when he limits language to mere spoken or
articulate sounds. He seems to ignore the question when he says: “In
all our investigations of language we find nothing which should lead
us to surmise that an intellectual apprehension could ever, by an
internal process, become transmuted into an articulated sound or
complex of sounds.” The implied premise in this sentence is erroneous,
since it is entirely possible that it be associated with some other
symbol, borrowed from a material source, which is its language, its
expression, and makes it something entirely distinct from the
intellectual apprehension. Indeed, here lies the secret of
metaphorical language, and of its extensive use among those tribes of
men whose philosophical vocabulary is limited.
LIGHT AND SHADOW.
In golden pomp at morn and eve
The purple mountains rise,
With banners bright of waving green
Gay flaunting to the skies;
But upward toiling, panting, slow,
Patient the fleetest step must go.
A winding pathway through the vale
Entices weary feet;
The shining waters sing of peace,
The morning breeze is sweet;
But nook or covert there is none
To shelter from the noonday sun.
The fainting trav’ller turns aside
To seek the woodland shade――
Beyond the thicket, stretching cool,
Invites the mossy glade――
But thorny is the tangled way,
And devious paths his steps betray.
The fleeciest cloud that graceful floats
In summer skies of light,
Within a veil of tender mist
Conceals the tempest’s might;
And winds that stir with softest breath
Are freighted with the seeds of death.
The loveliest blossom that unfolds
Its beauty to the day
Must yield its treasured fragrance up,
Then droop and fade away;
And greenwood birds that sweetest sing
Are soonest gone on flitting wing.
The undertone of earth’s delights
In sorrow’s pensive sigh
Is mingled with the echoing breeze
Ere joy’s glad accents die――
Of all the strains that saddest float
Are requiems blent with triumph’s note.
CHICAGO, October 14.
JEAN INGELOW’S POEMS.[131]
Jean Ingelow is now over fifty years of age. For some time past she
has devoted herself chiefly to graceful prose, in which her pure and
playful imagination seems to have found sufficient vent. She can never
be removed from the company of the poets, however, notwithstanding her
apparent purpose of withdrawal, so far as we may surmise a possible
design by her neglect of versification.
That she has demonstrated her possession of genuine poetic feeling
cannot be denied. The volume before us is sufficient proof of this.
Whenever she has permitted herself to be simple, lucid, and natural,
her verses’ not only please――they charm. She is one of the minor poets
sincerely beloved――not in so great a degree as Adelaide Procter, or
Christina Rossetti, because she is not equally successful in
expressing the universal sentiments of the heart, and because she
wanders from the unambitious poetry of natural feeling into the tricky
and artificial, whither the multitude will not voluntarily follow. She
is not always in one mood, as Adelaide Procter is; and her joy, when
sincere, and not fictitious and artful, is sometimes exceedingly
attractive and――what is its truest test――becomes infectious, pervading
the reader’s mind and carrying the emotions away into its own
atmosphere.
We never smile at Adelaide Procter’s joy. Her smiles are sadder than
her tears. She smiles like a dying saint, whose pallid features
proclaim that the effort is inspired by something higher and more
mysterious than the pleasure of the world. It is as Shakspere says:
“Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, as if he mocked himself,
and scorned his spirit, that could be moved to smile at anything.”
Jean Ingelow possesses enough perception of real humor to throw, here
and there, winsome flashes of merriment over very sombre pictures,
especially in _genre_ scenes like that depicted in “The Supper at the
Mill.” Indeed, it may be safe to say that if she unloosed the flimsy
chains of artificiality in which she has bound her muse, that very
affected maid would prove frolicsome and mischievous; but her mistress
prefers a decorousness of behavior which, by this time, must have
dulled her own sense of the ludicrous, while supplying additional
keenness in that direction to her critics, and furnishing new and
irresistible models for hilarious parody, as we shall see.
It is impossible to read through a volume of her poems without coming
to this conclusion: that she has a poetic stock-in-trade. Let us make
an inventory of it. First, there are the birds; secondly, certain
flowers and grasses; thirdly, a set of stereotypes composed of
peculiar comminglings of sea, sky, ships, and stars. This poetic stock
is, as it were, all duly classified and labelled, and the whole is
arranged with scientific calculation as to drafts, at intervals, upon
the several departments. Matthew Arnold,[132] modestly defending his
own attempts toward translating Homer into English hexameter, hopes to
make it clear that he at least follows “a right method,” and that, if
he fail, it is “from weakness of execution, not from original vice of
design.” Jean Ingelow is guilty, we think, of “original vice of
design.” “Weakness of execution” is infallibly certain to follow. In
selecting her poetic stock――which is, in itself, vice of design――she
deepens the folly by being persistently fantastical. It is not enough
to choose birds, grasses, and particular flowers――these are an
integral part of all descriptive poetry; but, in order to make them
her especial poetic stock, she calls them by a curious and grotesque
nomenclature, whose terms were undoubtedly devised with an ultimate
view toward picturesque artificial composition. Her birds are not the
sweet-syllabled singers of classic song; she eschews the nightingale
and lark for jackdaws, wagtails, grouse, coot, rail, cushat, and mews.
Her grasses and flowers are less grotesque and better adapted to
sentimentalism in style: marigolds, foxglove, heather, daffodils――very
fond is she of daffodils――orchis, bluebells, golden-broom, vetches,
anemone, clover――her muse is very often in clover――ling, marybuds,
cowslips, and cuckoo-pint. The bee appears with industrious frequency;
his colors and his business are alike serviceable in a kind of
composition both picturesque and fantastic, He is as full of available
verbal suggestion as of honey. The ships are invariably bowing to each
other, to the land, or to the port. The figure is a good one, and
true, but its recurrence soon renders it tiresome and exposes the
dryness of the poet’s fancy. And after all Shakspere has been
beforehand with her. In the _Merchant of Venice_ Antonio is told that
his mind is tossing on the ocean, where his argosies with portly sail,
like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,
“Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
_That curt’sy to them_, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.”
The sea――which has supplied all the poets, from Homer down, with noble
and beautiful images, lofty, grand, awful, terrible, or simply
lovely,――the sea to Jean Ingelow is as a sleek servant who comes in to
fill up a gap in the discourse or provide a necessary digression in
the narrative. “A Sea Song” contains nothing of the sea except “salt
sea foam” repeated. Her sea, stars, sun, and moon are all domestic.
They perform no higher functions than the pipes of parsley or “the
green ribbon” that “pranks the down.” Her sun either “stoops” or is
“level”; her moon “droops”; the sea is usually “level,” and when
disturbed, never awakens any sense of the sublime. Nothing more than
her apparent imbecility in poetic treatment of the sea is wanting to
dispose of the hope that Jean Ingelow can ever become a better poet
than she appeared to be in her first volume.
Mrs. Browning, in one of her earlier efforts, “The Seraphim,” makes
Ador and Zerah speak of “the glass sea-shore.” But we do not remember
noting a recurrence of the expression throughout her tens of thousands
of lines. Mrs. Browning seems to have been conscious that she was
unequal to an adequate depicting of marine grandeur, and she rarely
attempts it, except in an instant’s lofty sweep remindful of Homer――as
if she caught a single breath of his inspiration, and pressed it into
her verse. She had more imagination than Jean Ingelow; Jean has the
readier fancy. Mrs. Browning’s conceptions of the awe and beauty of
the sea were far above her power of description, whose efforts are
often turgid and swell into bombast; so she does not attempt, except
in modest discretion, to write of the sea at all. Miss Ingelow, on the
contrary, discovers the ocean only at her feet, or through the limited
vision of a pretty opera-glass. Thus it becomes a mere commonplace in
her stanzas; she is frivolous where Mrs. Browning would have been
turgid had she not been cautious.
The sea, indeed, has wrecked most of the poets who did not hug the
shore. Only the few greatest of the number have been able, like Jason,
to tempt its unknown breadth, and fewer still return from Colchis
without a Medea to torment them. The sea will always be the final
touchstone of poetic genius. Of recent poets, Tennyson has been most
ambitious and most successful; but his best ocean views may be seen
from along the shores of the _Æneid_. The little ’scapes which are
strictly his own are artificial and under-done; his pigment is only
the residuum of lapis-lazuli――ultramarine ashes.
Jean Ingelow’s “vice of design” is very sadly shown, too, in her
vocabulary. She wanders about in dusty, unused dictionaries, searching
out odd, obsolete, obscure, and ambiguous words. Because a term is
confessedly obsolete is no sound reason why it should not be revived;
but there is no justification for inserting it in a text where it must
play the unbecoming part of a conspicuous intruder who can make no
satisfactory excuse for his presence in uncongenial company. Where the
silenced lexicons do not afford the desired material, she is not loath
to make new combinations, and we are harassed by “bewrayed,” “amerce,”
“ancientry,” “thrid,” “scorpe,” “eygre,” “chine,” “brattling,” etc.
The best illustration of the artificiality and affectation of her
style is found in one of her most pleasing and most popular poems, and
it would be deservedly much more popular were these blemishes of
etymology and simperings of rhetoric removed. We quote stanzas enough
of “Divided” to exhibit her individuality both of thought and diction:
“An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them, wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
* * * * *
“Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Groweth the cleft with her golden ring,
’Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
* * * * *
“Hey the green ribbon! We kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses, dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
“Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells,――
Faëry wedding bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.”
The “beck” grows into a widening stream and divides them.
“A shady freshness, chafers whirring,
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.
* * * * *
“Stately prows are rising and bowing
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing
The tiny green ribbon that shows so fair.”
In the last two verses Miss Ingelow, unconsciously forgetting her
previous straining after literal effects, writes these true thoughts,
which are the most finely poetical in the entire poem:
“And yet I know past all doubting, truly――
A knowledge greater than grief can dim,
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly,
Yea better, e’en better than I loved him.
“And as I walk by the vast, calm river,
The awful river so dread to see.
I say, ‘Thy breadth and thy depth for ever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.’”
Only artificial poems can be well parodied, and the parody holds the
mirror up to the artifices, so that even the author must make
confession. The cleverest burlesques which have reached the public of
late, reproducing in an exaggerated form the faults of the modern
affected school of poetry, are those of C. S. Calverley.[133] The
merit of his rhymed farces――which is precisely what he makes of his
models――is nowhere more happily illustrated than in the following,
which needs no introduction. It is entitled “Lovers, and a Reflection”:
“In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter),
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;
“Through God’s own heather we wonned together,
I and my Willie (O love, my love!);
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats wavered alow, above;
“Boats were curtsying, rising, bowing
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!
“Through the rare red heather we danced together
(O love, my Willie!), and smelt for flowers;
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather――
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:――
“By rises that flushed with their purple favors,
Thro’ becks that brattled o’er grasses sheen,
We walked or waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.
“We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie――
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes;
* * * * *
“And Willie ’gan sing (O, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white winged sea)――
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of ‘ancientry’;
* * * * *
“Oh! if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together this genial weather,
And carted, or carried, on wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out――ay me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there’d be!”
Miss Ingelow’s most pretentious poem, next to “Divided,” is the
“Letter L.” It has all her characteristic faults, intensified by a
curious jog-trot metre:
“We sat on grassy slopes that meet
With sudden dip the level strand;
The trees hung overhead――our feet
Were on the sand.
* * * * *
“And let alighting jackdaws fleet
Adown it open-winged, and pass
Till they could touch with outstretched feet
The warmèd grass.”
And so on. Calverley has a little versification entitled “Changed.”
Mark how ingeniously adroit he is in getting the jog-trot:
“I know not why my soul is racked
Why I ne’er smile as was my wont;
I only know that, as a fact,
I don’t.
“I used to roam o’er glen and glade,
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.
* * * * *
“I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
’Tis that I can’t remember how
They go.”
Calverley’s exhilarating volume, by the way, is not all parody; many
of its numbers are original expressions of as pure fun, capitally
expressed, as mirth ever conceived or art wove into verse.
Jean Ingelow is not altogether artificial. Occasionally she writes a
terse truth:
“One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock
Shall move the seat of God”;
or falls into a simple, unaffected strain:
“Far better in its place the lowliest bird
Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song,
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word
And sing His glory wrong.”
Hers is that oft-quoted couplet:
“Is there never a chink in the world above
Where they listen for words from below?”
“The Carpenter,” relating the touching story of his wife’s death to
“The Scholar,” says with happy directness:
“’Tis sometimes natural to be glad;
And no man can be always sad,
Unless he wills to have it so.”
“The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire” is widely popularized by
lyceum readers, who find its energy well fitted for semi-dramatic
recitation; and certain divisions of the “Songs of Seven,” notably
“Love” and “Giving in Marriage,” possess lyrical richness.
The thought of Jean Ingelow’s poems is always clean-of-heart; she
eschews――generally――psychological tendencies, and, although far from
lucid, her longer flights of speculation are merely curious, obscure,
and fanciful rather than vicious or misleading. Indeed, according to
her measure of grace, she is abjectly devout, worshipping with Eastern
blindness a Deity of whose attributes she conceives only one――Love;
and, in the humble resignation of a sightless child, she casts herself
into the arms of her notion of what that Love is, and rests there,
content to seek no knowledge outside herself. But even within these
sacred limits her disposition to artificiality in expression
unconsciously enters, to mar, with incongruous ornament, the limpid
thought:
“For, O my God! thy creatures are so frail,
Thy bountiful creation is so fair,
That, drawn before us, like the Temple veil,
It hides the Holy Place from thought and care,
Giving man’s eyes instead its sweeping fold.
Rich as with cherub wings and apples wrought of gold.
“Purple and blue and scarlet――shimmering bells
And rare pomegranates on its broidered rim,
Glorious with chain and fretwork that the smell
Of incense shakes to music dreamy and dim,
Till on a day comes loss, that God makes gain,
And death and darkness rend the veil in twain.”
Literal criticism of Jean Ingelow is, however, abashed and almost
silenced by the essence of her verse, which, in its chastity and
beauty, is above the touch of cavil. She is one of our few
contemporaneous poets who can look upon the face of her own work
without a blush. Apparently past the zenith of her productive talent,
she may look gratefully back upon her modest and constant rise, and
say:
“Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast.”
She need not avert her gaze from any line, and plead that the public
forgets it was hers and a woman’s. Wanting the genius of poetry, her
inspiration has been only that of intense poetic feeling wrought out
by the canons of verse; but, although only one of many in this
respect, the work itself is far above the average of its class.
“Many fervent souls
Strike rhyme on rhyme who would strike steel on steel,
If steel had offered, in a restless heat
Of doing something. Many tender souls
Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,
As children cowslips――the more pains they take,
The work more withers …
… Alas! near all the birds
Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take
The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.”
While the popular magazines and the newspapers are daily lowering the
standard of taste, and degrading and corrupting the sources of
literary enjoyment as well as of personal honor and actual virtue, the
regret is irresistible that a pleasing versifier like Jean Ingelow
should not contribute more to a total of general reading into which
what is known as “popular poetry” so largely enters.
[131] _Jean Ingelow’s Poems._ Boston: Roberts Brothers.
[132] _Essays in Criticism_, p. 334.
[133] _Fly-Leaves._ By C. S. C.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
TERRA INCOGNITA; OR, THE CONVENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. By John
Nicholas Murphy. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
An unknown land indeed is this that Mr. Murphy traverses――unknown, it
is to be feared, not only to his “Protestant fellow-subjects of Great
Britain and Ireland, for whose information it has been written” and to
whom it is dedicated by the author, but also to too many of his
Catholic fellow subjects, as well as to Catholics generally. The book
is, in brief, a history of the growth and spread of the religious
Orders in Great Britain and Ireland, the greater portion of it being
devoted to their work and increase since a removal of the penal
statutes enabled them to return in safety to the United Kingdom. The
interest of the narrative is simply absorbing. The work accomplished
by the Orders in face of a multitude of difficulties and dangers seems
little short of the miraculous. They crept back singly or in little
groups from France and Belgium, whence the first French Revolution
drove them out. Thither they had flown for refuge when the greater
revolution of the sixteenth century banished them and their faith from
what had been a land of saints. Units gathered units, brothers
brothers, sisters sisters, Congregations other Congregations, Orders
affiliated Orders, and within less than a century we behold the
consecrated yet desecrated soil of England and Ireland dotted with
religious houses, asylums, schools, colleges, where the old faith is
taught and practised. Those who are in search of the heroic, the
sensational, the pathetic, the marvellous, should read this book.
Their appetite will be satisfied with a healthy food. It is the old
story over and over again of what can be accomplished by those who are
really inflamed with a love of God and their neighbor. No one can rise
from the story of St. Vincent de Paul or Nano Nagle without a
moistening of the eye and a better feeling in his heart.
Mr. Murphy’s book was published some years ago, and the extracts from
secular and Protestant journals in Great Britain and Ireland show how
truly he met a popular want at a time when men like Mr. Newdegate were
bent on satisfying their own morbid curiosity and insane hatred of
Catholicity by forcing themselves on the peaceful communities of
Catholic ladies. If we have any Newdegates among us, they would do
well to take up Mr. Murphy’s volume, and see for themselves how these
“dark and cloistered women” spend their lives. The present volume is a
new and improved edition. As the author tells us in the preface, “The
statistics of convents have been largely amplified and brought down to
the present day. Several chapters have been re-written, and eleven new
chapters have been introduced.”
THE CATHOLIC’S LATIN INSTRUCTOR IN THE PRINCIPAL CHURCH OFFICES AND
DEVOTIONS. For the use of choirs, convents, and mission schools,
and for self-teaching. By the Rev. E. Caswall, of the Oratory.
London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
Father Caswall has done the Catholic laity a great service by this
_Instructor_. As he truly observes in his preface, “A knowledge of
Latin is not needed for Catholic worship.… Nevertheless, to those
whose education admits of it an acquaintance with those portions of
the Latin Liturgy which are in most frequent public use must ever be a
legitimate and worthy object of interest.” Accordingly, he has put
himself to the very considerable trouble of preparing a manual, which,
although an experiment, will be found, we have no doubt, all that is
needed for enabling the laity of either sex, who have an English
education, to make themselves familiar with the language of the
church’s liturgy. It deals with grammar as little as possible, he
says, yet there will be found in Part II. more grammar than his words
may lead us to suppose. Moreover, there are ample directions given, at
every turn, for the right use of the book.
The work is primarily designed, as the title-page indicates, for
choirs and mission-schools. With regard to choirs, it is superfluous
to observe how much better and more pleasing to God is an intelligent
than a non-intelligent singing of the Latin. With regard to schools,
especially those where elementary instruction in secular Latin is
given, “Catholics will enjoy,” says our author, “in the _living_
character of the language as used in the church offices, a great and
singular advantage.” And further, “What better _food for the mind_ can
we offer to our children,” he asks, “than the simple translation from
Latin into English――after a method easy alike to girls or boys――of
what they constantly hear and often join in singing in church?” Then,
as to the adult laity, there is “a large class of persons who, while
provided with missals and prayer-books abounding in Latin text and
side-by-side translations, yet, from want of a very little practical
insight, fail to derive from these manuals the advantage intended.
Others there are, devout persons of either sex, who might greatly
profit by the occasional use of Latin prayers, but are restrained (and
ladies especially) by an idea that in order to this they must first
have a complete knowledge of Latin. Such a bugbear――for it is little
else――will, let us hope, quickly yield to a steady practice of the
present exercises.”
The work consists of two Parts: “Part I. containing Benediction, the
choir portions of Mass, the Serving at Mass, and various Latin prayers
in ordinary use; Part II. comprising additional portions of the Mass,
Requiem Mass, Litany of the Saints, Vespers, Compline, and other
offices and devotions, with a short Grammar and Vocabulary.”
The only stricture we have to make regards the pronunciation of _A_.
The author says: “_A_, when fully sounded, is to be pronounced as _a_
in _far_. Examples: Pater, _Par_ter; laudamus, laud_ar_mus; ora,
or_ar_.” This is a very strange mistake. Had he heard, as we have,
“Glori_ar_ _r_in in excelsis,” “Benedict_ar_ _r_es,” “super omni_ar_
_r_est,” etc., he would never have directed that “_a_ should be
pronounced as _a_ in _far_.” We are aware that the English _r_ is
fainter than the Irish or American. Still, should not _h_ be
substituted for _r_ in the above? P_ah_ter, laud_ah_mus, or_ah_ are
the exact sounds.
With this very small exception, then, we can only speak of Father
Caswall’s manual with unqualified praise, and hope it may obtain the
wide circulation it deserves.
ECCLESIASTICAL DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. By Bishop
Ullathorne. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
“These discourses,” says their distinguished author in his preface,
“are called ecclesiastical because they were either addressed to
ecclesiastics or treat on ecclesiastical subjects. They form a volume
embracing certain points of pastoral theology――a subject on which we
have very little that is Catholic in our language, if we except the
excellent little book by Canon Oakeley.” They will therefore be
specially valuable to our clergy, while, at the same time, the bishop
“trusts there is much in them which may offer solid instruction to
thoughtful Catholic laymen.” One of the most important, and the one to
which we particularly invite the attention of our readers, both
clerical and lay, is that on mixed marriages, “delivered on occasion
of the Fourth Diocesan Synod of Birmingham.” Bishop Ullathorne is not
afraid to speak plainly on this subject. Indeed, his language is
startling but leaves no room for question of its truth. He speaks,
too, from an extensive experience of the evils resulting from mixed
marriages. Here is a passage (the italics are our own), p. 89:
“It would be as unjust as ungenerous not to admit that there _are_
Protestants who loyally keep the promises they have made in marriage
with Catholics, and who truly respect the faith and religious
exercises of their Catholic spouse, and fulfil their pledges
respecting the education of their children. _But_ prudence looks to
_what generally happens_, and not to the exceptional cases. And wisdom
never runs any serious risks in matters of the soul. _The individuals,
and even the families, that have fallen from the church through mixed
marriages, amount to numbers incredible to those who have not examined
the question thoroughly_; and the number of Catholics bound at this
moment in mixed marriages, who live in a hard and bitter conflict for
the exercise of their religion, for that of their children, and in
certain cases for the soundness of their moral life, could they, with
all the facts, be known, would deter any thoughtful Catholic from
contracting a mixed marriage.”
The bishop has extended this discourse in order to give the early
discipline of the church on the matter. He further makes his argument
impregnable by citations from popes and councils. Moreover, he
concludes the instruction “with an admirable passage from the synodal
address published by the hierarchy of Australia”; and the condition of
Catholics in Australia, as regards the ordinary excuses for mixed
marriages, bears striking resemblance, be it remembered, to their
position here.
EVERY-DAY TOPICS: A Book of Briefs. By J. G. Holland. New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876.
To one person at least, and to one only, this volume of _Topics_ is
likely to be of lasting interest. That person is the author. The
_Topics_ are short articles on a variety of subjects which have
appeared from month to month in Scribner’s magazine. They are of about
the average length of an ordinary newspaper article, and of about
equal depth. They lack the newspaper liveliness, however, and the
English is in great part of that slipshod style that is mistaken by so
many nowadays for an evidence of careless strength. “Familiarly
didactic” is the character that Dr. Holland in his preface seems to
claim for this and others of his books, and the very phrase stamps the
man. The book is tiresome, prosy, and fussy. Any one of the articles
is too long for its purpose; what, then, must a volume of them be?
Dr. Holland is apparently a Christian or nothing. He is for ever
prating about “the church” and attacking “the world.” It is to be
feared that his Christianity is of a very vague character. His zeal is
unfortunately without knowledge. He is constantly making grave
mistakes with the most solemn confidence in his own infallibility, and
thunders away on every kind of subject with a “trenchant ignorance”
that would be amusing did it not touch such grave matters. Dr. Holland
may have the best intentions in the world, but he would do well to
weigh his words a little before undertaking to champion “the church.”
What particular “church” is he for ever defending? The Christian
Church, he would doubtless reply. But which is the Christian Church?
This is a question that Dr. Holland is quite capable of undertaking to
decide in a future “Topic,” and he would do not only his own readers
but the world at large infinite service by making this matter clear
once for all.
We are quite justified in putting this question to Dr. Holland; for
everybody knows what a Catholic means when he speaks of “the church.”
But in Dr. Holland’s “church” it is doubtful whether Catholics are
allowed a place. At least, we should judge so from the manner in which
he treats of them whenever their name occurs in the _Topics_.
LINKED LIVES. By Lady Gertrude Douglas. New York: Benziger Brothers.
1876.
The English Catholic journals greeted this story with such an unusual
flourish of trumpets that we were led to expect something
extraordinary in the way of novel-writing. It is extraordinary in no
sense. It is not even extraordinarily bad. It is eminently dull,
altogether commonplace, and only saved from utter insipidity by here
and there an indication of real power.
Of course it relies for its main interest on the good old English
Catholic story-theme――conversion. To relieve the monotony of this
subject, probably, the author sprinkled the narrative with dashes of
what is meant for sensation. She takes us to the dens of thieves, to
the reformatory, the prison, the court of justice. Such scenes may be
rendered exciting――by a Dickens or a Victor Hugo. We are very happy to
see that Lady Gertrude Douglas is not at all at home among them. All
this portion of the book reads pretty much like an ordinary police
report, and all the desire in the world on the reader’s part cannot
invest Katie McKay or any of her companions with even a touch of the
interest that Dickens threw around Nancy Sykes. Such themes should not
be touched at all unless they can be made elevating. It takes a very
experienced, strong, yet tender hand to bare the ulcers and foul sores
of society. The process is a most delicate one. If well done, it
excites pity, remorse, sorrow, indignation, that such things can be
among Christian peoples; if ill done, it is revolting and only excites
disgust.
Great pains have been bestowed on the delineation of the character of
Mabel Forrester, and not without success. Indeed, she and her brother
Guy, who is killed off too early, are almost the only interesting
persons in the volume. By the way, what a lugubrious story it is!
Everybody is constantly down at the mouth. Poor Guy is killed at a
yacht-race, which he has just won. Katie McKay throws herself into the
sea with her babe, which has been chloroformed (!) by Katie’s sister;
and we could almost wish that Katie had been left in the sea. She is
dragged out, however, to receive two years’ imprisonment. The rascal
whom she married dies in prison. Her sister dies in her bed, but with
a strong intimation that she is likely to be consigned to the lower
regions. There are several other deaths of minor consequence; and
finally, after being induced to accompany Mabel on a voyage to
Australia, to assist at her wedding with her elderly lover, Hugh
Fortescue――who, of course, is in the last stage of consumption at the
time――the vessel takes fire and Mabel perishes. Equally of course,
Hugh, as soon as he receives the news, dies also, “aged fifty-three,”
as the tombstone erected to his memory in Australia informs us.
Surely, after all this, we may say with Macbeth that we have “supped
full of horrors,” and, like him also, we feel none the better for
them.
A great fault with the book, too, is that the fate of every one is
foreshadowed early in the story, and the recurrence of such remarks as
“But we must not anticipate,” “But of that anon,” is peculiarly
exasperating when the whole murder is out in the very sentence that
occasions such a remark. The convert-making is far too labored, and
there is too much of it.
We should not have been at the unpleasing pains to write of this book
as we have done, did we not see signs in it of a really good Catholic
story-writer, who is likely to be spoiled for any future work worthy
of the name by the injudicious praise which has been lavished on this,
which we take to be her first book. The lady can describe natural
scenery well, can touch a tender chord with true pathos, can display
strength at times. She only needs more interest of plot, and to avoid
scenes and characters of which she knows little or nothing. All the
plot in the present volume consists of the slowly-dragged-out
conversion of Mabel to Catholicity――which religion clashes with the
creed of the elderly and by no means pleasant parson to whom she is
affianced――and the consequent breaking off of the match. Finally he
also is converted, and the _dénoûment_ is as given above. To tag five
hundred and twenty-five pages of a story on a plot of such very
slender device is rather overweighting it. The French scenes are the
best in the book, and even they are needlessly marred by what the
author doubtless considers a beauty――the supposed literal translation
of the French characters’ speech into English, which is a barbarism.
THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC for the United States, for
the Year of Our Lord 1877. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society. 1877.
The season would scarcely be itself without this admirable little
annual. It is always bright, instructive, and amusing, and the number
for the present year shows no falling off in these qualities. The
first portion of the _Almanac_ contains the usual calendars,
astronomical and ecclesiastical, with the information respecting
Catholic feasts and fasts necessary for the coming year. Among the
biographical sketches, that of Dr. Brownson claims the first place. It
is illustrated by an admirably-executed portrait. There are excellent
portraits also of Bishop Verot, Archbishop Connolly of Halifax, N. S.,
Very Rev. Dr. Moriarty, O.S.A., Rev. Francis Piquet, Pius VII.,
Vittoria Colonna, all accompanied by brief but interesting sketches.
There are, as usual, pictures of old Catholic landmarks in this
country, Ireland, and other lands, with pleasing descriptions. Among
these, that of St. Joseph’s Church, in Philadelphia, is especially
interesting. In addition to the complete and very valuable list of the
popes, which was published for the first time last year, and is wisely
retained in the present number, there is a complete catalogue of the
kings of Ireland, from the Firbholg conquest down to the landing of
Henry II. of England. To this is appended some valuable historical
remarks. Indeed, there is not a page of this _Almanac_ that can be
called dull, and its cheapness happily places it within easy reach of
every reader. We only wish that such cheapness and real excellence
could be oftener combined in Catholic books.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR THOMAS MORE. By Agnes M. Stewart,
authoress of _Margaret Roper_, etc. 8vo, pp. 365. London: Burns &
Oates. 1876.
The lot of Sir Thomas More was cast in troublous times. He lived amid
storms that wrecked many a noble life, and yet no man ever bore
throughout a serener soul or a happier and gayer disposition. His
character is a study of the most healthful sort; for it exhibits the
rare picture of a man who deemed the sacrifice of power, wealth,
place, friends, and life itself, to principle and conscience, too
ordinary a duty to excite surprise. On whatever side we view the man,
the hero comes to light. He lived in an atmosphere of his own
creation, and whoever came within its influence left it a better and
wiser mortal. He was, in the best sense of the word, a Christian
philosopher and statesman. He would jest with Erasmus in antique
phrase as though he had but returned from the portico, while a
hair-shirt nettled his skin and his soul communed in frequent
ejaculation with its Creator.
As a letter-writer he will ever hold a foremost rank because of his
sense, humor, wit, and grace of expression. Even the careless
construction of some of his letters possesses a charm; for there you
see the man disclosing himself without reserve――careful, indeed, that
the picture be a true one, but indifferent as to the setting. What
could be more delightful than his letters to his children while these
were under the care of a tutor at home and he was engrossed by the
weighty concerns of office? He flies to the pen as a refuge from
distracting thoughts, and pours out his soul to his little ones with a
sweet _abandon_; he is sportive and grave by turns and veils deep
philosophy and wise counsels beneath the garb of a fresh and mirthful
phraseology. He evidently believed with Horace:
“Quamquam ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?”
“And how can you want matter of writing to me, who am delighted to
hear either of your studies or your play, whom you may then
exceedingly please when, having nothing to write of, you write as
largely as you can of that nothing, than which nothing is more easy
for you to do, especially being women, and therefore prattlers by
nature, amongst whom a great story riseth out of nothing.” He then
advises them to be careless in nothing, but to bestow conscientious
pains on all their performances. The homelife of Sir Thomas affords us
the best glimpse of the true character of this great man, and lends a
new and sad significance to the scene which occurred between his
heart-broken daughter and himself, as he tottered, haggard and
emaciated, to the block. He loved his home as the pupil of his eye,
and sighed for it when duty called him away. With even such a shrew as
his second wife he contrived to make his a model household, where
refinement, piety, and cheerfulness ever reigned. Smart retort and
repartee, brilliant things and witty sayings, were the salt which lent
savor to many a pious reflection and devout allusion while the family
shared their daily meals. Thus did Sir Thomas, by being a devout
Catholic and a lover of learning, convert a possible home of bickering
and discontent into one which nurtured peace, contentment, happiness,
and hope.
Unless we pause to study Sir Thomas More in his home at Chelsea, we
will fail to discern the peerless knight, the virtuous man, the lover
of religion, the sententious philosopher (all which he was), amid the
grime and lustful air of Henry’s court,
“Where the individual withers, and the world is more and more.”
Next to Sir Thomas as father, friend, and husband, the reader loves to
view him in his exalted capacity of chancellor. From him indeed, the
title has acquired its synonymous meaning with unblemished integrity
and purity immaculate; for throughout his whole political career he
never recognized friend or foe as such; he treated all alike with
unswerving impartiality. And in pursuing this course he obtained the
reward which he especially desired: the testimony of a good
conscience. He felt that, though “there are innumerable hopes to
innumerable men, he is happy who is happy day by day”; and this is
just the sort of happiness which is born of a good conscience. His
decisions bore the mark of his sterling sense and unyielding will, and
though many exceptions had been taken to his renderings by those whose
interests he countered, not a single reversal could be obtained, while
others degraded their high offices and stooped to pander to the
lustful instincts of the king. More studied to grace the chancellor’s
gown by the practice of every virtue pertaining to the dignity of his
position, and shone forth more brilliantly by contrast with the pliant
tools of Henry.
“Velut inter ignes
Luna minores.”
The speech which he delivered on the occasion of his investiture will
ever remain a model of dignity and modesty. While deprecating the
praise bestowed on him by the Duke of Norfolk, he failed not to
express his just appreciation of the high and important trust to which
he had been called, and this in language so fitting and graceful that
his admirers likened him to Cicero.
Miss Stewart, who but a short time ago gave to the world a charming
novelette with the title of the _Chancellor and his Daughter_,
addressed herself to the task of compiling these memoirs with laudable
enthusiasm, such, indeed, as no one acquainted with the subject could
fail to experience. Here is a hero-worship of the right sort, growing
out of the virtues and learning of her idol, and so far not to be
reckoned with Macaulay’s stupid admiration of William III. or
Carlyle’s still more fatuous veneration for Frederick of Prussia. She
has earned a new title to the esteem in which she is held in England.
The book contains an admirable autotype fac-simile of the celebrated
picture of the meeting between the chancellor and his daughter.
THE SCIENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. By Father Francis Neumayr, S.J.
London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
This is a poor translation of an excellent little book on ascetical
theology. Francis Neumayr was born in Munich in 1697. Early in life he
entered the Society of Jesus, and, having finished his studies, taught
theology with great success during a number of years. He was then sent
to fill the pulpit of the Cathedral of Augsburg, and during the ten
years in which he held this position acquired an extraordinary
reputation as an orator. He did not, however, confine himself to
preaching, but wrote on various subjects relating to the religious
controversies of his age. His writings were very popular in Germany,
and some of them made their way throughout Catholic Europe. _The
Science of the Spiritual Life_, which is one of his most widely-known
works, is a compendium of what has been called the “science of the
saints.” It is written with good judgment and a thorough knowledge of
the subject, in a style which is concise without being obscure. There
is nothing in it which the simplest cannot readily understand, and yet
there is everything that the most learned could desire.
MISSALE ROMANUM ex Decreto Sacros. Concilii Tridentini restitutum,
S. Pii V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII. et
Urbani VIII. auctoritate recognitum. Editio Ratisbonensis X. hujus
forma altera missis novissimis aucta. Cum textu et cantu a
Sacrorum Rituum Congregatione adprobato. 1876. Ratisbonæ, Neo
Eboraci, et Cincinnatii: Sumptibus, chartis, et typis Frederici
Pustet, S. Sedis Apost. et Sacr. Rituum Congreg. typographi.
This beautiful and finely-printed Missal fully sustains the reputation
that Mr. Pustet has already gained for his liturgical books. The paper
on which it is printed is of the finest quality, and the type by far
the best we have yet seen. Special praise is due to the printing of
the notation in the prefaces and other musical portions of the work,
which is singularly distinct and clear. The Missal is adorned with
many fine and artistic pictures, and all the introits are embellished
with finely executed initial letters. The proof-sheets have all been
read by the Sacred Congregation and approved.
MARGARET ROPER; OR, THE CHANCELLOR AND HIS DAUGHTER. By Agnes
Stewart, Authoress of _Florence O’Neill_, _The Foster-Sisters_,
etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.
This little book will amply repay perusal. The heroine, Margaret
Roper, the favorite daughter of Sir Thomas More, was the model of a
noble Christian woman, worthy in every way of her gifted and heroic
father. Sir Thomas More was, in the truest and broadest sense of the
words, a grand character, a peerless Christian knight without fear and
without reproach, true to his honest convictions, to his friends, true
to the faith for which he died with the calm heroism of the early
martyrs. His murder――to borrow the language of one of his
biographers――was one of the blackest crimes ever perpetrated in
England under the form of law. Time has only increased the admiration
which his grand virtues extorted from his bitterest enemies, and the
most bigoted Protestants venerate his name more than that of Cranmer
or Cromwell, the unprincipled tools of the heartless tyrant, Henry
VIII., who deluged England with innocent blood. His letters to his
daughter, skilfully interwoven into the narrative, form a very
interesting feature of the volume before us. The character of the
greatest of English chancellors is sketched by the authoress with
historical fidelity, and the picture of his celebrated daughter is
drawn with equal devotion to historic truth.
A PREPARATION FOR DEATH. Done out of French. Chicago: W. F. Squire.
1876.
This is an excellent little book, quite cheap, and well adapted for
the sick room. It was originally “done out of French” by a writer in
Dublin and has been reprinted in this country by the present
publisher. It consists of short prayers, exhortations, and reflections
on the Passion of Our Lord. The _imprimatur_ of Bishop Foley is
attached.
Another work, though larger, which is peculiarly adapted for spiritual
reading during the month of the Holy Souls is the _Life of St.
Catherine of Genoa_, published by the Catholic Publication Society.
This is not only a beautiful and interesting life of one of those
great women who adorn the history of the Church in all ages, but
contains in addition St. Catherine’s treatise on Purgatory, which
together with her spiritual dialogues, as is said in the introduction,
“St. Francis of Sales, that great master in spiritual life, was
accustomed to read twice a year.” And “Frederick Schlegel, who was the
first to translate St. Catherine’s dialogues into German, regarded
them as seldom, if ever, equalled in beauty of style; and such has
been the effect of the example of Christian perfection in our saint,
that even the American Tract Society could not resist its attraction,
and published a short sketch of her life among its tracts, with the
title of her name by marriage, Catherine Adorno.” The words of the
saints are always golden. One can never repeat them too often or
ponder on them too long.
SONGS IN THE NIGHT, AND OTHER POEMS. By the author of _Christian
Schools and Scholars_. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
Songs with a meaning are these, and full of sweet melody. The singer
evidently feels. The feelings are deep, the thought deep also, and
steeped in the purest well of religion. The versification is as varied
as it is happy; and, indeed, for both thought and expression
throughout this small volume we have nothing but praise. The title
owes its meaning to the fact that “several of the poems were
originally suggested by passages in the _Spiritual Canticles_ of St.
John of the Cross, whose use of the word _night_, in a mystic sense,
is too well known to need explanation.” The opening poem, “The
Fountain of the Night; or, the Canticle of the Soul rejoicing to know
God by Faith,” gives a good idea of the tone and excellence of the
volume:
There is a Fount whence endless waters flow;
There zephyrs play and fairest flowerets blow.
Full well that crystal Fountain do I know,
Though of the night.
I know the verdant hills that gird it round;
Its source I know not, for no thought can sound
The Spring whence all things first their being found
In the dark night.
I know no earthly beauty to compare
With that mysterious Fount, so calm and fair;
All things in heaven and earth are pictured there,
Though of the night.
The tide wells forth in many a flowing river,
Yet is the Fountain-head exhausted never;
Onward it flows, for ever and for ever,
On through the night.
No cloud obscures, no passing shadows rest
Upon that Fountain’s clear, unruffled breast,
Itself the very source of light confessed,
Though of the night.
Forth from this spring a sparkling Torrent flows;
Who shall the secret of its birth disclose?
And yet I know the source from whence it rose,
Though of the night.
I see from both a mighty River run,
Yet dare not say when first its course begun;
For Fountain, Torrent, River――all are one,
Though of the night.
I know that all are ours――all hidden lie
In form of Bread, hid from the curious eye
To give us life. O love! O mystery
Of deepest night!
And the Life seeks all living things to fill,
To quench our thirst with water from the rill,
To feed, to guide us, though in darkness still,
As of the night.
And ever of that Fount I long to drink,
And ever of that living Bread I think,
And linger by that flowing River’s brink
Through the long night.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS FOR OUR DEAR LITTLE ONES. By Miss Rosa
Mulholland. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pustet.
This beautiful book will be welcomed by the little ones, for whom it
is intended, because, from the cover all the way through, it is bright
and attractive, and each picture is a pleasant surprise. All the
characters of the holy tale are made life-like and familiar, and the
children may feel themselves at home with the white-winged angels, the
eager shepherds, the stately Magi, and those nearer and dearer ones
who attended the Blessed Infant’s earliest years.
By parents this book should be welcomed, because anything that
illustrates home-lessons and makes them charming is a valuable friend
in the household, and because it provides an acceptable gift which
will bring home to children’s hearts the true meaning of the holiday
season. The verses are appropriate and not too difficult for the
little ones to enjoy.
LECTURES ON SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. By Father John Cornoldi, S.J.
Part I. Logic. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
Quite a number of persons have recently undertaken the laudable but
difficult task of preparing elementary works on philosophy. Cornoldi’s
Lectures or Lessons in Philosophy are to be speedily published entire,
in an English translation, making two small volumes of from 300 to 350
pages each. A large part of the work is devoted to Rational Physics.
The Logic, just now issued, contains the simplest and most necessary
part of pure and applied logic in a _brochure_ of less than one
hundred pages. It seems to be made as simple and intelligible to
beginners as the nature of the subject permits. It is a defect,
however, in the translation, that Latin terms are sometimes used
without the least necessity, and Latin quotations are left
untranslated. We hope this defect will be supplied in a second edition.
AN ESSAY CONTRIBUTING TO A PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE. By B. A. M.
Second revised edition. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
Haffelfinger. 1876.
The first edition of this solid and genial essay was noticed in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. We are happy to see that its merit has received a
general recognition which must be gratifying to the author. It is a
book which grows upon one the more carefully it is perused, and we
have now an even higher esteem of its originality, sound learning,
discriminating judgment and taste than we had when we first commended
it as a work of genuine and rare excellence.
THE VOICE OF JESUS SUFFERING, TO THE MIND AND HEART OF CHRISTIANS,
ETC. By a Passionist Missionary Priest. New York: P. O’Shea, 37
Barclay Street.
Another excellent book on our Lord’s Passion; but it differs from the
generality of such works in making our Lord himself relate the history
of his sufferings first, and then helping the auditor to “Practical
Reflections.” This is an admirable plan, in that it enables the reader
to bring the divine Object of his thoughts so much more really before
his imagination. This, together with the character of the “Practical
Reflections,” will be found, we are sure, to make meditation easy to
those who have hitherto given it up as requiring too great an effort.
And if the pious author shall have done no more than succeed in thus
facilitating devotion to the Passion, he will not have labored in vain.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. (To the end of the Lord’s Prayer.) By Henry
James Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates.
1876.
This is the third division of Father Coleridge’s treatise on the
Public Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are glad to learn that the
reception of the preceding volume on the Beatitudes has “encouraged
him to attempt a somewhat fuller treatment of the rest of the Sermon
on the Mount than he had originally thought of.” Those who have read
the volume on the Beatitudes need no insurance from us that they will
find in this new work an abundance of beautiful lessons, and
particularly some we much need at the present time. The nine chapters
on the Lord’s Prayer (chapters xv.-xxiii.) will furnish the devout
with many helps to meditation on the clauses of this summary of prayer.
THE LIFE OF THE VERY REVEREND MOTHER MADELEINE LOUISE SOPHIE BARAT,
FOUNDRESS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. By M.
l’Abbé Baunard. Translated by Lady Georgiana Fullerton.
Roehampton: 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The original French edition of this admirable work has already been
noticed at length in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The English edition is
brought out in two handsome volumes, and the distinguished name of the
translator furnishes every guarantee for a faithful and excellent
rendering of the original. So great has been the demand for the work
that a large order was exhausted almost immediately on its arrival in
this country.
THE DEVOTION OF THE HOLY ROSARY. By Michael Müller, C.S.S.R. New
York: Benziger Brothers.
Father Müller is a tireless writer. His works are for the most part
addressed to those who are too often forgotten by Catholic
writers――the ordinary classes. He who provides the people with books
of devotion which they will _read_, and not put on the shelf, does a
great and good work. Under a modest appearance Father Müller’s books
conceal much learning and knowledge, the fruit evidently of very
extensive reading, while the whole is pervaded with a spirit of piety
and zeal. The present volume is devoted to an explanation of that most
popular of devotions――the rosary. Those who care to satisfy themselves
as to what the rosary is, what it is intended for, what it has done in
the service of the church and for the salvation of souls, will find in
this volume much to interest and instruct them, as well as to increase
their fervor. The concluding chapter treats of the “Devotion of the
Scapular.”
SHORT SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARY’S COLLEGE, OSCOTT.
Collected and edited by the President. London: Burns & Oates.
1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
These sermons will be found very serviceable to our clergy, who are
often sorely pressed for time to prepare their discourses. One
instruction such as these is better than ten ordinary sermons of twice
or thrice its length. Lay persons also will benefit greatly by making
their spiritual reading from this volume. The subjects are wisely
selected. There are twenty-seven in all, with two funeral sermons in
an appendix.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 142.――JANUARY, 1877.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.[134]
A national literature is the most perfect expression of the best
thoughts and highest sentiments of the people of which it is born, and
of whose life it is the truest record. No other Englishman may have
ever written or thought like Shakspere, but he wrote and thought from
the fulness of a mind and heart that drew their inspiration from the
life of the English people. He may be great nature’s best interpreter,
but she was revealed to him through English eyes, and spoke in English
accents. The power to take up into one’s own mind the thoughts of a
whole people; to give a voice to the impressions made upon them by
nature, religion, and society; to interpret to them their doubts,
longings, and aspirations; to awaken the chords of deep and hidden
sympathy which but await the touch of inspiration――is genius. Every
great author is the type of a generation, the interpreter of an age,
the delineator of a phase of national life. Between the character of a
people, therefore, and its literature there is an intimate relation;
and one great cause of the feebleness of American literature is
doubtless the lack of conscious nationality in the American people. We
have not yet outgrown the provincialism of our origin, nor assimilated
the heterogeneous elements which from many sources have come to swell
the current of our life. The growth of a national literature has been
hindered also, by our necessary intellectual dependence on England.
For, though it was a great privilege to possess from the start a rich
and highly-developed language, with this boon we received bonds which
no revolution could break. When the British colonies of North America
were founded, Shakspere and Bacon had written, Milton was born, and
the English language had received a form which nor power nor time
could change; and before our ancestors had leisure or opportunity to
turn from the rude labors of life in the wilderness to more
intellectual pursuits, it had taken on the polish and precision of the
age of Queen Anne. Henceforward, to know English, it was necessary to
study its classics; and in them Americans found the imprint of a
mental type which had ceased to be their own. And being themselves as
yet without strongly-marked or well-defined national features of
character, they became fatally mere imitators of works which could not
be read without admiration, or studied without exciting in those who
had thoughts to express the strong desire of imitation. Their
excellence served to intimidate those who, while admiring, could not
hope to rival their ease and elegance; and thus, in losing something
of native vigor and freshness, our best writers have generally
acquired only an artificial polish and a foreign grace.
It must be remembered, too, that more than any other people we have
been and are practical and utilitarian; and this is more specially
true of the New Englanders, whose mental activity has been greater
than that of any other Americans. We have loved knowledge as the means
of power and wealth, and not as an element of refinement and culture.
If evidence of this were needed, it would suffice to point to our
school system, which is based upon the notion that the sole aim of
education should be to fit man for the practical business of life. As
the result, knowledge has been widely diffused, but the love of
excellence has been diminished. Education, when considered as merely a
help to common and immediate ends, neither strengthens nor refines the
higher qualities of mind. If we may rely upon our own experience in
college, we should say that the prevailing sentiment with young
Americans is that it is waste of time to study anything which cannot
be put to practical use either in commercial or professional life; and
this in spite of the efforts very generally made by the professors to
inspire more exalted ideas. We have known the wretched sophism that it
is useless to read logic, because in the world men do not reason in
syllogisms, to pass current in a class of graduates. This low and
utilitarian view of education does not affect alone our notions of the
value of literature, in the stricter sense of the word, but exerts
also a hurtful influence upon the study of science. For science, like
literature, to be successfully cultivated, in its higher developments
at least, must be sought for its own sake, without thought of those
ulterior objects to which certainly it may be made to conduce. The
love of knowledge for itself, the conviction that knowledge is its own
end, is rarely found among us, and we therefore have but little
enthusiasm for literary excellence or philosophic truth. The noblest
thoughts spring from the heart, and he who seeks to know from a
calculating spirit will for ever remain a stranger to the higher and
serener realms of mind.
Another cause by which the growth of American literature has been
unfavorably affected may be found in the unlimited resources of the
country, offering to all opportunities of wealth or fame. The demand
for ability of every kind is so great that talent is not permitted to
mature. The young man who possesses readiness of wit and a sprightly
fancy, if he does not enter one of the learned professions or engage
in commerce, almost fatally drifts into a newspaper office, than which
a place more unfavorable to intellectual pursuits or to true culture
of mind cannot easily be imagined. If a book is the better the farther
the author keeps away all thought of the reader, under what
disadvantages does not he write whose duty it is made to think only of
the reader! To be forced day by day to write upon subjects of which he
knows little; to give opinions without having time to weigh arguments
or to consider facts; to interpret passing events in the interests of
party or in accordance with popular prejudice; to exaggerate the
virtues of friends and the vices of opponents; to court applause by
adapting style to the capacity and taste of the crowd; and to do all
this hurriedly and in a rush, is to be an editor. When we reflect that
it is to work of this kind that a very considerable part of the
literary ability of the country is devoted, it is manifest that the
result must be not only to withdraw useful laborers from nobler
intellectual pursuits, but to lower and pervert the standard of taste.
They who accustom their minds to dwell upon the picture of human life
as presented in a daily newspaper, in which what is atrocious, vulgar,
or startling receives greatest prominence, will hardly cultivate or
retain an appreciation of elevated thoughts or the graces of
composition.
As the public is content with crude and hasty writing, the crowd, who
are capable of such performance, rush in, eager to carry off the prize
of voluminousness, if not of excellence; and, in consequence, we
surpass all other nations in the number of worthless books which we
print. In fact, the great national defect is haste, and therefore a
want of thoroughness in our work.
But we have no thought of entering into an extended examination of the
causes to which the feebleness of American literature is to be
attributed. The very general recognition of the fact that it is
feeble, even when not marred by grosser faults, is probably the most
assuring evidence that in the future we may hope for something better.
Our weakness, however it may be accounted for, is most perceptible in
the highest realms of thought――philosophy and poetry. To the former
our contributions are valueless. No original thinker has appeared
among us; no one who has even aspired to anything higher than the
office of a commentator. This, indeed, can hardly be matter for
surprise, since we may be naturally supposed to inherit from the
English their deficiency in power of abstract thought and metaphysical
intuition. But in poetry they excel all other nations, whether ancient
or modern; and as they have transmitted to us their mental defects, we
might not unreasonably hope to be endowed with their peculiar gifts of
mind. Deprived of the philosophic brow, we might hope for some
compensation, at least, in the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling.
But even in this we seem not to have been highly favored. Nothing
could well be more wretched than American verse-making during the
colonial era. We doubt whether a single line of all that was written
from the landing of the Pilgrims down to the war of Independence is
worth preserving. Pope, when he wrote his _Dunciad_, found but one
American worthy even of being damned to so unenviable an immortality.
Freneau, who was the most popular and the most gifted poet of the
Revolution, is as completely unknown to this generation as though he
had never written; and, indeed, he wrote nothing which, without great
loss to the world, may not be forgotten. And to this class, whom nor
gods nor columns permit to live, belong nearly all who in America have
courted the Muse. In our entire poetical literature there are not more
than half a dozen names which deserve even passing notice, and the
greatest of these cannot be placed higher than among the third-rate
poets of England.
Without adopting the crude theory of Macaulay that as civilization
advances poetry necessarily declines, we shall be at no loss for
reasons to account for this absence of the highest poetic gifts.
Neither the character of the early settlers in this country, nor their
religious faith, nor their social and political conditions of life,
were of the kind from which inspiration to high thinking and flights
of fancy might naturally be expected to spring. The Puritans were
hard, unsympathetic, with no appreciation of beauty. In their eyes art
of every kind was at best useless, even when not tending to give a
dangerous softness and false polish to manners. Their religious faith
intensified this feeling, and caused them to turn with aversion from
what had been so long and so intimately associated, as almost to be
identified, with Catholic worship. Their sour looks, their nasal
twang, their affected simplicity, their contempt of literature, and
their dislike of the most innocent amusements, would hardly lead the
Muse, even if invited, to smile on them. Habits of thought and feeling
not unlike theirs had, it is true, in Milton, been found to be not
incompatible with the highest gifts of imagination and expression. But
Milton had not the Puritan contempt of letters. He was, on the
contrary, a man of extensive reading and great culture; and his proud
and lofty spirit was not too high to stoop to flattery as servile and
as elegant as ever a tyrant received. His lines on ecclesiastical
architecture and music in _Il Penseroso_ prove that he had a keen
perception of the beauty and grandeur of Catholic worship. He was, in
fact, in many respects more a Cavalier than a Roundhead. He had,
besides, in the burning passions of his age, the bitter strife of
party and sect, in the scorn and contempt of the nobles for the
low-born――which in the civil wars had been trodden beneath the iron
heel of war, only to rise with the monarchy in more offensive
form――that which fired him to the adventurous song “that with no
middle flight intends to soar,” and made him deify rebellion in Satan,
who, rather than be subject, would not be at all.
In the primitive and simple social organization of the American
colonies there was nothing to fire the soul or kindle the indignation
that makes poets. And even nature presented herself to our ancestors
rather as a shrew to be conquered than as a mistress to be wooed with
harmonious numbers and sweet sounds of melody. If to this we add, what
few will deny, that the equality of conditions in our society, however
desirable from a political or philanthropic point of view, is to the
poetic eye but a flat and weary plain, without any of the inspiration
of high mountains and long-withdrawing vales, of thundering cataracts
that lose themselves in streams that peacefully glide all unconscious
of the roar and turmoil of waters of which they are born, we will find
nothing strange in the practical and unimaginative character of the
American people. We know of no better example of the tameness of the
American Muse than Whittier. He is one of our most voluminous writers
of verse, and various causes, most of which are doubtless extrinsic to
the literary merit of his compositions, have obtained for him very
general recognition. He lacks, indeed, the culture of Longfellow, his
wide acquaintance with books and the world, and his careful study of
the literatures of the European nations. He lacks also his large
sympathies and catholic thought, his elevation of sentiment and power
of finished and polished expression.
But if Whittier’s garb is plain, his features hard, and his voice
harsh, his poetry, both in subject and in style, seems native here and
to spring from the soil. He has himself not inaptly described his
verse in the lines which he has prefixed to the Centennial edition of
his complete poetical works:
“The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor’s hurried time
Or Duty’s rugged march through storm and strife, are here.
“Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace
Or softer shades of Nature’s face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.”
Whittier is, however, far from being a representative American or
American poet. He is a Quaker. The broad-brimmed hat, the neat and
simple dress, the sober gait, the slow and careful phrase with thee
and thou, could not more truly denote him than his verse. Now,
whatever idea we may form to ourselves of the typical American, or
whether we think such a being exists at all, no one would ever imagine
him to be a Quaker.
The American is eager; the Quaker is subdued. The American is loud,
with a tendency to boastfulness and exaggeration; the Quaker is quiet
and his language sober. He shuns the conflict and the battle, does not
over-estimate his strength; while the American would fight the world,
catch the Leviathan, swim the ocean, or do anything most impossible.
The Quaker is cautious, the American reckless. The American is
aggressive, the Quaker is timid. But it is needless to continue the
contrast. A great poet is held by no bonds. His eye glances from earth
to heaven――the infinite is his home; and that Whittier should be only
a Quaker poet is of itself sufficient evidence that he is not a great
poet. But in saying this we affirm only what is universally
recognized. He is, indeed, wholly devoid of the creative faculty to
which all true poetry owes its life; and yet this alone could have
lifted most of the subjects which he has treated out of the dulness
and weariness of the commonplace. To transform the real, to invest
that which is low or mean or trivial with honor and beauty, is the
triumph of the poet’s art, the test of his inspiration. His words,
like the light of heaven, clothe the world in a splendor not its own,
or, like the morning rays falling on the statue of Memnon, strike from
dead and sluggish matter sounds of celestial harmony.
“To him the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
Whittier certainly has no fear of trivial and commonplace subjects,
but in his treatment of them he rarely, if ever, rises above the level
of the verse-maker.
It was the opinion of Keats that a long poem is the test of invention;
and if we accept this as a canon of criticism, we shall want no other
evidence of Whittier’s poverty of imagination. All his pieces are
short, though few readers, we suppose, have ever wished them longer.
He cannot give sprightliness or variety to his verse, which like a
sluggish stream creeps languidly along. There is no freshness about
him, none of the breeziness of nature, none of its joyousness,
exuberance, and exultant strength. In his youth, even, he had all the
stiffness and slowness of age with its want of graceful motion. His
narrations are interrupted and halting, interspersed with commonplace
reflections and wearisome details; and when we have jogged along with
him to the end, we are less pleased than fatigued. He never with
strong arm bears us on over flood and fell, through hair-breadth
escapes, gently at times letting us down amidst smiling homes and
pleasant scenes, and again, with more rapid flight, hurrying us on
breathless to the goal.
Some of his descriptive pieces have been admired, but to us they seem
artificial and mechanical. They are the pictures of a view-hunter.
They lack life, warmth, and coloring――the individuality that comes of
an informing soul. He remains external to nature, and with careful
survey and deliberate purpose sketches this and that trait, till he
has his landscape with sloping hills and meadows green, with flower
and shrub and tree and everything that one could wish, except that
indefinable something which would make the scene stand out from all
the earth, familiar as the countenance of a friend or as a spot known
from childhood. He has too much the air of a man who says: Come, let
us make a description. In fact, he has taken the trouble to tell us
that he has considered the story of Mogg Megone only as a framework
for sketches of the scenery of New England and of its early
inhabitants. His own confession proves his art mechanical. He gets a
frame, stretches the canvas, and deliberately proceeds to copy. The
true poet fuses man and nature into a union so intimate that both seem
part of each. He dreams not of framework and sketches, but of the
unity and harmony of life. Where the common eye sees but parts, his
sees the living whole. He does not copy, but transforms and
re-creates. Before his enraptured gaze the immeasurable heavens break
open to their highest, and every height comes out and jutting peak.
From him not the humblest flower or blade of grass is hidden; and
whatever he beholds becomes the minister of his thought, the slave of
his will; passing through his mind receives its coloring, and rises
from his page as though some eternal law of harmony had fitted it to
this and no other purpose.
Whittier is even feebler in his attempts to portray character than in
his description of scenery. To Ruth Bonython he gives “the sunny eye
and sunset hair.” “Sunny eye” is poor enough; but who will tell us
what “sunset hair” is like? Is it purple or gold or yellow or red? She
is “tall and erect,” has a “dark-brown cheek,” “a pure white brow,” “a
neck and bosom as white as ever the foam-wreaths that rise on the
leaping river”;
“And her eye has a glance more sternly wild
Than even that of a forest child.”
And she talks in the following style:
“A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,
_I passed a fearful time_.”
The artifice by which Ruth quiets the suspicion of Mogg Megone, roused
by the sight of her tearful eye and heaving bosom, is as remarkable
for shrewdness as for poetic beauty:
“Is the sachem angry――angry with Ruth
Because she cries with an ache in her tooth
Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry
And look about with a woman’s eye?”
The same weak and unskilful hand is visible in the characters of Mogg
Megone, John Bonython, and Father Rasle, the Jesuit missionary. The
descriptive portions of Mogg Megone are disfigured by mere rhetoric
and what critics call “nonsense-verses.” As Mogg Megone and John
Bonython are stealing through the wood, they hear a sound:
“Hark! is that the angry howl
Of the wolf the hills among,
Or the hooting of the owl
On his leafy cradle swung?”
The only reason for hesitating between the wolfs howl and the hooting
of the owl was the poet’s want of a rhyme. But it is needless to load
our page with these nonsense-verses, since Hudibras claims them to be
a poet’s privilege:
“But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other’s sake;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think that’s sufficient at one time.”
Whittier’s Quaker faith inspired him early in life with an abhorrence
of slavery, and drew him to the abolitionists, by whom, in 1836, he
was appointed secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. It was
about this time that he began to publish his anti-slavery rhymes,
which he afterwards collected in a volume entitled, _Voices of
Freedom_. These verses are not remarkable for thought or expression.
They have the dull, monotonous ring of all Whittier’s rhymes, and are
hardly more poetic than a political harangue. They are partisan in
tone and manner; breathe rather hatred of the “haughty Southron” than
love of the negro; and are without polish or elegance. Read to
political meetings during the excitement of the anti-slavery
agitation, they were probably as effective as ordinary stump-speeches.
Worthless as they are as poetry, they brought Whittier to public
notice. He became the laureate of the abolitionist party, and with its
growth grew his fame. The circumstances which made _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_
the most popular novel of the day made him a popular poet. His verses
found readers who cared but little for inspired thought or expression,
but who were delighted with political rhymes that painted the Southern
slave-owner as the most heartless and brutal of men, who “in the vile
South Sodom” feasted day by day upon the sight of human suffering
inflicted by his own hand. Pieces like that which begins with the
words,
“A Christian! Going, gone!
Who bids for God’s own image?”
were at least good campaign documents in the times of anti-slavery
agitation.
“A Christian up for sale;
Wet with her blood your whips, o’ertask her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame:
Her patience shall not fail.”
This is very commonplace and vulgar, we grant, but it has the merit of
not being above the intellectual level of an ordinary political
meeting.
And then, in the metre of Scott’s “Bride of Netherby,” we have the
“Hunters of Men”:
“Have ye heard of our hunting o’er mountain and glen,
Through canebrake and forest, the hunting of men?
Hark! the cheer and the halloo, the crack of the whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip.
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match――
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.”
All we maintain is that this is not poetry, fair sample though it be
of Whittier’s _Voices of Freedom_.
Slavery undoubtedly is hateful, and to denounce it cannot but be
right. A preacher, however, need not be a poet, even though he should
declaim in rhymes; nor is hate of the slave-owner love of the slave,
much less love of liberty. We fail to catch in these _Voices_ the
swelling sound of freedom. They are rather the echoes of the fierce
words of bitter partisan strife. The lips of him who uttered them had
not been touched by the burning coal snatched from the altar of
liberty, however his heart may have rankled at the thought of Southern
cruelty.
Whittier’s rhymes of the war are the natural sequel of his
anti-slavery verses. The laureate of abolitionism could but sing,
Quaker though he was, the bloody, fratricidal strife which he had
helped to kindle. At first, indeed, he seemed to hesitate and to doubt
whether it was well to light
“The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain.”
Safe on freedom’s vantage-ground, he inclined rather to be the sad and
helpless spectator of a suicide.
“Why take we up the accursed thing again?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion’s rag
With its vile reptile-blazon.”
But soon he came to recognize that God may speak “in battle’s stormy
voice, and his praise be in the wrath of man.”
Whittier’s war rhymes are not so numerous as his _Voices of Freedom_,
nor are they in any way remarkable as poetical compositions. The lines
on Barbara Frietchie derive their interest from the incident narrated,
and not from any beauty of thought or language with which it has been
clothed. They are popular because old Barbara Frietchie waving the
flag of the Union above Stonewall Jackson’s army as it passed, with
measured tread, through the streets of Frederick, is a striking and
dramatic figure. There could be no more convincing proof of the
barrenness of Whittier’s imagination than the poor use which he has
made of so poetical an episode.
“In her attic window the staff she set
To show that one heart was loyal yet.”
And yet of all his poems this is probably the best known and the most
popular.
The _Voices of Freedom_ and the _Songs in War Time_ both belong to the
class of occasional poetry which more than any other kind is apt to
confer a short-lived fame upon authors whose chief merit consists in
being fortunate. He who sings the conqueror’s praise will never lack
admirers.
We are sorry to perceive, in so amiable a man as Whittier is generally
supposed to be, the many evidences which this edition of his complete
poetical works affords of intense and bitter anti-Catholic prejudice.
If he were content with manifesting, even with damnable iteration, his
Quaker horror of creeds, we could excuse the simple mind that is
capable of holding that men may believe without giving to their faith
form and sensible expression; though the mental habit from which alone
such a theory could proceed is the very opposite of the poetical. The
Catholic Church, which is the groundwork and firm support of all
Christian dogmas, cannot be understood by those who fail to perceive
that without doctrinal religion the whole moral order would be
meaningless. But Whittier’s prejudice carries him far beyond mere
protest against Catholic teaching. He cannot approach any subject or
person connected with the church without being thrown into mental
convulsions. Let us take, for example, the character of Father Rasle,
the martyr, in “Mogg Megone,” one of his earliest and longest poems.
This noble and heroic missionary is represented as a heartless and
senseless zealot, who “by cross and vow” had pledged Mogg Megone
“To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And round his own, the church’s, foe
To light the avenging fire.”
When Ruth Bonython, half mad with fear and grief, comes to confess to
Father Rasle that, seeing the scalp of her lover hanging to Mogg
Megone’s belt, she had killed him in his drunken sleep, the Jesuit
starts back――
“His long, thin frame as ague shakes,
And loathing hate is in his eye”――
not from horror of the crime, but because in the death of Megone he
recognizes the extinction of his long-cherished hopes of revenge.
“Ah! weary priest!…
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart.…
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along――
Fading hopes for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer;
Schemes which Heaven may never bless;
Tears which darken to despair.”
His heart is as stone to the pitiful appeal of the contrite and
broken-hearted girl. “Off!” he exclaims――
“‘Off, woman of sin! Nay, touch not me
With those fingers of blood; begone!’
With a gesture of horror he spurns the form
That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm.”
And in the death-scene of the martyr, as painted by Whittier, the
coward and the villain, with forces equally matched, strive for the
mastery.
The ode “To Pius IX.” will furnish us with another example of
religious hate driving its victim to the very verge of raving madness.
“Hider at Gaeta,” he exclaims――
“Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance!
Coward and cruel, come!
“Creep now from Naple’s bloody skirt;
Thy mummer’s part was acted well,
While Rome, with steel and fire begirt,
Before thy crusade fell.
* * * * *
“But hateful as that tyrant old,
The mocking witness of his crime,
In thee shall loathing eyes behold
The Nero of our time!
“Stand where Rome’s blood was freest shed,
Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call
Its curses on the patriot dead,
Its blessings on the Gaul;
“Or sit upon thy throne of lies,
A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared,
Whom even its worshippers despise――
Unhonored, unrevered!”
It is some consolation to know that Whittier himself, in reading over
these ravings, has been forced to acknowledge their unworthiness by a
lame attempt at apology. “He is no enemy of Catholics,” he informs us
in a note to this effusion; “but the severity of his language finds
its ample apology in the reluctant confession of one of the most
eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and devoted Father Ventura.” What
is this but making calumny an ally of outrage?
In the “Dream of Pio Nono” he introduces St. Peter, who upbraids the
venerable Pontiff in the following style:
“Hearest thou the angels sing
Above this open hell? _Thou_ God’s high-priest!
Thou the vicegerent of the Prince of Peace!
Thou the successor of his chosen ones!
I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee,
In the dear Master’s name, and for the love
Of his true church, proclaim thee Antichrist.”
In a poem on “Italy” Whittier hears the groans of nations across the
sea.
“Their blood and bones
Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones
And sucked by priestly cannibals.”
“Rejoice, O Garibaldi!” he exclaims,
“Though thy sword
Failed at Rome’s gates, and blood seemed vainly poured
Where in Christ’s name the crownèd infidel
Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell.
* * * * *
God’s providence is not blind, but, full of eyes,
It searches all the refuges of lies;
And in his time and way the accursed things
Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age
Shall perish.”
We crave the reader’s indulgence for this disfigurement of our page,
and wish with all our heart it had been possible to fill it with more
worthy matter.
Longfellow, breathing the same air as Whittier, the disciple of a
faith commonly supposed to be less mild and sweetly loving than a
Quaker’s, has found the tenderest thoughts, the noblest images, and
the highest forms of character in the church which our poet cannot
even think of without raving.
But possibly we should be wrong to complain that the mystic beauty
which has in all ages appealed with irresistible power of fascination
to the highest and most richly-gifted natures should fail to impress
one all of whose thoughts are cast in a straitened and unyielding
mould. Whittier has not the far-glancing eye of the poet to which all
beauty appeals like the light itself. The partisan habit of an
inveterate abolitionist has stiffened and hardened a disposition which
was never plastic. It was so long his official duty to write
anti-slavery campaign verses that, in treating subjects which should
inspire higher thoughts, he is still held captive to the lash of the
slave-driver, hears the clanking of chains and the groans of the
fettered; and these sights and sounds drive him into mere rant and
rhetoric.
We willingly bear testimony to the moral tone and purity which pervade
Whittier’s verse. There is nothing to offend the most delicate ear;
nothing to bring a blush to a virgin’s cheek. He lacks the power to
portray passion, and was not tempted into doubtful paths. He delights
in pictures of home, with its innocent joys and quiet happiness; sings
of friendship and the endearing ties that bind the parent to the
child; or, if he attunes his harp to love, he does it in numbers so
sadly sweet that we only remember that the fickle god has wreathed his
bowers with cypress boughs and made his best interpreter a sigh.
What could be more harmless than the little scene between Maud Muller
and the judge――though Heaven only knows what the judge, and above all
the American judge, can have done that he should be condemned to play
the _rôle_ of a lover. Possibly it may have been the judicious nature
of the love that induced the poet to think such a _deus ex machinâ_
not out of place. At all events, nothing could be more inoffensive.
“She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up
And filled for him her small tin cup.
‘Thanks!’ said the judge; ‘a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.’”
And how refreshing it is to find a judge making love by talking
“Of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and humming bees”!
We are less edified, however, when, in after-years, we find him a
married man, sipping the golden wine but longing for the wayside well
and the barefoot maiden:
“And the proud man sighed, with secret pain:
‘Ah! that I were free again!’”
In reading Whittier we seldom come upon a thought so perfectly
expressed that it can never after occur to us except in the words in
which he has clothed it. It is a poet’s privilege thus to marry
thoughts to words in a union so divine that no man may put them
asunder; and where this high power is wanting the _mens divinior_ is
not found. For our own part, we hardly recall a line of Whittier that
we should care to remember. Nothing that he has written has been more
frequently quoted than the couplet:
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen.
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
To our thinking, this is meaningless. “It might have been” is neither
sad nor joyful, except as it is made so by that with which it is
associated. He who is drowned may thus have escaped hanging――“It might
have been.” The judge might have been Maud’s husband; but she might
have thought of sadder things than that she was not his wife.
“Snow-Bound,” a winter idyl, is, in the opinion of several critics,
Whittier’s best performance. A more hackneyed theme he would probably
have found it difficult to choose; nor has he the magic charm that
makes the old seem as new. It is the unmistakable snow-storm with
which our school-readers made us familiar in childhood. The sun rises
“cheerless” over “hills of gray”; sinks from sight before it sets;
“the ocean roars on his wintry shore”; night comes on, made hoary
“with the whirl-dance of the blinding storm,” and ere bedtime
“The white drift piled the window-frame”;
and then, of course, we have the horse and cow and cock, each in turn
contemplating the beautiful snow. Even the silly ram
“Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.”
The boys, with mittened hands, and caps drawn down over ears, sally
forth to cut a pathway at their sire’s command. And when the second
night is ushered in, we are quite prepared for the blazing fire of
oaken logs, whose roaring draught makes the great throat of the
chimney laugh; while on the clean hearth the apples sputter, the mug
of cider simmers, the house-dog sleeps, and the cat meditates. The
group of faces gathered round are plain and honest, just such as good,
simple country folk are wont to wear, but feebly drawn. In the fitful
firelight their features are dim. The father talks of rides on
Memphremagog’s wooded side; of trapper’s hut and Indian camp. The
mother turns her wheel or knits her stocking, and tells how the Indian
came down at midnight on Cocheco town. The uncle, “innocent of books,”
unravels the mysteries of moons and tides. The maiden aunt, very sweet
and very unselfish, recalls her memories of
“The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails.”
It would be unkind to leave the village schoolmaster out in the biting
air, and he is therefore brought in to make us wonder how one small
head could contain all he knew.
In the very thought of home there is an exhaustless well-spring of
poetic feeling. The word itself is all alive with the spirit of sweet
poesy which gives charm to the humblest verse; and it would be strange
indeed if, in an idyl like “Snow-Bound,” there should not be found
passages of real beauty, touches of nature that make the whole world
kin. The subject is one that readily lends itself to the lowly mood
and unpretending style. Fine thoughts and ambitious words would but
distract us. Each one is thinking of his own dear home, and he but
asks the poet not to break the spell that has made him a child again;
not to darken the dewy dawn of memory, that throws the light of heaven
around a world that seemed as dead, but now lives.
“O Time and Change!――with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah! brother, only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now――
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn;
We sit beneath their orchard trees;
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er.
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet love will dream, and faith will trust
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas! for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees;
Who hopeless lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play;
Who hath not learned in hours of faith
The truth to flesh and sense unknown――
That Life is ever Lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!”
This is true poetry, sad and sweet as a mother’s voice when she lulls
her sick babe to rest, knowing that, if he sleep, he shall live.
In Whittier’s verse we often catch the unmistakable accent of genuine
feeling, and his best lyrics are so artless and simple that they
almost disarm criticism. In many ways his influence has doubtless been
good; and the critic, whose eye is naturally drawn to what is less
worthy, finds it easy to carp at faults which he has not the ability
to commit.
[134] _The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf
Whittier._ Boston: Osgood & Co. 1876.
MONSIEUR GOMBARD’S MISTAKE.
M. Gombard was a short, stout, pompous man, with a flat nose, and
sharp gray eyes that did their very best to look fierce through a pair
of tortoise-shell spectacles. They succeeded in this attempt with very
young culprits and with the female prisoners who appeared before M.
Gombard in his official capacity of mayor of the town of Loisel; they
succeeded in a lesser degree with functionaries, such as clerks and
policemen, who were to a certain extent under the official eye of the
mayor; but with the general, independent public the attempt at
ferocity was a failure. M. Gombard passed for being a good man, a man
with high principles, an unflinching sense of duty, and a genuine
respect for law, but also a man whose heart was as dry as a last
year’s nut. He was fifty years of age, and it had never been said,
even as a joke, that M. Gombard had had a “sentiment”; it had never
entered into the imagination of anybody who knew him to suggest that
he might have a sentiment, or even that he might marry some day. He
was looked upon by his fellow-townsmen as a trusty, intelligent
machine――a machine that never got out of order, that was always ready
when wanted, that would be seriously missed if it were removed. He
settled their differences and saved them many a costly lawsuit; for M.
Gombard had studied the law, and understood its practical application
better than any lawyer in Loisel; he made marriages, and drew out
wills, and dispensed advice to young and old with the wisdom of
Solomon and the stoical impartiality of Brutus. Everybody trusted him;
they knew that if their case was a good case, he would decide it in
their favor; if it was a bad case, he would give it against them: no
man could buy him, no man could frighten him. Antoine Grimoire, the
biggest bully in all the country round――even Antoine Grimoire shook in
his shoes when one day a suit in which he was defendant was sent up
before M. Gombard. M. Gombard gave judgment against him; and this was
more than the united magistrates in Loisel would have dared do, for
Antoine would have “licked them” within an inch of their lives, if
they had tried it; but he never said _boo_ when M. Gombard pronounced
the plaintiff an injured man, and ordered the defendant to pay him one
hundred and fifty-three francs, ten sous, and three centimes damages.
Everybody in the place held their breath when this sentence went
forth. They fully expected Antoine to fly at the audacious judge, and
break every bone in his body on the spot; but Antoine coolly nodded,
and said civilly, “_C’est bon, Monsieur le Maire_,” and walked off.
People made sure he was bent on some terrible vengeance, and that he
would never pay a sou of the damages; but he deceived them by paying.
This incident added fresh lustre to the prestige of M. Gombard, whose
word henceforth was counted as good as, and better than, law, since
even Antoine Grimoire gave in to it, which was more than he had ever
been known to do to the law.
M. Gombard had some pressing business on hand just now; for he had
left Loisel before daybreak in a post-chaise, and never once pulled
up, except when the wheels came off and went spinning right and left
into the ditch on either side, and sent him bumping on over the snow
in the disabled vehicle, till at last the horses stopped and M.
Gombard got out, jumped on to the back of the leader, and rode on into
Cabicol. There he is now, his wig awry and pulled very low over his
forehead, but otherwise looking none the worse for his adventurous
ride, as he walks up and down the best room in the _Jacques Bonhomme_,
the principal inn of Cabicol.
“You said I could have a post-chaise?” said M. Gombard to the waiter,
who fussed about, on hospitable cares intent.
“I did, monsieur.”
“And it is in good condition, you say?”
“Excellent, monsieur. It would take you from Cabicol to Paris without
starting a nail.”
“Good,” observed M. Gombard, sitting down and casting a glance that
was unmistakably ferocious on the savory omelet. “I can count on a
stout pair of horses?” he continued, helping himself with the haste of
a ravenous man.
“Horses?” repeated the waiter blandly. “Monsieur said nothing about
horses.”
M. Gombard dropped his knife and fork with a clatter, and looked round
at the man.
“What use can the chaise be to me without horses?” he said. “Does it
go by steam, or do you expect me to carry it on my head?”
“Assuredly not, monsieur; that would be of the last impossibility,”
replied the waiter demurely.
“The aborigines of Cabicol are idiots, apparently,” observed M.
Gombard, still looking straight at the man, but with a broad,
speculative stare, as if he had been a curious stone or an unknown
variety of dog.
“Yes, monsieur,” said the waiter, with ready assent. If a traveller
had declared the aborigines of Cabicol to be buffaloes, he would have
assented just as readily; he did not care a dry pea for the
aborigines, whoever they might be; he did not know them even by sight,
so why should he stand up for them? Besides, every traveller
represented a tip, and he was not a man to quarrel with his bread and
butter.
“What’s to be done?” said M. Gombard. “I must have horses; where am I
to get them?”
“I doubt that there is a horse in the town to-day which can be placed
at monsieur’s disposal. This is the grand market day at Luxort, and
everybody is gone there, and to-morrow the beasts will be too tired to
start for a fresh journey; but on Friday I dare say monsieur could
find a pair, if he does not mind waiting till then.”
“There is nothing at the present moment I should mind much more,
nothing that could be more disagreeable to me,” said M. Gombard.
“We would do our best to make monsieur’s delay agreeable,” said the
waiter; “the beds of the _Jacques Bonhomme_ are celebrated; the food
is excellent and the cooking of the best; the landlord cuts himself
into little pieces for his guests.”
“Good heavens!” ejaculated M. Gombard.
“It is a figure of speech, monsieur, a figure of rhetoric,” explained
the waiter, who began to heap up blocks of wood on the hearth, as if
he were preparing a funeral pyre for his unwilling guest.
“Tell the landlord I want to speak to him,” said M. Gombard.
Before he had finished his meal the landlord knocked at the door. M.
Gombard said “Come in,” and the landlord entered. He was a solemn,
melancholy-looking man, who spoke in a sepulchral voice, and seemed
continually struggling to withhold his tears. He loved his inn, but
the weight of responsibility it laid upon him was more than he could
bear with a smiling countenance. Every traveller who slept beneath his
roof was, for the time being, an object of the tenderest interest to
him; it was no exaggeration to say, with the rhetorical waiter, that
he cut himself into little pieces for each one of them. He made out
imaginary histories of them, which he related afterwards for the
entertainment of their successors. He was guided as to the facts of
each subject by the peculiar make and fashion of their physiognomies;
but he drew his inspiration chiefly from their noses: if the traveller
wore his beard long and his nose turned up, he was set down as a
philosopher travelling in the pursuit of knowledge; if he wore his
beard cropped and his nose hooked, he was a banker whose financial
genius and fabulous wealth were a source of terror to the
money-markets of Europe; if he carried his nose flat against his face
and wore a wig and spectacles, he was a desperate criminal with a huge
price on his head, and the police scouring the country in pursuit of
him; but he was safe beneath the roof of the _Jacques Bonhomme_, for
his host would have sworn with the patriot bard: “I know not, I care
not, if guilt’s in that heart; I but know that I’ll hide thee,
whatever thou art!” All the pearls of Golconda, all the gold of
California, would not have bribed him into delivering up a man who
enjoyed his hospitality. Many and thrilling were the tales he had to
tell of these sinister guests, their hair-breadth escapes, and the
silent but, to him, distinctly manifest rage of their baffled
pursuers. This life of secret care and harrowing emotions had done its
work on the landlord; you saw at a glance that his was a heavily-laden
spirit, and that pale “melancholy had marked him for her own.” He
bowed low, and in a voice of deep feeling inquired how he could serve
M. Gombard.
“By getting me a pair of good post-horses,” replied his guest. “It is
of the utmost importance that I reach X―――― before five o’clock
to-morrow afternoon, and your people say I have no chance of finding
horses until Friday.”
The landlord stifled a sigh and replied: “That is only too true,
monsieur.”
M. Gombard pushed away his plate, rose, walked up and down the room,
and then stood at the window and looked out. It was a bleak look out;
everything was covered with snow. Snow lay deep on the ground, on the
trees, on the lamp-post, on the chimneys and the house-tops; and the
sky looked as if it were still full of snow.
Just opposite there was a strange, grand old house that arrested M.
Gombard’s attention; it was a gabled edifice with turrets at either
end, and high pointed, mullioned windows filled with diamond-paned
lattices. The roof slanted rapidly from the chimneys to the windows,
and looked as if the north wind that had howled over it for centuries
had blown it a little to one side and battered it a good deal; for you
could see by the undulations of the snow that it was full of dints and
ruts. Close under the projecting eaves in the centre of the house
there was a stone shield, on which a family coat of arms was engraved;
but the ivy, which grew thick over the wall, draped the escutcheon,
and, with the snow, made it impossible to read the story it set forth.
There was a balcony right under it, from the floor of which an old man
was now engaged sweeping the snow; on either side were set huge stone
vases, in which some hardy plants grew, defying all weathers,
apparently. When the old man had cleared away the snow, he brought out
some pots of wintry-looking flowers, and placed them on the ledge of
the balcony. M. Gombard had been watching the performance, and taking
in the scene with his eyes while his thoughts were busy about these
post-horses that were not to be had in the town of Cabicol. He turned
round suddenly, and said in his abrupt, magisterial way: “Curious old
house. Whose is it?”
“It belongs now to Mlle. Aimée Bobert,” replied the landlord; and the
question seemed to affect him painfully.
“Whom did it belong to formerly?” inquired M. Gombard.
“To the brave and illustrious family of De Valbranchart. The
Revolution ruined them, and the mansion was bought by a retired
manufacturer, the grandfather of Mlle. Aimée, who is now the sole
heiress of all his wealth.”
“Strange vicissitudes in the game of life!” muttered M. Gombard; he
turned again to survey the old house, that looked as if it had been
transplanted from some forest or lovely fell-side to this commonplace
little town. As he looked, the window on the balcony opened, and the
slight figure of a woman appeared, holding a flower-pot in her hand.
He could not see her face, which was concealed by a shawl thrown
lightly over her head; but her movements had the grace and suppleness
of youth. M. Gombard mechanically adjusted his spectacles, the better
to inspect this new object in the picture; the same moment a
gentleman, hurrying down the street, came up, and lifted his hat in a
stately salutation as he passed before the balcony. M. Gombard could
not see whether the greeting was returned, or how; for when he glanced
again towards the latticed window, it had closed on the retreating
figure of the lady. The old church clock was chiming the hour of noon.
“The ancient house has its modern romance, I perceive,” observed M.
Gombard superciliously; and as if this discovery must strip it at once
of all interest in the eyes of a sensible man, he turned his back upon
the old house, and proceeded to catechise the landlord concerning
post-horses. There was clearly no chance of his procuring any that
day, and a very doubtful chance of his procuring any the next. There
was no help for it: he must spend at least one night at the _Jacques
Bonhomme_. He was not a man to waste his energies in useless
lamentation or invective. One exclamation of impatience escaped him,
but he stifled it half way, snapped his fingers, and muttered in
almost a cheerful tone, “_Tantpis!_” The landlord stood regarding him
with a gaze of compassion mingled with a sort of cowed admiration.
There was a strange fascination about these criminals, murderers or
forgers, flying for dear life; the concentrated energy, the reckless
daring, the heroic self-control, the calm self-possession they evinced
in the face of danger and impending death, were wonderful. If these
grand faculties had been ruled by principle, and devoted to lawful
pursuits and worthy aims, what might they not have accomplished! The
landlord saw the stigma of crime distinctly branded upon the
countenance of this man, though the low, bad brow was almost entirely
concealed at one side by the wig; and yet he could not but admire,
nay, to a certain extent, sympathize, with him. M. Gombard noticed his
singular air of dejection, his immovable attitude――standing there as
if he were rooted to the spot when there was no longer any ostensible
reason for his remaining in the room. He bent a glance of inquiry upon
him, which said as plainly as words: “You have evidently something to
say; so say it.”
“Monsieur,” said the landlord in a thick undertone, “I have been
trusted with many secrets, and I have never been known to betray one.
I ask you for no confidence; but, if you can trust me so far, answer
me one question: Is it a matter of life and death that you go――that
you reach your destination by a given time?”
M. Gombard hesitated for a moment, perplexed by the tone and manner of
his host; then he replied, deliberately, as if weighing the value of
each word: “I will not say ‘life and death,’ but as urgent as if it
were life and death.”
“Ha! That is enough. I understand,” said the landlord. His voice was
husky; he shook from head to foot. “Now tell me this: will you――will
the situation be saved, if you can leave this to-morrow?”
“To-morrow?… Let me see,” said M. Gombard; and thrusting both hands
into his pockets, he bent his head upon his breast with the air of a
man making a calculation. After a prolonged silence he looked up, and
continued reflectively: “If I can leave this to-morrow at four
o’clock, with a good pair of horses, I shall be at X―――― by ten; and
starting afresh at, say, five next morning, I shall be――”
“Saved!” broke in the landlord.
“I shall be saved, as you say,” repeated M. Gombard.
“Monsieur, if the thing is possible it shall be done!” protested the
landlord. This coolness, this superhuman calm, at such a crisis, were
magnificent; this felon, whoever he was, was a glorious man.
“Very peculiar person our host seems,” was the hero’s reflection, when
the door closed behind that excited and highly sensitive individual.
M. Gombard then drew a chair towards the fire, pulled a newspaper from
his pocket, and poked his feet as far out on the hearth as he could
without putting them right into the blaze.
When he had squeezed the newspaper dry, he threw it aside, and
bethought to himself that he might as well go for a walk, and
reconnoitre this extremely unprogressive town, where a traveller might
wait two days and two nights for a pair of post-horses. He pulled on
his big furred coat and sallied forth. The snow was deep, but the
night’s sharp frost had hardened it, so that it was dry and crisp to
walk on. There was little in the aspect of Cabicol that promised
entertainment; it was called a town, but it was more like a village
with a disproportionately fine church, and some large houses that
looked out of place in the midst of the shabby ones all round though
the largest was insignificant beside the imposing old pile opposite
the inn. They looked quaint and picturesque enough, however, in their
snow dress, glistening in the beams of the pale winter sun that shone
out feebly from the milky-looking sky. The church was the first place
to which M. Gombard bent his steps, not with any pious intentions, but
because it was the only place that seemed to be open to a visitor, and
was, moreover, a stately, Gothic edifice that would have done honor to
a thriving, well-populated town. The front door was closed. M. Gombard
was turning away with some disappointment, when an old woman who was
frying chestnuts in the angle of the projecting buttress, with an
umbrella tied to the back of her chair as a protest rather than a
protection against the north wind that was blowing over the deserted
market-place, called out to him that the side door was open, and
pointed to the other side of the church. When the visitor entered it,
he was struck by the solemnity and vastness of the place. It was quite
empty. At least he thought so; for his eye, piercing the sombre
perspective, saw no living person there. In the south aisle the rich
stained glass threw delicate shadows of purple and gold and crimson on
the pavement, on the stern mediæval statues, on the slim, groined
pillars; but the other aisle was so dark that it was like night until
your eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. M. Gombard walked slowly
through the darkened aisle, peering up at the massive carving of the
capitals, and into the quaint devices of the basements, and wondering
what could have brought this majestic, cathedral-like church into so
incongruous a frame as Cabicol. Suddenly he descried coming towards
him from the farthest end of the aisle, like a dimly visible form
emerging from total darkness, the figure of a man. He supposed at
first it was a priest, and he thought he would ask him for some
information about the church; but, as the figure drew near, he saw he
had been mistaken, and presently he recognized the tall, erect bearing
and hurried step of the lover of Mlle. Bobert. There was no reason why
M. Gombard should not have accosted him just as readily as if he had
been the priest he had taken him for, but something checked him at the
first moment; and when the young man had passed, he was loath to call
him back. He had not the kind of face M. Gombard expected; there was
none of the levity or mawkishness that almost invariably characterized
the countenances of men who were in love; neither was there any trace
of coxcombry or conceit in his dress and general appearance; he had a
fine head, well shaped, and with a breadth of forehead that announced
brains; his face was thoughtful and intelligent. M. Gombard was sorry
for the poor fellow, who was evidently not otherwise a fool. The sound
of the lover’s footfall died away, and the great door closed behind
him with a boom like low thunder. M. Gombard continued his walk round
the church undisturbed. He came to the Lady Chapel behind the high
altar, and stood at the entrance, filled with a new admiration and
surprise. The chapel was as dimly lighted as the rest of the building;
but from a deep, mullioned window there came a flood of amber light
that fell full upon a kneeling figure, illuminating it with an
effulgence to which the word heavenly might fitly be applied. M.
Gombard’s first thought was that this new wonder was part of the
whole; that it was not a real, living female form he beheld, but some
beautiful creation of painter and sculptor, placed here to symbolize
faith and worship in their loveliest aspect. But this was merely the
first unreasoning impression of delight and wonder. He had not gazed
more than a second on the kneeling figure when he saw that it was
neither a statue nor an apparition, but a living, breathing woman. The
worshipper was absorbed in her devotions, and seemed unconscious of
the proximity of any spectator; so M. Gombard was free to contemplate
her at his ease. It was the first time in his life that he ever stood
deliberately to contemplate a woman, simply as a beautiful object; but
there was something in this one totally different from all the women,
beautiful or otherwise, that he had ever seen. It may have been the
circumstances, the place and hour, the obscurity of all around, except
for that yellow shaft of light that shot straight down upon the lovely
devotee, investing her with a sort of celestial glory; but whatever it
was, the spectacle stirred the fibres of his heart as they had never
been stirred before. Who was this lovely creature, and why was she
here in the deserted church, alone and at an hour when there was
neither chant nor ceremony to call her thither? M. Gombard’s habit of
mind and his semi-legal and magisterial functions led him to suspect
and discover plots and sinister motives in most human actions that
were at all out of the usual course; but it never for an instant
occurred to seek any such here. This fair girl――she looked in the full
bloom of youth――could only be engaged on some errand of duty, of
mercy, or of love. Love! Strange to say, the word, as it rose to his
lips, did not call up the scornful, or even the pitying, smile which
at best never failed to accompany the thought of this greatest of
human follies in the mayor’s mind. He repeated mentally, “Love,” as he
looked at her, and something very like a sigh rose and was not
peremptorily stifled in his breast. While he stood there gazing, a
deeper gloom fell upon the place, the yellow shaft was suddenly
withdrawn, the golden light went out, and the vision melted into brown
shadow. M. Gombard started; high up, on all sides, there was a noise
like pebbles rattling against the windows. The lady started too, and,
crossing herself, as at a signal that cut short her devotions, rose
and hurried from the chapel. She took no notice of the man standing
under the archway, but passed on, with a quick, light step, down the
north aisle. M. Gombard turned and walked after her. He had no idea of
pursuing her; he merely yielded to an impulse that anticipated thought
and will.
On emerging into the daylight of the porch he saw that the rain was
falling heavily, mixed with hail-stones as big as peas. The lady
surveyed the scene without in blank dismay, while M. Gombard
stealthily surveyed her. She struck him as more wonderful, more
vision-like, now even than when she had burst upon him with her golden
halo amidst the darkness; her soft brown eyes full of light, her
silken brown curls, her scarlet lips parted in inarticulate despair,
the small head thrown slightly back, and raised in scared
interrogation to the dull gray tank above――M. Gombard saw all these
charms distinctly now, and his dry, legal soul was strangely moved.
Should he speak to her? What could he say? Offer her his umbrella,
perhaps? That was a safe offer to make, and a legitimate opportunity;
he blessed his stars that he had brought his umbrella.
“Madame――mademoiselle――pardon me――I shall be very happy――that is, I
should esteem myself fortunate if I could――be of any service to you in
this emergency――”
“Thank you; I am much obliged to you, monsieur,” replied the young
lady; she saw he meant to be polite, but she did not see what help he
intended.
“If you would allow me to call a cab for you?” continued M. Gombard
timidly.
“Oh! thank you.” She broke into a little, childlike laugh that was
perfectly delicious. “We have no cabs at Cabicol!”
The young merriment was so contagious that M. Gombard laughed too.
“Of course not! How stupid of me to have thought there could be! But
how are you to get home in this rain, mademoiselle? Will you accept my
umbrella? It is large; it will protect you in some degree.”
“Oh! you are too good, monsieur,” replied his companion, turning the
brown eyes, darting with light, full upon him; “but I think we had
better have a little patience and wait until the rain stops. It can’t
last long like this; and if I ventured out in such a deluge, I think I
should be drowned.”
There was nothing very original, or poetical, or preternaturally wise
in this remark, but coming from those poppy lips, in that young,
silvery voice, it sounded like the inspiration of genius to M.
Gombard. He replied that she was right, that he was an idiot; in fact,
had not his age and his business-like, dry, matter-of-fact appearance
offered a guarantee for his sobriety and an excuse for his attempt at
facetiousness, M. Gombard’s jubilant manner and ecstatic air would
have led the young lady to fear he was slightly deranged or slightly
inebriated. But ugly, elderly gentlemen who wear wigs are a kind of
privileged persons to young ladies; they may say anything, almost,
under cover of these potent credentials.
“This is a fine old church,” observed M. Gombard presently.
“Yes; we are proud of it at Cabicol. Strangers always admire it,”
replied his companion.
“They are right; it is one of the best specimens of the Gothic of the
Renaissance I remember to have seen,” said M. Gombard; “this portico
reminds one of the cathedral of B――――. Have you ever seen it,
mademoiselle?”
“No; I have never travelled farther from Cabicol than Luxort.”
“Indeed! How I envy you!” exclaimed the mayor heartily. He was a new
man; he was fired with enthusiasm for beauty of every description, in
art, in nature, everywhere.
“It is you, rather, who are to be envied for having seen far places
and beautiful things!” returned the young girl naïvely. “I wish I
could see them too.”
“And why should you not?” demanded M. Gombard; he would have given
half his fortune to have been able to say there and then: “Come, and I
will show you these strange places, and beautiful things!”
“I am alone,” replied his companion in a low tone; the merry
brightness faded from her face, the sweet eyes filled with tears.
M. Gombard could have fallen at her feet, and cried, “Forgive me! I
did not mean to give you pain.” But he did not do so; he did better:
he bowed gravely and murmured, almost under his breath: “_Pauvre
enfant!_” He had never pitied any human being as he pitied this
beautiful orphan; but then he was a man, as we know, who passed for
having no heart. His young companion looked up at him through her
tears, and her eyes said, “_Merci!_” It was like the glance of a dumb
animal, so large, so pathetic, so trustful. The rain still fell in
torrents, lashing the ground like whip-cords; but the hailstones had
ceased. The two persons under the portico stood in solemn silence,
watching the steady downpour. Presently, as when, by a sudden jerk of
the string, the force of a shower-bath is slackened, it grew lighter;
the sun made a slit in the tank, and gleamed down in a silver line
through the lessening drops. The young girl went to the edge of the
steps, and looked up, reconnoitring the sky.
“It is raining heavily still,” said M. Gombard; “but if you are in a
hurry, and must go, pray take my umbrella!”
“But then you will get wet,” she replied, laughing with the childlike
freedom that had marked her manner at first.
“That is of small consequence! It will do me good,” protested M.
Gombard. “I entreat you, mademoiselle, accept my umbrella!”
It was hard to say “no,” and it was selfish to say “yes.” She
hesitated. M. Gombard opened the umbrella, capacious as a young tent,
and held it towards her. The young lady advanced and took it; but the
thick handle and the weight of the outspread canopy were too much for
her tiny hand and little round wrist. It swayed to and fro as she
grasped it. M. Gombard caught hold of it again.
“Let me hold it for you,” he said. “Which way are you going?”
“Across the market-place to that house with the veranda,” she replied;
“but perhaps that is not your way, monsieur?”
It was not his way; but if it had been ten times more out of it, M.
Gombard would have gone with delight.
“Do me the honor to take my arm, mademoiselle,” he said, without
answering her inquiry. It was done in the kindest way――just as if she
had been the daughter of an old friend. The young girl gathered her
pretty cashmere dress well in one hand, and slipped the other into the
arm of her protector. They crossed the market-place quickly, and were
soon at the door of the house she had pointed out.
“Thank you! I am so much obliged to you, monsieur!”
“Mademoiselle, I am too happy――”
She smiled at him with her laughing brown eyes, and he turned away, a
changed man, elated, bewildered, walking upon air. He walked on in the
rain, his feet sinking ankle-deep in parts where the snow was thick
and had been melted into slush by the heavy shower. He did not think
now whether there was anything to visit to pass the rest of the day;
his one idea was to find out the name of this beautiful creature, then
to see her again, offer her his hand and fortune, if her position were
not too far above his own, and be the happiest of men for the rest of
his life. He was fifty years of age; but what of that? His heart was
twenty; he had not worn it out in butterfly passions, “fancies, light
as air,” and ephemeral as summer gnats. This was his first love, and
few men half his age had that virgin gift to place in the bridal
_corbeille_. Then how respected he was by his fellow-citizens! M.
Gombard saw them already paying homage to his young wife; saw all the
magnates congratulating him, and the fine ladies calling on Madame
Gombard. When he reached the _Jacques Bonhomme_ he was in the seventh
heaven. The landlord saw him from the window of the bar, and hurried
out to meet him with a countenance blanched with terror.
“Good heavens, monsieur! you have ventured out into the town. You have
been abroad all this time! What mad imprudence!” he whispered.
“Eh! Imprudence? Not the least, my good sir,” replied the mayor,
descending with a painful jump from his celestial altitude; “my boots
are snow-proof, and behold my umbrella!” He swung it round, shut it up
with a click, and held it proudly at arm’s length, while the wet
streamed down its seams as from a spout.
“Marvellous man!” muttered the landlord, staring at him aghast. “But
hasten in now, I entreat you. You ordered dinner at three; it will be
served to you in your room.”
“Just as it pleases you,” returned M. Gombard complacently. “I don’t
mind where I get it, provided it be good.”
“Monsieur, for heaven’s sake be prudent!” said the landlord; he took
the umbrella from him, and hung it outside the door to drip.
“I wish to have a word with you presently, mine host,” M. Gombard
called out from the top of the stairs.
“I am at your orders, monsieur,” said the host. This reckless behavior
in a man flying for his life was beyond belief. “It is madness, but it
is sublime!” thought the landlord. The table was ready laid when M.
Gombard entered his room; the dinner was ready too, as was evident
from the smell of fry and cabbage that filled the place; he went to
the window and threw it open. As he did so the mysterious lover
appeared at the corner of the street――that is, of the gabled
house――and, as before, lifted his hat and bowed reverently as he
passed under the balcony. Was his lady-love there to see it? M.
Gombard glanced quickly to the latticed window; it did not open, but
he distinctly saw a female figure standing behind it, and retreating
suddenly, as if unwilling to be observed. The little pantomime, which
he had looked on so contemptuously a few hours ago, was now full of a
new interest to him. He wondered what the lady was like; whether she
looked with full kindness on this pensive, intellectual-looking
adorer, and admitted him occasionally to her presence, or whether she
starved him on these distant glimpses. What was he doing in the church
just now, with that long scroll in his hand? He had not been praying
out of it, certainly. “I must interrogate mine host,” thought M.
Gombard, stirred to unwonted curiosity about these lovers. Great was
his surprise at that very moment to behold the said host cross the
street, pass the open gateway of the gabled house, ring at the narrow,
arched door and presently disappear within it. What could the landlord
of the _Jacques Bonhomme_ have to do with the wealthy mistress of that
house?
“Monsieur is served!” said the waiter, in a tone which announced that
he had said it before.
M. Gombard started, shut the window, and sat down to his dinner. When
he had finished it, he went and opened the window again, and, lo and
behold! there was the landlord coming back from the mystifying visit.
This time M. Gombard saw most distinctly the figure of a woman looking
out from the latticed window, and drawing back instantly when he
appeared.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” said M. Gombard.
The landlord looked very much excited.
“I have done my best for you, monsieur,” he began in an agitated
manner; “I have left nothing undone, and all I have been able to
obtain is that you shall have a good pair of post-horses to-morrow at
one o’clock.”
“Capital! Excellent! Then I am――” He stopped short.
“_Saved!_” muttered the landlord exultingly.
“Yes, yes, my friend, saved,” repeated M. Gombard with an air of cool
indifference which was nothing short of heroic; “but I am just
thinking whether, as I have not been able to start this afternoon, I
am not losing my time in starting at all. It might be wiser to―― But,
no; I had better go. You say the horses are good?”
“The best in Cabicol.”
“And I can count upon them?”
“I have the word of a noble woman for that.”
“Ha! a woman! Who may she be?”
“The mistress of that house――Mlle. Bobert.”
The landlord pronounced these words with an emphasis that might have
been dispensed with, as far as regarded the effect of the announcement
on M. Gombard.
“Mlle. Bobert!” he repeated in amazement.
“Yes, monsieur. She is young, but she has the mind of a man and the
heart of a mother. When every other resource had been tried in vain, I
went to her; I told her――enough to excite her sympathy, her desire to
help you; she promised me you should have the horses to-morrow at one
o’clock.”
“You confound me!” said M. Gombard.
“Have no fear, monsieur; Mlle. Bobert is a woman, but――she is to be
trusted. The horses will be here at one o’clock.”
“Well, well,” said M. Gombard, “I must not be ungrateful either to you
or Mlle. Bobert; it is most kind of you to take so much trouble in my
behalf, landlord, and most kind of her to furnish me with the horses.
You say she is young; is she pretty?” (Gracious heavens! If the
citizens of Loisel had heard this stony-hearted mayor putting such
questions!)
“No, monsieur, she is not pretty,” replied the landlord; “she is
beautiful.”
“_Diable!_” exclaimed M. Gombard facetiously.
“Beautiful as an _angel_,” remarked the landlord, with an accent that
seemed to rebuke his guest’s exclamation.
“You appear to have a _spécialité_ for beautiful persons in Cabicol,”
said M. Gombard, pouncing on his opportunity; “I met one in the church
just now, taking shelter from the rain――the most remarkably beautiful
person I ever saw in my life. Who can she be? She lives in the house
to the right of the market-place.”
“Excuse me, monsieur, she does not,” said the landlord sadly.
“No? How do you know? Did you see me――did you see her in the church?”
“No, monsieur, I did not,” answered the landlord.
M. Gombard was mystified again. What a droll fellow mine host was
altogether!
“You evidently know something about her,” he resumed; “can you tell me
her name and where she lives?”
“Her name is Mlle. Bobert; she lives yonder.” He stretched out his
arm, and held a finger pointed toward the old house. The effect on M.
Gombard was electric. He started as if the landlord’s finger had
pulled the trigger of a pistol; he grew pale; he could not utter a
word. The landlord pitied him sincerely.
“When I told her who it was I wanted the horses for,” he continued,
“she asked me to describe you. I did so, and she recognized you at
once as the person to whom she had spoken in the church. She said
immediately it would be a great pleasure to her to do you this
service, you had been so very courteous to her.”
“Pray convey my best thanks to Mlle. Bobert,” said M. Gombard, making
a strong effort to control his emotions; “I am profoundly sensible of
her goodness.”
The landlord cast one deeply tragic look upon his unfortunate guest,
bowed and withdrew. As he turned away, he bethought to himself how, as
the wisest men had been fooled by lovely woman, it was not to be
wondered at that the bravest should be made cowards by her; here was a
man who could carry a bold heart and a smiling face into the very
teeth of danger, but no sooner did he find that a woman had got hold
of even a suspicion of his secret than his courage deserted him, and
he was incapable of keeping up even a semblance of bravery. Unhappy
man! But he was safe; he had nothing to fear from Mlle. Bobert.
And so it was the great heiress whom he had seen and surrendered his
impregnable heart to, without even a feint at resistance! M. Gombard
understood all now; the joyous expression of her lovely face, her
unconstrained manner to him, her presence in the deserted church――it
was all explained: her lover had been there, praying with her, and she
had lingered on praying for him. Happy, happy man! Miserable Gombard!
He spent the evening drearily over his lonely fire. How lonely it
seemed since he had lost the dream that had beautified it, filling the
future with sweet visions of fireside joys, of bright companionship by
the winter blaze! He went to bed, nevertheless, and slept soundly. The
wound was not so deep as he imagined, this middle-aged man, who had no
memories of young love, with its kindling hopes and passionate
despairs, by which to measure his present suffering. He was very
miserable, sincerely unhappy, but, all the same, he slept his seven
hours without awaking. When at last he did awake, and bethought him of
his sorrow, he took it up where he had left it the night before, and
moaned and pitied himself with all his heart. He was to start at one
o’clock, but he must make an effort to see Mlle. Bobert again before
leaving Cabicol for ever. He ordered his breakfast, ate heartily, and
then sallied forth in the direction of the church. He knew of no other
place where he was at all likely to meet her; he had not seen her
leave the house, but she might have done so while he was breakfasting.
As well try to time the coming in and out of the sunbeams as the ways
and movements of this fairy _châtelaine_. She would sit by her
latticed window immovable for an hour, then disappear, then return,
flitting to and fro like a shadow. M. Gombard watched his opportunity,
when the landlord was busy in the crowded bar, to slip out of the
house. He felt as if he were performing some guilty action in stealing
away on such a foolish errand; how men would laugh at him if they
knew, if they could see the revolution that had taken place in him
within the last four-and-twenty hours! He tried to laugh at himself,
but it was more than his philosophy could accomplish. The great doors
of the church were open to-day. They were open every morning up to
noon; the good folks of Cabicol went in and out to their devotions,
from daybreak until then, not in crowds, but in groups of twos and
threes, trickling in and out at leisure. The grand old church looked
less gloomy than yesterday; the sunlight poured in, illuminating the
nave fully, and scattering the oppressive darkness of the lofty
aisles; but to M. Gombard the sunshine brought no brightness. He stood
at the entrance of the nave, and looked up the long vista and on every
side, but no trace of the luminary he sought was visible. The few
worshippers who knelt at the various shrines disappeared one by one,
going forth to the day’s labor, its troubles and its interests, till
the church was nearly empty. M. Gombard turned into the north aisle,
and sauntered slowly on. Presently he saw a tall figure advancing, as
yesterday, with the same quick step, from out the same side chapel. It
was his hated rival! Here he was again, with the same scroll of paper
in his hand; he rolled it up carefully, and put it in his pocket as he
walked on, calm, pensive, unconcerned, as if nobody had been by,
nobody scowling fiercely upon him as he passed. It was evidently a
plan agreed upon between these lovers that they should come and say
their prayers together at a given hour every day. M. Gombard was now
certain that Mlle. Bobert was in the Lady Chapel; he quickened his
step in that direction. Great was his surprise to find it almost
filled with people. The first Mass was at six, the second at ten; the
second was just finished. People were rising to come away; soon there
were only a few, more fervent than the rest, who lingered on at their
devotions. M. Gombard looked eagerly all round. There was a group of
several persons going out together. Descrying Mlle. Bobert amongst
them, he turned and followed quickly, taking the south aisle so as to
reach the portico before her, and have a chance of saluting, perhaps
speaking to, her; for might he not, ought he not, lawfully seize this
opportunity of thanking her? He stationed himself in the open
door-way, standing so that she could not pass without seeing him. The
common herd passed out. M. Gombard turned as a light step drew close.
He bowed low. “Mademoiselle, I have many thanks to offer you,” he said
in a subdued voice, as became the solemn neighborhood. “You have done
a great kindness to a perfect stranger. I shall never see you again;
but if ever, by chance, by some unspeakable good fortune, it were――in
my power, if I could do anything to serve you, I should count it a
great hap … I should be only too happy!”
Poor man! How confused he was! He could hardly get the words out. It
was pitiable to see his emotion. Mlle. Bobert’s gentle heart was
touched.
“Don’t think of it!” she answered kindly, but with a nervous, timid
manner that he was not too absorbed to notice and to wonder at,
remembering her unrestrained frankness of yesterday. “It is I who am
glad. I wish I had known it sooner, before the market-day. I should
have done my best; but I hope it is not too late, that you will
esca――that you will get where you want in good time.”
“It is of little consequence, mademoiselle. I care not whether I get
there late or early now,” replied M. Gombard.
“Don’t say that! Pray don’t!” said the young girl with great feeling.
“I should be so sorry! Good-by, monsieur, good-by.”
She hurried away. Did his eyes deceive him, or were there tears in
hers? She was strangely agitated; her voice trembled; there was a
choking sound in it when she said that “Good-by, monsieur, good-by!”
Did she read his secret on his face, in his manner, his tone, and was
she sorry for him? It was not improbable. He hoped it was so. It was
something to have her pity, since she could give him nothing more. He
watched the slight figure drifting out of sight; the step was less
elastic than yesterday; she was depressed, unnerved. What a treasure
that odious man had conquered in this tender, loving heart!
The post-chaise was at the door punctually at one. M. Gombard was
ready waiting for it when the landlord knocked at his door. The
traveller’s air of deep dejection struck a new pang at his feeling
heart.
“Monsieur, I trust sincerely you may not be too late,” he said in the
quick undertone of strong emotion, as he closed the door of the chaise
and leaned forward confidentially.
“Late or not, I shall always remember your kindness, landlord; it
signifies little whether I am late or not,” replied the parting guest.
“Don’t say that, monsieur, don’t, I entreat you!” said the landlord,
lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. “It would grieve me to the
very soul! I swear to you it would! Will you do me one favor?――just to
prove that you trust me and believe that I have done my best to
forward your es――your wishes: will you send me word by the postilion
if you arrive in time?”
“Really, landlord, your interest in my welfare is beyond my
comprehension,” said M. Gombard; he had had enough of this effusive
sympathy, and at the moment it irritated him.
“Don’t say so, sir! But I understand――you don’t know me; you are
afraid to trust me. Well, I will not persist; but if you consent to
send me back one word, I shall be the happier for it. And Mlle.
Bobert――think of her!”
“Mlle. Bobert! Do you suppose she cares to hear of me again? To know
what becomes of me?” asked M. Gombard breathlessly.
“Care, monsieur? She will know no peace until she hears from you; she
will reproach herself, as if it had been her fault. You little know
what a sensitive heart hers is.”
The postilion gave a preliminary flourish of his whip. Crack! crack!
it went with a noise that roused all the population of the _Jacques
Bonhomme_, the inmates of the house, of the back yard and the front;
boys, dogs, pigs, ducks, turkeys, geese――all came hurrying to the
fore, barking, grumbling, cackling, screaming, and pushing, terrified
lest they should be late for the fun.
“I will send you word,” said M. Gombard, pressing mine host’s hand
with an impulse of gratitude and joy too strong for pride. “Adieu!
_Merci!_”
Crack! crack! and away went the post-chaise amidst such a noise and
confusion of men and animals as is not to be described. As the horses
dashed down the street, M. Gombard beheld the man with the scroll turn
the corner. Curiosity was too much for dignity; he looked back: the
hat was raised, and the happy rival passed on.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
WHAT IS DR. NEVIN’S POSITION?
The leading article[135] in the _Mercersburg Review_ for October last
is from the celebrated pen of J. Williamson Nevin, D.D. Dr. Nevin is a
member of the German Reformed Church, and at one period he was
president of Marshall College, the leader of a school of theologians,
and editor of the _Mercersburg Review_, to which magazine he is now
the ablest contributor. During his editorship he wrote several
remarkable articles for its pages, especially those on St. Cyprian,
which attracted considerable attention.
Dr. Nevin’s writings are characterized by an earnest religious spirit,
a freedom from bigotry, and they always aim at conveying some
important Christian verity; which, although he scarcely can be said to
know it, finds its true home only in the bosom of the Catholic Church.
Hence Catholics can but take an interest in whatever Dr. Nevin writes,
and we intend to lay before our readers, with some remarks of our own,
the purport of his present article, entitled “The Spiritual World.”
In this article Dr. Nevin tries to show and prove that the work of
salvation includes not only the resistance to inordinate passions, but
above all a struggle against, and a conquest over, the world of evil
spirits. This is his thesis. He says:
“Flesh and blood, self, the world, and the things of the
world around us here in the body, are indeed part of the
hostile force we are called to encounter in our way to
heaven; they are not the whole of this force, however, nor
are they the main part of it, by any means. That belongs
always to a more inward and far deeper realm of being, where
the powers of the spiritual world are found to go
immeasurably beyond all the powers of nature, and to be, at
the same time, in truth, the continual source and spring of
all that is in these last, whether for good or for evil. The
Christian conflict thus, even where it regards things simply
of the present life, looks through what is thus mundane,
constantly to things which are unseen and eternal; and in
this way it becomes in very fact throughout a wrestling, not
with flesh and blood, but with the universal powers of evil
brought to bear upon us from the other world.”
This he proceeds to prove by the vows of baptism:
“So much we are taught in the form of our Christian baptism
itself, by which we are engaged to ‘renounce the devil with
all his ways and works, the world with its vain pomp and
glory, and the flesh with all its sinful desires.’ In one
view these may be regarded as separate enemies; but we know,
at the same time, that they form together but one and the
same grand power of evil, no one part of which can be
effectually withstood asunder from the diabolical life that
animates and actuates the whole. To wrestle with the world
or with the flesh really, is to wrestle at the same time
really with the full power of hell. If the struggle reach
not to this, it may issue in stoic morality or respectable
prudence, but it can never come to true self-mastery or
victory over the world in the Christian sense. The field for
any such conquest lies wholly beyond the realm of mere flesh
and blood. The conquest, if gained at all, must be won from
the hosts of hell, and then, of course, by the aid only of
corresponding heavenly hosts and heavenly armor; which is,
in truth, just what our baptism means.”
He calls in philosophy to confirm his thesis, thus:
“The conception of any such comprehension of our life here
in the general spiritual order of the universe can be no
better than foolishness, we know, for the reigning
materialistic thinking of the present time. But it is, in
truth, the only rational view of the world’s existence.
Philosophy, no less than religion, postulates the idea that
the entire creation of God is one thought, in the power of
which all things are held together as a single system from
alpha to omega, from origin to end; and all modern science
is serving continually more and more to confirm this view by
showing that all things everywhere look to all things, and
that everything everywhere is and can be what it is only
through its relations to other things universally. So it is
in the world of nature; so it is in the spiritual world; and
so it must be also in the union of these two worlds one with
the other. It is to be considered a settled maxim now, a
mere truism indeed for all true thinkers, that there is no
such thing as insulated existence anywhere――such an
_inconnexum_ must at once perish, sink into nonentity. It is
no weakness of mind, therefore, to think of the spiritual
world as a vast nexus of affection and thought (like the
waves of the sea, endlessly various and yet multitudinously
one), viewed either as heaven or as hell. Without doing so,
indeed, no man can believe really in any such world at all.
It will be for him simply an abstraction, a notion, a
phantom. And so, again, it is no weakness of mind, in
acknowledging the existence of the spiritual world (thus
concretely apprehended), to think of our present human life,
even here in the body, as holding in real contact and
communication organic inward correlation, we may say, with
the universal life of that world (angelic and diabolic), in
such sort that our entire destiny for weal or woe shall be
found to hang upon it, as it is made to do in the teaching
of God’s Word here under consideration. It is no weakness of
mind, we say, to think of the subject before us in this way.
The weakness lies altogether on the other side, with those
who refuse the thought of any such organic connection
between the life of men here in the body and the life of
spirits in the other world.”
These views, so strongly put forth by Dr. Nevin, we hardly need
remark, are familiar to all Catholics, agree with the doctrines of all
Catholic spiritual authors, especially the mystics, who have written
professedly on this subject, and their truth is abundantly illustrated
on almost every page of the lives of the saints. The Catholic mystical
authors, many of whom were saints, have gone over the entire ground of
our relations with the supernatural world, and, both by their learning
and personal experience, have conveyed, in their writings on this
subject, important knowledge, laid down wise regulations, and given in
detail safe, wholesome, practical directions. They seem to breathe in
the same atmosphere as that in which the Holy Scriptures were written,
and in passing from the reading of the Holy Scriptures to the lives of
the saints there is no feeling of any break. They lived in the
habitual and conscious presence, and in some cases in sight, of the
inhabitants of the supernatural world; and so familiar was their
intercourse with the angelical side, and at times so dreadful were the
combats to which they were delivered on the diabolical side, that
their lives, for this very reason, become a stumbling-block to worldly
Catholics and to Protestants generally. In the lives of her saints the
Catholic Church proves that she is not only the teacher of
Christianity, but also the inheritor and channel of its life and
spirit. How far Dr. Nevin himself would agree with this intense
realism of the church in connection with the supernatural world, as
seen in the lives of her saints, we have no special means of knowing;
but if we may judge from the spirit and drift of the article under
consideration, he goes much farther in this direction than is usual
for Protestants. Be his opinion what it may, their lives form a
concrete evidence of the truth of his thesis. It is the sense of
nearness of the spiritual world, and its bearing on the Christian
life, pervading as it does the public worship, the private devotions,
and the general tone of Catholics, that characterizes them from those
who went out from the fold of the Catholic Church in the religious
revolution of three centuries ago. This whole field has become to
Protestants, in the process of time, a _terra incognita_; and if Dr.
Nevin can bring them again to its knowledge, and in “constant, living
union” with it, he will have done a most extraordinary work.
Efforts of this kind and of a similar nature have not been wanting in
one way or another, and are not now wanting, among Protestants. There
are those who show a decided interest in the works of the spiritual
writers of the Catholic Church. Strange to say――and yet it is not
strange; for in this they follow the law of _similia similibus_――they
are particularly fond of those authors whose writings are not
altogether sound or whose doctrines are tainted with exaggerations.
Thus Dr. Upham will write the life of Madame Guyon; another will
translate _The Maxims of the Saints_, by Fénelon; and to another class
there is a peculiar charm in the history of the Jansenistic movement
of Port Royal; others, again, moved by the same instinct, will not
hesitate to acknowledge with Dr. Mahan that “such individuals as
Thomas à Kempis, Catherine Adorno [he means St. Catherine of Genoa],
and many others were not only Christians, but believers who had a
knowledge of all the mysteries of the higher life, and who, through
all coming time, will shine as stars of the first magnitude in the
firmament of the Church. In their inward experiences, holy walk, and
‘power with God and with men,’ they had few, if any, superiors in any
preceding era of church history. ‘The unction of the Spirit’ was as
manifest in them as in the apostles and primitive believers”;[136]
while many of this class in the Episcopal Church translate from
foreign languages into English the works of Catholic ascetic writers,
and books of devotion, for the use of pious members of their
persuasion. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould will give you in English, in many
volumes, the complete lives of the saints. They even go so far, both
in England and the United States, as to found religious orders of both
sexes as schools for the better attainment of Christian perfection,
and venture to take the name of a Catholic saint as their patron.
It is evident that, among a class of souls upon whom the church can be
said to exert no direct influence, there is a movement towards seeking
nearer relations with the unseen spiritual world, accompanied with a
desire for closer union with God. It finds expression among all
Protestant denominations. With the Methodists and Presbyterians it is
known by the name of “perfectionism,” or “the higher life,” or “the
baptism of the Holy Ghost.” It is also manifested by the efforts made
now and again for union among all the Protestant sects. It is the same
craving of this mystical instinct for satisfaction that lies at the
root of spiritism, which has spread so rapidly and extensively outside
of the Catholic Church, not only among sceptics and unbelievers, but
even among all classes of Protestants, and entered largely into their
pulpits.
The former movement assumes a religious aspect; but lacking the
scientific knowledge of spiritual life, and the practical discipline
necessary to its true development and perfection, it gradually dies
out or runs into every kind of vagary and exaggeration. Recently,
after having made not a little commotion among different denominations
in England and Germany, it came, in the person of its American
apostle, Mr. Pearsall Smith, to a sudden and disgraceful collapse. “If
the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.” The latter
movement――spiritism――leads directly to the entire emancipation of the
flesh, resulting in free-lovism, and sometimes ending in possession
and diabolism. Spiritism is Satan’s master-stroke, in which he obtains
from his adepts the denial of his own existence. These are some of the
bitter fruits of the separation from Catholic unity: those who took
this step under the pretence of seeking a higher spiritual life are
afflicted with spiritual languor and death; and they who were led by a
boasted independence of Christ have fallen into the snares of Satan
and become his dupes and abject slaves. Behold the revenge of
neglected Catholic truth; for only in Catholic unity every truth is
held in its true relation with all other truths, shines in its full
splendor, and produces its wholesome and precious fruits!
Suppose for a moment that Dr. Nevin should succeed in the task which
he has undertaken, and by his efforts raise those around him, and the
whole Protestant world, to a sense of their relation to the
supernatural world. What then? Why, he has only brought souls to a
state which many Protestants have reached before; and when they sought
for the light, aid, and sympathy which these new conditions required,
in those around them, they found none.
By quickening their spiritual sensibilities you have opened the door
to wilder fancies, more dangerous illusions, and thereby exposed the
salvation of their souls to greater perils. For, as St. Gregory tells
us: “_Ars artium est regimen animarum_”――the art of arts is the
guidance of souls; and where is this art, this science, this
discipline, to be found? Not in Protestantism. What then? Why, either
these souls have to renounce their holiest convictions, their
newly-awakened spiritual life, and sink into their former
insensibility; or go where they can find true guidance, certain peace,
and spiritual progress――enter into the bosom of the holy Catholic
Church, where alone the cravings of that spiritual hunger can be
appeased which nowhere else upon earth found food, and the soul can at
last breathe freely.
But there is another point involved in Dr. Nevin’s article; and
however so much, as Catholics, we may sympathize with his endeavors to
awaken Protestants to their relations with the supernatural world,
this point in question will come up, and we cannot help putting it:
What is Dr. Nevin’s criterion of revealed truth? The rule of
interpretation of the written Word? Dr. Nevin has one; for neither he
nor any one else can move a single step without employing and
applying, implicitly or explicitly, a rule of faith. He criticises,
judges, condemns others, but on what ground? Does his own position, at
bottom, differ from that of those whom he condemns? He lacks neither
the ability nor the learning to make a consistent statement on this
point. Truth is consistent. God is not the author of confusion.
Where does Dr. Nevin find or put the rule of faith? If it be placed in
simple human reason, then we have as the result, in religion, pure
rationalism. If it be placed in human reason illuminated by grace,
then we have illuminism. If it be placed in both of these, with the
written Word――that is, the Bible as interpreted by each individual
with the assistance of divine grace――then we have the common rule of
faith of all Protestants, so fruitful in breeding sects and schisms,
and inevitably tending to the entire negation of Christianity.
This last appears to be Dr. Nevin’s rule of faith; for what else does
he mean when in the beginning of his article, its second sentence, he
makes the following surprising statement: “Christianity is a theory of
salvation”? Did God descend from heaven and become man upon earth,
live, suffer, and die, and for what? “A theory”! Is this the whole
issue and reality of Christianity――“a theory,” a speculation? Did
Christ rise from the dead and ascend to the Father, and, with him,
send forth upon earth the Holy Ghost, to create “a theory,” a
speculation, or an abstraction? “Christianity a theory”! We fear that
one who would deliberately make that assertion has never had the true
conception of what is meant by the reality of Christianity. What would
be said of a man who in treating of the sun should say: The sun is a
theory, or a speculation, or an exposition of the abstract principles
of light? If the sun be a theory, it would be quickly asked, what
becomes, in the meanwhile, of the reality of the sun? This way of
dealing with Christianity, while professing to explain it, allows its
reality altogether to escape. Notwithstanding Dr. Nevin’s condemnation
of “the abstract spiritualistic thinking of the age,” and of those who
would make Christianity “a fond sentiment simply of their own fancy,”
he falls, in his definition of Christianity, into the very same error
which in others he emphatically condemns.
That this is so is evident; for while he says, “Christianity is a
theory,” he adds in the same sentence, “and is made known to us by
divine revelation.” Now, the separation, even in idea, between the
church and Christianity, is the fountain, source, and origin of all
the illusions and errors uttered or written, since the beginning,
concerning the Christian religion. The attempt to get at and set up a
Christianity independently of the Christian Church is the very essence
and nature of all heresies. The church and Christianity are
distinguishable, but not separable; and in assuming their
separability, as a primary position, lies all the confusion of ideas
and misapprehensions of Christianity in the author of the article
under present consideration. This point needs further explanation, as
it is all-important, and forms, indeed, the very root of the matter.
“Christianity is a theory,” says Dr. Nevin, “and is made known to us
by divine revelation.” But what does Dr. Nevin mean by “divine
revelation”? Here are his own words in explanation:
“When the question arises, How are we to be made in this way
partakers of the living Christ, so that our religion shall
be in very deed――not a name only, not a doctrinal or
ritualistic fetich merely, nor a fond sentiment simply of
our own fancy?” “All turns in this case on our standing in
the divine order as it reaches us from the Father through
the Son. That meets us in the written Word of God, which, in
the way we have before seen, is nothing less in its interior
life than the presence of the Lord of life and glory himself
in the world.”
Again:
“We cannot now follow out the subject with any sort of
adequate discussion. We will simply say, therefore, that
what our Lord says here of his words or commandments is just
what the Scriptures everywhere attribute to themselves in
the same respect and view. They claim to be spirit and life,
to have in them supernatural and heavenly power, to be able
to make men wise unto everlasting life, to be the Word of
God which liveth and abideth for ever――not the memory or
report simply of such word spoken in time past, but the
always present energy of it reaching through the ages. The
Scriptures――God’s law, testimonies, commandments, statutes,
judgments, his word in form of history, ritual, psalmody,
and prophecy――are all this through what they are as the
‘testimony of Jesus’; and therefore it is that they are, in
truth, what the ark of God’s covenant represented of old,
the conjunction of heaven and earth, and in this way a real
place of meeting or convention between men and God. To know
this, to own it, to acknowledge inwardly the presence of
Christ in his Word, as the same Jehovah from whom the law
came on Mount Sinai; and then to fear the Lord as thus
revealed in his Word, to bow before his authority, and to
walk in his ways; or, in shorter phrase, to ‘fear God and
keep his commandments,’ because they _are his_ commandments,
and not for any lower reason――this is the whole duty of man,
and of itself the bringing of man into union with God; the
full verification of which is reached at last only in and by
the Word made glorious through the glorification of the Lord
himself; as when, in the passage before us he makes the
keeping of his commandments the one simple condition of all
that is comprehended in the idea of the mystical union
between himself and his people.”
According, then, to Dr. Nevin, “the divine order of our being” made
“partakers of the living Christ is in the Word of God.”
To make what is plain unmistakable, he adds:
“What we have to do, then, especially in the war we are
called to wage with the powers of hell, is to see that this
conjunction with Christ be in us really and truly, through a
proper continual use of the Word of God for this purpose.”
There is here and there throughout this article a haziness of language
which smacks of Swedenborgianism, and makes it difficult to seize its
precise meaning; but we submit that Dr. Nevin――and he will probably
accept the statement, as our only aim is to get at his real
meaning――proceeds on the supposition that Christianity is a theory,
and becomes real as each individual, illumined by divine light,
discovers and appropriates it in reading the written Word――the Bible.
This is the common ground of Protestantism; and Dr. Nevin holds no
other than the rule of faith of all Protestants. The following passage
places this beyond doubt or cavil:
“It was the life of the risen Lord himself, shining into the
written Word, and through this into the mind of the
disciples, which, by inward correspondence, served to open
their understanding to the proper knowledge of both. And as
it was then, so it is still. We learn what the written Word
is only by light from the incarnate Word; but then, again,
we learn what the light of the incarnate Word is only as
this shines into us through the written Word――a circle, it
is true, which alone, however, brings us to the true ground
of the Christian faith.”
We need scarcely tell our readers that this pretended rule of faith is
no rule of faith at all. It breaks down on any reasonable test which
you may apply to it. It will not stand the trial of the written Word
itself, nor of history, nor of common sense, nor of good and sound
logic. This has been too often demonstrated to require here long
argumentation. Therefore, when a man ventures to speak for
Christianity, and professes to define and explain what is
Christianity, the question rises up at once, and naturally: What does
this man know, in fact, about Christianity? Did he live in the time of
Christ? Did he ever speak to Christ, or see him? Was he a witness to
his miracles? Why, no! He can bear testimony to none of these events.
If he was not a contemporary of Christ, what, then, does he know about
him? Where has he obtained his knowledge to set up for a teacher of
Christianity? On what grounds does he presume to speak for
Christianity? Does he come commissioned by those whom Christ
authorized to teach in his name? Why, no; they repudiate him in the
character of a teacher of Christ. Does he prove by direct miraculous
power from God to speak in his name? Why, no! Then he has no
commission, indirect or direct; then he is unauthorized, a self-sent
and a self-appointed teacher!
But he fancies he has a light to speak for Christianity on the
authority of certain historical documents which contain an account of
Christ and his doctrines. But how about these documents? What
authority verified and stamped them with its approval as genuine, and
rejected others, which professed to be genuine, as spurious? Why, the
very authority which verified these documents, and on which he has to
rely for their genuineness and divine inspiration, is the very
authority which altogether denies his presumed right of teaching
Christianity! The authority which authenticated them rejects as
spurious his claim to be the interpreter of their true meaning. How
does he get over this difficulty? He does not get over it. He simply
ignores it.
But do these documents profess to give a full and complete account of
Christianity? By no means. He assumes this too. What! assumes the
vital point of his own rule, which is in dispute? He does. Strange
that those who were inspired to write these so important documents
should not have written their great object plainly on their face; and
stranger still, if they did, that this should have remained a secret
many centuries before its discovery!
Then this was not the way the primitive Christians learned
Christianity? Not at all. There were millions of Christians who spilt
their blood for Christianity, and millions more who had died in the
faith, before these documents were verified and put in the shape which
we now have them and call the Bible. This pretended rule, then,
unchristianizes the early Christians? It does; and does more――it
unchristianizes the great bulk of Christians since; for the mass of
Christians could not obtain Bibles before the invention of printing,
and could not read them if they had them. Even to-day, if this be the
rule, how about the children, the blind, and those who cannot
read――not a small number? How are they to become Christians?
But as the Bible is an inspired book, to get at its true meaning
requires the same divine Spirit which inspired it? Of course it does.
But do they that follow this rule assume that each one for himself has
this divine Spirit? Nothing else. But are they sure of this? Sure of
it?――they say so. But are they sure that each one has the divine
Spirit to interpret rightly the divinely-inspired, written Word? Each
one thinks so. Thinks so! But do they not know it? Do they not know
it? Why, let me explain: “You see we learn what the written Word is
only by light from the incarnate Word.” But how do you get the light
from the incarnate Word? Why, “we learn what the light of the
incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the written
Word.” That is, you suppose that the Bible, read with proper
dispositions, conveys to your soul divine grace? Just so. That is, you
put the Bible in the place of the sacraments; but that is not the
question now. The question, the point, now at issue is: How do you
know that that light which shines into you through the written Word is
not “a fond sentiment simply of your own fancy,” is not a delusion,
instead of “the light of the incarnate Word”? “Oh! I see what you are
aiming at. A book divinely inspired requires for its interpreter the
divine Spirit to get at its divine meaning. Now, if those who assume
to possess this Spirit contradict each other point-blank in their
interpretation of its meaning, then this is equivalent to charging the
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, with error; and such a charge is
blasphemy! But this is pushing things too far.”
Perhaps so; nevertheless, those who follow this rule of faith do
differ in their interpretation of Holy Scripture, and differ as far as
heaven is from earth. There is no end to their differences. Almost
every day breeds a new sect. They not only differ from each other, but
each one differs from himself; and why? Because none are certain that
they have the inspired Word of God, except on a basis which undermines
their position; and none are certain that the light by which they
interpret the written Word of God is the unerring Spirit of truth.
Hence all who hold this rule gradually decline into uncertitude,
doubt, scepticism, and total unbelief.
But how do the followers of this rule of faith interpret those
passages of Holy Scriptures which speak so plainly of the church?――for
instance, where Christ promises to “build his church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it”; “He that heareth not the church,
let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican”; “The church of the
living God, the pillar and ground of truth”; “Christ died for the
church”; “The church is ever subject to Christ”; and others of like
import. They either pass them by as of no account, or deal with them
as an artist does with a piece of clay or wax――they mould them to suit
their fancy. Truly, this rule of faith reduces the divine reality of
Christianity to the efforts of one’s own thought――“a theory.”
Dr. Nevin may struggle against the inevitable results of this rule, as
he does in several places in the present article, but he stands on the
same inclined plane as those whom he condemns, and, in spite of his
earnest counter-efforts, he is descending visibly with them into the
same abyss. For the effort to get at the reality of Christianity, and
to escape the recognition of the divine authority of the church,
through the personal interpretation of the written Word, is a vain,
absurd, and fatal expedient. “He that entereth not by the door into
the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a
robber” (John x. 1).
As the attempt to separate the church and Christianity from each other
empties Christianity of all its contents and destroys its reality, so,
reversely, the conception of the transcendent union and inseparability
of the church and Christianity leads to the recognition of the living,
constant, divine reality of Christianity. For the Christian Church was
called into being by God, the Holy Ghost, the Creator Spirit; and as
this primary creative act still subsists in her in all its original
vigor, she is, at every moment of her life, equally real, living,
divine. Just as the created universe exists by the continuation of the
creative act which called it into existence at the beginning, so the
Catholic Church exists by the continuation of the supernatural
creative act which called her into existence on the day of Pentecost.
Once the church, always the church.
The church and the Bible are, in their divine origin, one; they
co-operate together for the same end, and are in their nature
inseparable. But the written Word is relative or subsidiary to the
church, having for its aim to enlighten, to strengthen, and to perfect
the faithful in that supernatural life of the Spirit in which they
were begotten in the layer of regeneration, in the bosom of the holy
church. The purpose of the written Word is, therefore, to effect a
more perfect realization of the church, and to accelerate her true
progress in the redemption and sanctification of the world. Hence the
written Word presupposes the existence of the church, is within and in
the keeping of the church, and depends on her divine authority for its
authentication and true interpretation. The church is primary, and not
enclosed in the written Word; but the end of the written Word is
enclosed in that of the church.
Were not a word of divine revelation written, the church would have
none the less existed in all her divine reality, and she would have
none the less accomplished her divine mission upon earth. For God, the
indwelling Holy Spirit, is her life, power, guide, and protector. God
the Son was incarnate in the man Christ Jesus; so God the Holy Spirit
was incorporate in the holy Catholic Church.
Undoubtedly the apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write all
that they wrote; but their Gospels and their Epistles always
presuppose the church as existing. To appeal, therefore, from the
church to the written Word of the New Testament, if nothing else, is
to be guilty of an anachronism.
Even as to the Old Testament, before the Incarnation as well as after
the Incarnation, the reality of the church consisted in that
supernatural communion between God and man which existed at the moment
of his creation. The church, therefore, existed, at least in
potentiality, in the garden of Paradise, and was historically primary
in the order of supernatural communications.
Wherein does Dr. Nevin differ from the Ebionites, the Nicolaites, the
Gnostics, the common Protestants, down to Joe Smith, Père Hyacinthe,
and Bishop Reinkens? Perceptibly, at bottom, there is no difference.
Dr. Nevin appears to have never asked himself seriously the most
searching of all questions, to wit: What, in the last analysis, is the
basis, standard, or rule by which I judge what is and what is not
Christianity? He ventures to treat of the gravest questions and most
momentous mysteries touching the kingdom of God, on which the saints
would not have ventured a personal opinion; and on what grounds? But
it may be said in his excuse, and with truth, that this
self-sufficient attitude is due to the very position of defiance to
the divine authority of the church in which all those who have gone
out, or are born out, of her fold are necessarily involved.
To sum up: Either we must suppose that God has left the task to every
individual to direct the human race to the great end for which he
created it――and thus the individual occupies the place of Almighty
God, and turns the crank of the universe to suit his own fancy, or the
schemes and theories of the cogitations of his little brain――or
believe in “a divine order,” in being made constant partakers of the
living Christ “in a concrete form.” In this case, our first duty is to
find this real concrete body, become a member and partaker of its
divine life, and, in conquering the obstacles in the way of our
salvation, co-operate in its divine work for the whole world.
But the history of these last three centuries shows conclusively that
there is no standing-place between the Catholic Church and
Protestantism; and it has made it equally clear that Protestantism has
no standing ground of its own, and therefore no man can be a
Christian, and defend with perfect consistency his position, out of
the Catholic Church.
[135] “The Spiritual World,” by J. W. Nevin, D.D., the
_Mercersburg Review_, October, 1876.
[136] _The Baptism of the Holy Ghost_, by Rev. Asa Mahan,
D.D., p. 81.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ARRIVAL.
If Mr. Vane and the Signora felt any difficulty in meeting each other
the next morning, it was soon over. _Ce n’est que le premier pas qui
coûte_, and that one step brought them into the familiar path again,
almost as though they had never left it. Almost, but not quite; for
the entire unconsciousness of Mr. Vane’s manner impressed the lady
strongly. It did not give her a new idea of him, but it emphasized the
impressions she had for some time been receiving. She had never
believed him to be so careless and indifferent as he often appeared to
be, but it had grown upon her, little by little, that under that calm,
and even _nonchalant_, exterior was hidden an immense self-control and
watchfulness; that he could ignore things when he chose so perfectly
that it was difficult to believe he had not forgotten them; and that,
instead of being one of the most unobserving of men, he was, in
reality, aware of everything that went on about him, seeing much which
escaped ordinary lookers-on.
Such a disposition in a person in whose honesty we have not entire
confidence is disconcerting, and increases our distrust of them; but
it excites in us a greater interest when we know them to be honest and
friendly. If they have had sorrows, we look at them with a tenderer
sympathy, searching for signs of a suffering which they will not
express; if they have revealed a peculiar affection for us, we feel
either sweetly protected or painfully haunted by an attention which
seldom betrays itself, and which will not be evaded.
The Signora could not have said clearly whether she was pleased or
displeased. Mr. Vane had mistaken the nature of her sympathy, she
thought, and, believing her to be attached to him, had spoken from
gratitude; and though the conviction hurt her pride, she could not
feel any resentment for a mistake kindly made on his part, and
promptly corrected on hers. The only wise course was to put the matter
completely out of her mind, as he seemed to have done, and to secure
and enjoy the friendship she had no fear of his withdrawing.
Isabel was greatly exercised in her mind that morning on the subject
of insects.
“I made up my mind in the middle of the night what I should do if I
ever built a house in Italy,” she said. “I should have every stick and
stone on the place carried away, a deep trench dug all around the
land, and a high wall built all around the trench. Then I should have
the whole surface of the ground covered with combustible material, and
a fire kindled over it. When that had burned a day or two, I should
have cellars, wells, drains, everything that had to be excavated, made
thoroughly, and the garden-plot well turned over. Then I should have a
second conflagration, covering everything. Next would come the
house-building. For that every stone should be washed and fumigated
before it was brought in at the gate, and all the earth and gravel
should be baked in a furnace, and every tree and shrub, and cart and
donkey and workman, should be washed seven times; and finally, when
the house should be finished as to the stone-work and plaster, I would
have it drenched inside and out with spirits of wine, and set fire to.
By taking those precautions I believe that one might have a place free
of fleas. What do you think, Signora?”
“My dear, I think you would have had your labor for your pains,” was
the reply. “These little creatures would hop over your walls, come in
snugly hidden in your furniture, ride grandly in on the horses and in
the coaches of your visitors, and even enter triumphantly on your own
person. They are invincible. One must have patience.”
“I would continue to burn the place over, furniture and all, till I
had routed them,” the young woman declared. “I believe it could be
done. I would have patience, but it should be the patience of
continual resistance, not of submission. I would not give up though I
should reduce the place to ashes.”
Mr. Vane asked his daughter if she ever heard of such a process as
biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; and then he told her a very
pathetic story of a man and a flea: “Once there was a man who was
greatly tormented by a flea which he could never catch. In vain he
searched his garments and the house. The insect hopped from place to
place, but always returned as soon as the search was over. At length,
in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he
did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after
waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders,
flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one
thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters
drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they
were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the
flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely
to shore again.”
“The moral is――” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter
interrupted him.
“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could
never bite him again.”
This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally
suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind
them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in
every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows
of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of
lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the
rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green,
silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no
larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose
simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural
behavior could have been――all these kept their eyes and minds alert.
In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering
about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little
children were playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women,
with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a
confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed,
came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and
there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.
The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path.
“You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.
The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious
sweetness, as she made the reply of St. Clara: “She is not blind who
sees God!”
She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass.
Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so
early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she
lifted her face to it and smiled again.
The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the
church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on
her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while
the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving
rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of
the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on
tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A
third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a
liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of
the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking
innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed
along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures, and
presently, climbing with some difficulty the steps of one of the
altars, seated itself and began softly to stroke the cheeks of a
marble cherub that supported the altar-table.
If a company of baby angels had come in, they would not have made less
noise nor done less harm; perhaps, would not have done more good.
“How peaceful it is!” Mr. Vane exclaimed as they went out into the air
again. “How heavenly peaceful!”
They saw only women and children on their way down through the town.
Some of the men had gone off in the night to Rome, carrying wine in
those carts of theirs, with the awning slung like a galley-sail over
the driver’s seat, and the cluster of bells atop, each tinkling in a
different tone, and the little white dog keeping watch over the
barrels while the man dozed. Others had gone at day-dawn to work in
the Campagna, and might be seen from the town moving, as small as
spiders, among the vines or in the gardens.
Just below the great piazza, at the entrance of the town, beside the
dip of the road into the hollow between _Monte Compatri_ and _Monte
San Sylvestro_, a long, tiled roof was visible supported on arches.
They leaned over the parapet supporting the road, and watched for a
little while the lively scene below. All the space beneath this roof
was an immense tank of water, or fountain, as it was called, divided
into square compartments. Around these stood forty or fifty women
washing. They soaped and dipped their clothes in the constantly-changing
water, and beat them on the wide stone border of the fountain, working
leisurely, and chatting with each other. The white handkerchiefs on
their heads, and, now and then, a bit of bright drapery on their
shoulders, shone out of the shadow made by the roof and the piers
supporting it, and the rich green of that sheltered nook between the
hills. It was, in fact, the town wash-tub, and this was the town
wash-day. In this place the women washed the year round, in the open
air, and with cold water, spreading their clothes out to dry on the
grass and bushes.
The travellers went up _Monte San Sylvestro_, gathering flowers as
they went. The path was rough and wild, winding to and fro among the
bushes as it climbed, and hidden, from time to time, by tall trees.
Half way up they met a man with a herd of goats rushing and tumbling
down the steep way. A little farther on, at a turn of the road, was a
large shrine holding a crucifix. The place seemed to be an absolute
solitude, but the withered flowers drooping from the wire screen, and
the sod, worn to dust, at the foot of the step, showed that faith and
love had passed that way, and stopped in passing. Near this shrine was
a protruding ledge, from under which the gravel had dropped away or
been dug away, leaving a sort of cave. The place needed only a
gray-bearded old man clad in rags, and bending over an open book, an
hour-glass before him, and perhaps a lion lying at his feet. Or one
might have placed there the Magdalen, with her long hair trailing in
the sand, and her woful eyes looking off into the distant east, as she
gazed across the blue ocean from her cave on the coast of France.
There was still faith enough in this region to have honored and
protected such a penitent.
The three women gathered some green to go with their flowers, cleared
away all the withered stems and leaves, and wrote in pink and white
and blue around the edge of the screen. When they had done all that
they could well reach, Mr. Vane finished for them by writing last,
over the head of the crucifix, the word that in reality came first.
Then they went on, leaving the symbol of all that Heaven could do for
earth encircled by the expression of all that earth can do for
Heaven――“_Credo, Spero, Amo, Ringrazio, Pento_.” They wrote these
words in flowers, Bianca weaving a verdant Hope at the right hand,
Isabel a white Thanksgiving at the left, and the Signora placing a
rose-red Love and Penitence under the feet. Over the head Mr. Vane had
set in blue the word of Faith.
The summit of the mountain was crowned with the convent and church of
St. Sylvester; but the buildings extended quite to the edge of the
platform on the eastern side, and the fine view was from the gardens
on the west side, and, of course, inaccessible to ladies. They could
only obtain glimpses over the tops of trees that climbed from below,
and through the trunks of trees that pressed close to the corners of
the stone barriers. No person was visible but a monk in a brown robe
and a broad-brimmed hat, who lingered near a moment, as if to give
them an opportunity to speak to him if they wished, then entered a
long court leading to the convent door, and disappeared under the
portico.
A perfect silence reigned. They heard nothing but their own steps on
the grassy pavement. The town of _Monte Compatri_, seen through the
trees on the other height, looked more like a gray rock than a city.
Not a sign of life was visible from it. The glimpses they caught of
the Campagna had seemed fragments of a vast green solitude where grass
had long overgrown the traces of men. No smallest cloud gave life or
motion to the steady blue overhead; no song of bird wove a silver link
between familiar scenes and that solemn retreat. The soul, stripped of
its veiling cares and interests, was like Moses on the mountain, face
to face with God. History, mythology, poetry――they were not! The
buzzing of these golden bees that made the brow of Tusculum their hive
was inaudible and forgotten. On this height was a station-house of
eternity, and the electric current of the other world flowed through
its blue and silent air.
“It seems to me one should prepare one’s mind before going there,”
Bianca said, looking back from the foot of the mountain, after they
had descended. They had scarcely spoken a word going down.
The impression made on them was, indeed, so strong that they scarcely
observed anything about them for several hours; and it was only when
they were going down to Frascati again in the afternoon that they
roused themselves from their silence.
“We shall have time to go into Villa Aldobrandini a little while,” the
Signora said, looking at her watch. “The train does not start for more
than an hour. We can send the man on to the station with our bags, and
walk down ourselves. Of course all these villas have very nearly the
same view, but this is the finest of all.”
They had time for a short visit only, but their guide made the most of
it. Going round one of the circling avenues, dark with ancient
ilex-trees, she turned into a cross-road that led directly to the
upper centre of the villa, where the cascades began. First, from under
a tomb-like door in the side of a mound, flowed a swift ribbon of
water between stone borders. It slanted with the hill, and flashed
along silent in the sunshine, eager to leap through the mouth of the
great mask below, to scatter its spray over carven stone and a hundred
flowers.
They followed the cascades down to the lower front, with its niches,
statues, chapel, and chambers, and the noble _casino_ facing it.
“Every story of the house, as you go up,” the Signora said, “brings
you on a level with a new cascade, and from the topmost room you look
into the heart of the upper thicket, where you might imagine yourself
unseen. Indeed, splendid as these scenes are, there is, to me, a
constant sense of discomfort in that frequent appearance of solitude
where solitude is not. There seems to be no nook, however apparently
remote, which is not perfectly overlooked from some almost invisible
watch-tower. It may be necessary, but the suggestion is of suspicion
and espionage.”
They left the villa by the front avenue and lawn, walking through
grass and flowers ankle deep, and gathering handfuls of dear, familiar
pennyroyal that they found growing all about.
When they reached the station there was yet a little time to wait, and
they stood in the western windows and looked off to the distant ridges
that showed their dark edges against intervening layers of silvery
mist. They were ridges of jewels, marked thickly with spires, towers,
and palaces. At the left the dome of the world’s temple was visible,
making everything else of its sort puny, and next it, like the outline
of a forest against the sky, the Quirinal stretched its royal front.
All floated in that delicate mist that, from the distance, always
veils the Campagna, as if the innumerable ghosts of the past became
luminous when so seen, evading for ever the nearer spectator.
Framing this distant picture, a hill of olives at one side of the
station-house sloped to a hill of vines at the other, and the railroad
track, set in roses, curved round in the narrow strip of land between
them.
The Signora, putting her arm around Bianca, and pointing to one of
these ridges, whispered in her ear: “What does my darling think that
is――the two dark spots shaped like two thimbles, and about as large,
and the something that might be a lead-pencil standing up between
them? What blessed _campanile_ and twin _cupole_ do you wish them to
be?”
“Oh! I was searching for them,” the girl exclaimed, and kissed her
hand to the far-away basilica. “We must go there a few minutes this
evening,” she added――“go up the steps, at least, if it should be too
late to go in.”
They started, and went trailing along through the enchanted land,
happy to return to the city that already seemed to them like home,
and, having learnt some landmarks in their outward passage, added to
the number of their acquisitions in returning. The Signora indicated
the principal tombs and named the aqueducts. “There are the Claudian
and Marcian, side by side, galloping over the plain like a pair of
coursers, each bringing a lake in its veins to quench the thirst of
Rome. Sixtus V., who built our chapel of the Blessed Sacrament,
Bianca, used those Claudian arches to bring a new stream in when the
old one failed. It is called Aqua Felice. His name was Felice
Peretti.”
“_Stia felice!_” said Bianca, smiling at the grand old arches.
“In what a circle water goes,” she added after a moment, “and what a
beautiful circle!――down in the rain, running in the river, where the
wheel touches the earth, rising on the sunbeams, running in clouds,
where the wheel touches the sky, dropping in rain again, and so on
round and round.”
“Apropos of Sixtus V.,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “see how the
church recognizes and rewards merit. It is, in fact, the only true
republic. That wonderful man was a swineherd in Montalto when he was a
boy, and Cardinal of Montalto when he was a man, and he died one of
the most brilliant popes that ever wore the tiara. One cannot help
wondering what the boy Felice thought of in those days when he watched
the swine, and if ever a vision came to him of kings kneeling to kiss
his feet. And, more yet, I wonder what thoughts the mother had of his
future when she watched over her sleeping child, or looked after him
when he went out to his day’s task. He could not have been so great
but that his mother gave the first impulse. One does not gather figs
of thistles.”
“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I
don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life
without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a
noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and
teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be
sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be.
I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has not benefited
the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of
commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular
credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her
any great discredit.”
While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner
more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the
Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and
interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and
tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s
exclamation: “_Stia felice!_”
His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand,
and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to
go on.
“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have
less need than most men. I would like to put his _La Donna Cattolica_
into the hands of every Catholic――yes, and of every Protestant. I
would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that
Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too,
to learn from St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Gregory the Great what
estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to
read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and
ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre
Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even
must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s
characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by
what they say is to be found in them.”
“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at
the Signora in his turn.
“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have
read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb in St. Andrea
delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about
half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on
the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would
drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that
man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home
and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the
woman is the priest.’”
She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so
many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with
which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death,
he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into
the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that
immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One
he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’
He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”
They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming
out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming
down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica
on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an
hour before _Ave Maria_; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the
long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the
setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe
of pink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the
flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance
up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and
then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.
They met Mr. Vane and Isabel at the door.
“Did you think we also might not visit a church?” Isabel said. “I
invited papa to go into St. Bernard’s, and, though they were about
closing, they kept open ten minutes for us. I am not sure but I may
adopt that church as my favorite. It is not too large. The
congregations are orderly, and all attend to one service; and,
besides, I like a rotunda. If I should go there, papa, you must side
with me, that the house may be equally divided.”
“I’m not sure I like those cherubic churches, all head and no nave,”
Mr. Vane replied. “The basilica, being modelled on the human body, has
a more human feeling.”
The door opened before they rang, and the servants, having been on the
watch, welcomed them with smiling faces, kissing the hand of the
Signora. It was impossible not to believe in, and be touched by, their
sincerity and affection, which expressed themselves, not in looks and
words alone, but in actions. The house showed plainly, by its
exquisite cleanliness, that the absence of the mistress had not been a
holiday for them; and they had prepared everything they could to
please her, even to filling all the smaller vases with her favorite
flowers.
“You haven’t been spending your money for violets, you extravagant
children!” she exclaimed.
They had been watching to see if she would notice them, and were
delighted with her surprise and pleasure.
No, they had not spent money, but only time and strength. They had
gathered the flowers themselves in Villa Borghese.
“I do not take on myself to decide great social questions,” the
Signora said, as they sat talking over their supper. “I could not
decide them if I would. But this I must think: that, in most cases,
little happiness is to be found for people except in the position in
which they were born. Look at these two good creatures who serve us.
Their parents before them were servants, and they do not expect or
wish to be anything more. They want the rights their claim to which
they understand perfectly――fair wages, not too hard work, and an
occasional holiday. They know that the fatigues of the great, the
wealthy, and the ambitious are greater than theirs, though of a
different sort. If wealth were to drop upon them, they would grasp it,
no doubt, but it would embarrass them. They would never strive for it.
Do you know, I find their position dignified, even when they black my
shoes. It’s a nicer thing to do than toadying for fine friends, or
striving for place, or gnawing one’s heart out with envy.”
Mr. Vane smiled slightly.
“How is it about your swineherd, who changed his rough straw hat for a
triple crown, and had the royalty and nobility of centuries come to
kiss the foot that once hadn’t even a shoe to it?”
“Oh!” she replied, “the church is the beginning of the kingdom of
heaven on earth, and the meek and the poor in spirit possess it
already. Besides, I always make exception of those whom God has
especially endowed with gifts of nature or grace, or with both.
Besides, again, this man did not seek greatness; it was conferred on
him.”
Isabel felt called on to show her colors.
“America for ever!” she said. “Europe will do very well for the great,
and for those who are willing to remain small; but in _my_ country
there’s a fair field for everybody. Everybody there is born to as high
a position as he can work his way to, and his destiny is not in the
beginning of his life, but in the end of it. We are like Adams and
Eves new-made, and dominion is given us over the garden of the new
world.”
She paused for breath, and the Signora applauded. “Brava! I am willing
you should defeat me. I will call America not only the garden, but the
nursery-garden, of the new world, if you like. Long live your
seedlings!”
“How would you like it,” the girl went on, rather red in the
cheeks――“how would you like it, if you had been born in some very
humble position in life, instead of in the position of a lady, to have
some one tell you not to try to rise, but to stay where you were? Just
take it to yourself.”
“If I had been so born I should have been a different sort of person,
and cannot say how I should have felt,” the Signora replied
tranquilly. “If I had been a product of generations of obedience,
instead of generations of command, do not you see that the marriages
would have been different, the habits, the traditions, the education,
everything but the immortal spark and the common human nature? Or, if
I had been like what I am now, I think I should have looked for, and
found, the beauties and pleasures in my path.” She had been speaking
very quietly, but here she drew herself up a little, and a slight
color rose to her face as she went on: “I have never striven for any
of those things the chase of which seems so mean to me. It has never
occurred to me that I might be honored by any association, except with
a person either very good or very highly gifted by nature. The only
rank which impresses me is that in the church. For the rest――you have
heard the expression, ‘a distinction without a difference.’”
Isabel gave a puzzled sigh. “I never could understand you,” she said,
a little impatiently. “Sometimes you seem to me the haughtiest of
women; sometimes I think you not half proud enough. One moment you
seem to be a red republican, the next an aristocrat. I can’t make out
what you really are. You graduate your bows to an inch, according to
the rank you salute. I’ve seen your eyes flash lightning at a person
for being too familiar toward you; and then I find you talking about
the rights of the people almost like a communist.”
The Signora was crumbling a bit of bread while she listened, and did
not look up in answering: “I am quite ashamed of having made myself
the subject of conversation for so long a time. Excuse me! Shall we go
out to the _loggia_ for a little while? It is very warm here.”
“Permit me!” Mr. Vane interposed. He had been looking at his daughter
with great displeasure. “I would say, Isabel, that when you shall have
thought and learned more, you will, I hope, understand the Signora
better than you do now, and will try to imitate the justice which can
give to all their due, and not rob Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, I
would remind you that an intrusive familiarity is not a right of any
one, even to an inferior. And now, Signora, shall we go to the
_loggia_?”
Perhaps it was because she had never before been so sharply criticised
to her face; but the Signora had, certainly, never before known how
pleasant it is to be defended. This pleasure showed itself in her
manner as they went out. She usually held herself rather erect, and
had an air of composure which might easily be called pride; but now
there was a slight drooping of the head and bending of the form which
gave her an appearance of softness, as of one who droops content under
a protecting shadow. It was a softness which she, perhaps, needed.
They heard the door-bell ringing as they went up the _loggia_ steps,
and presently an exclamation in Isabel’s clear voice. She had not
followed them, they now perceived, being a little displeased or hurt
at the reproof to which she had been subjected.
“Who can have come?” said the Signora, listening. “It seems to be some
one whom Isabel knows.”
Bianca stood at the railing and looked intently at the windows of the
_sala_, faintly lighted from the room beyond. Two figures passed
through the dimness and disappeared. They might be coming to the
_loggia_, or they might be going to the sofa under that picture of
Penelope and Ulysses――the Signora and Mr. Vane, both a little
preoccupied, did not notice or care which. If any one wished to see
them, he could come to them.
Bianca, alone, stood looking steadily. The full moon, shining in her
face, had showed it for one moment as red as a rose; but as the
minutes passed, that lovely color faded, growing paler, till it was
whiter than the light that veiled it, sparkling like silver on its
beautiful outlines. Where was the sweet confidence that had been
growing up in her heart for the last few weeks? Gone like a
cloud-house built on a cloud. She was terrified at the fear and pain
that had taken the place of it, and began to lose sight of the cause
in trembling at the magnitude of the effect.
“It is surely wrong that anything in the world should make me feel
so,” she murmured. “What have I been doing? I must have thought of
this too much, and now is come my punishment. Here in Rome, where we
shall stay but a few months, I ought to have given all my mind and
heart to religion. It is a shame that I have not. I do not deserve the
privilege of being here.”
She strove to gather about her mind the sacred thoughts and
associations which the Christian finds in the heart of the Christian
world, to dwarf with the grand interests of eternity the passing
interests of time, and she was in some measure successful, to the
extent, at least, of inspiring herself with resolution, if not with
peace.
“Oh! how terrible is life,” she said, looking upward, as if to escape
the sight of it. “How it catches us unawares, sometimes, and wrings
the blood out of our hearts!” The prayer that always rose to her lips
in any necessity, “We fly to thy patronage,” escaped them now; and
then she swiftly and firmly read to herself her lesson: “I will be
friendly and gentle toward him. I will neither seek him nor shrink
from him, nor show any foolish consciousness, if I can help it; and I
will not be angry with Isabel. If he should care for me in the way I
have thought, he will come every step of the way for me; if he should
not, I shall not win either respect or affection by putting myself in
his way. For the rest, I will trust my future with God.”
“Bianca,” said her sister’s voice at her elbow, “who do you think has
come?”
Whatever might happen, it was a pleasure to meet him, and there was no
effort or embarrassment in her greeting. That moment of pain and
recollection had lifted her merely earthly affection so that it became
touched with the serious sweetness of heavenly charity, as the mist,
lifting at morning from the bosom of the river, where it has hung
through the dark hours, grows silver in the upper light. She held out
her hand and smiled. “You are welcome! Papa, here is an old friend of
ours.”
The Signora was instantly all attention. Her own affairs were quite
forgotten in those of her beloved young favorite. She was eager to see
this man, to watch him, to understand him. If he should suit her and
be good to Bianca, there was nothing she would not do for him; if he
should be lacking in principle, or in kindness to her darling, woe to
him! She would most certainly――
And here, just as she was meditating in what way she could most
fittingly punish him without hurting any one else, he turned, at Mr.
Vane’s introduction, and saluted her with a smile and glance that won
her completely. It was not the meeting of two strangers. He had
thought of his lady’s guardian with almost as much interest, perhaps,
as she had thought of her friend’s lover, and had expected to find in
her either a help or a hindrance. Her searching regard had not
disconcerted, then, but reassured him rather.
The Signora soon made an excuse to go into the house a moment, and
left the Vanes and their visitor to renew their intercourse without
interruption, and go through the mutual questioning of friends
reunited after many and varied experiences. Returning quietly after a
while, she stood in a corner of the _loggia_ and observed them. Mr.
Vane sat with a daughter at either side, and Marion stood opposite
them, leaning back against the railing and talking. The moon shone in
his face and flowed down his form, investing both, or revealing in
both, a beauty inexpressibly noble and graceful. One might say that he
looked as if he had been formed to music. A gold bronze color in his
hair showed where the light struck fully, a flash of dusky blue came
now and then from under his thick eye-lashes, and when he smiled one
knew that his teeth were perfect and snowy white. His voice, too, was
very pleasant, with a sound of laughter in it when he talked gayly――a
laughter like that we fancy in a brook. It was as though his thoughts
and fancies sparkled as they passed into the air.
“He is certainly fascinating,” the Signora thought. “I hope he does
not try to be so.”
He did not. No one could be more unconscious of the effect produced by
what was personal in his talk than Marion. If he sometimes appeared,
while talking, almost to forget his company, it was not because he
thought of himself, but because he was absorbed in his subject. He saw
plainly before his eyes that which he described, and he made others
see it. Bright, animated, varied, passing, not abruptly, but with the
grace of a bird that swims through the air, and alights for a moment,
now here, now there, on a tree, a shrine, a house-top, a mountain-top,
a window-ledge with an inside view, he carried his listeners along
with him, charmed and unconscious of time. He knew that they were
pleased, but gave the credit to the subject, and thought nothing of
himself. He would have kept silent if he had believed he could be
thought talking for effect.
The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of
his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every
moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at
every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways
of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the
pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside.
“If only he could find so much in worn and hackneyed people!” she
thought. “If he could compel the cold, the conventional, and the mean
to break the dull crust that has accumulated around the original
nature of them, what a boon it would be! There must be something
tolerable, perhaps a capacity for becoming even admirable, left in the
lowest. I would like to have him point it out or call it out; for
sometimes my charity fails.”
His recital finished, he stood an instant silent, looking down; then a
swift glance probed the shadowed corner where the Signora stood,
showing that he had all the while known she was there. It was not the
inquisitive nor intrusive look of one who wishes to show a knowledge
of what another has tried to hide from him, but a pleasant glance that
sought her presence, and begged her not to separate herself from them.
She came forward immediately, more pleased at the frank invitation
than if he had pretended to be unaware of her presence.
“I feel bound, in honor, to declare my intentions to you, Signora,” he
said; “for you may look on me as a foe when you know them, and it is
but right you should have fair warning. I have been told that you are
disposed to win this family for Rome, and I am equally disposed to
keep them in America. I should despair of success in such a rivalry
but that I believe I have right on my side. Is it peace or war?”
“Peace,” she replied. “I cannot war against right, and I ought not to
wish against it. Moreover, since the family are the majority, and have
free will, we can only try to influence, but must leave them to
decide. I am sorry, though, that you distrust Rome so.”
“Oh! it is not that,” he said quickly, “though, indeed, I do distrust
Rome for some people――or rather, I distrust some people for Rome. I
have known cases of the most deplorable deterioration of character
here in persons who were considered at home a little better than the
average. But that was not my thought in this instance. I hope our
friends will return to America for other reasons. No one should, it
seems to me, expatriate himself without a sort of necessity. The
native land assigned us by Providence would seem to be the theatre in
which it is our duty to act, and one of the motives of our visits to
other countries should be to enrich our own with whatever of good we
may find there. Every country needs its children; but America
particularly needs all her good citizens, and the church in America
needs good Catholics. That is not a true Christian who spends a whole
life abroad without necessity. The climate is not an excuse, for we
have every climate; economy has ceased to be a sufficient motive; and
mere pleasure is no reason for a Catholic to give.”
“What, then, may be considered a good reason?” the Signora asked,
wondering if she were to be included in the catalogue of the
condemned.
“An artist may study here a good many years,” was the reply. “The
sculptor or the painter finds here his school. But I maintain that
when the sculptor and painter are out of school, and begin to work in
the strength of their own genius, if they have any, their place and
their subjects are to be found in their own land. If they stay here
they will never come to anything. They will only produce trite and
worn-out imitations. The writer has a longer mission here, perhaps the
longest; for thoughts are at home in every land, and that is the best
where thoughts can best clothe themselves in words. There is another
class who must be allowed to choose for themselves, though it would be
better if they would choose to endure to the end in their own
country――that is, certain tender souls from whom have been stripped
friends and home, leaving them bare to a world that wounds them too
much. Here, I have been assured and can well believe, they find a
contentment not possible to them anywhere else. Their imaginations had
flown here in childhood and youth, and had unconsciously made a nest
to which they could themselves follow at need, and find a sort of
repose. If they have not the courage or the strength to stay in the
midst of our ceaseless, and sometimes even merciless, activity, I have
not a word of blame for them. I would not breathe, even gently,
against the bruised reeds.”
He spoke with such tender feeling that for a moment no one said
anything; then he added, smiling: “I hope the Signora does not think
me too dogmatic.”
“I think you are quite right,” she replied.
“You have forgotten one large class of Americans who may be excused,
and even lauded and encouraged, for taking up a permanent residence in
Europe,” Mr. Vane said.
“What, pray?”
“Snobs,” he replied solemnly.
The subject was whirled away on a little laugh, and a change of
position showed them Annunciata on the shadowed side of the _loggia_,
making coffee at a little table there, at the same time that Adreano
offered them ices and cake. The place where the girl stood was quite
darkened by the wall of Carlin’s studio and by an over-growing
grape-vine, and the moonlight about revealed of her only a dark
outline. But the flame of the spirit she was burning threw a pale blue
light into her face and over her hands, flickering so that the light
seemed rather to shine from, than on, her.
“It looks Plutonian,” Marion said. “We are, perhaps, on a visit to
Proserpine.”
“Speaking of Proserpine reminds, me of pomegranate-seeds,” the Signora
said; “and pomegranate-seeds remind me of something I heard very
prettily said last summer by a very pretty young lady. We were in
Subiaco, and had risen very early in the morning to go up to the
church of St. Benedict. I noticed that Lily was very serious and
silent, so did not speak, but only looked at her while we waited a
little in the _sala_ for another member of our party. She walked
slowly up and down, and seemed to be praying; presently, as if
recollecting that we had a difficult climb before us, she seated
herself near a table on which a servant had just piled up the fruit
she had been buying. Among it was a pomegranate, broken open, and
bleeding a drop or two of crimson juice out on to the dark wood. Lily
drew a small, pointed leaf from an orange stem, and made a knife of it
to separate the grains of the pomegranate, presently lifted one, and
then another, and another to her mouth. I only thought how pretty her
daintiness was as she absently fed like a bird, when all at once she
turned as crimson as the juicy grain she had just eaten, and sprang up
from the table, throwing the leaf away, and uttering an exclamation of
such distress that I thought she must have been poisoned. Her
exclamation was odd: ‘O Pluto!’
“‘You see,’ she explained after a minute, ‘I was saying the rosary,
and had finished it, when I caught sight of the fruit here. And I
thought then that, though our prayers may be flowers before the
throne, our actions are fruits. Then I sat down to look at the
pomegranate, and wondered what sort of a good action it was like; and
while I wondered, I got tangled in a thicket of similitudes, and
wandered off into mythology; and as I divided the grains I remembered
poor Proserpine, and how Pluto, who knew well she could not leave him
after having eaten, induced her to eat three pomegranate grains. I
wondered if they were just like these, and how they tasted to her, and
put one and another in my mouth, imagining myself in her place, and
that presently my mother would come seeking me, and want to carry me
back to heaven with her, and would find that I could not go because of
these same pomegranate seeds. And then, my mind catching on the word
Mother, which I had just been repeating on my rosary so many times, I
remembered the Mother of God, and began to search for some Christian
meaning in the myth. I thought Ceres was the giver of wheat and grain,
therefore of bread, and Mary gave us the Bread of Life. Ceres came
searching and mourning for her daughter, snatched away by the prince
of darkness, and Mary watches and prays over those whom the enemy has
snatched away from the garden of God, and who cry out to her for help.
Ceres found that her daughter, having tasted of the fruit of the lower
regions, was bound to spend one-half of her life there. Before I had
time to find a Christian parallel for that part of the story, it
flashed over me that my three pomegranate-seeds had cost me heaven for
to-day, and deprived me of a privilege I might never have again. O
Signora! I was going to receive Communion to-day in the grotto of St.
Benedict!’”
“It is not often,” the Signora added, “that one can retrace the
wandering path of a reverie as my poor Lily did. Her story reminded me
of an illustrated poem, with wheat and roses wreathed around the
leaves and hanging in among the verses.”
The bell announcing visitors, they went into the house again, and
found Mr. Coleman and Signor Leonardo, the latter having come to see
when his pupils would wish to resume their lessons.
“I can assure you, Signor, that I am the only one who has thought of
study during the last three days,” Isabel said. “You should commend
me. I have faithfully learned an irregular verb every morning while
taking my coffee. That is my rule; and it is becoming such a habit
with me that the mere sight of a cup and saucer suggests to me an
irregular verb. The night we spent at Monte Compatri I learned three,
not being able to sleep for the fleas.”
The Italian murmured some inarticulate commendation of her industry,
and dropped his eyes. Her perfectly free and off-hand manner
confounded him. To his mind such a lack of the downcast reserve of the
girls he was accustomed to regard as models of behavior indicated a
very strange disposition and an education still more strange. Yet he
could not doubt that Miss Vane was respectable.
Mr. Coleman, who was hovering near, begged permission to make a
comment, which he would not be thought to intend as a criticism. “You
say the night you ‘spent’ at Monte Compatri. Is it, may I ask, true
that Americans always speak of _spending_ time? In England we say we
_pass_ time. I have heard the peculiarity attributed to your nation,
the reason given for it being that Americans are almost always engaged
in business of some kind, and naturally use the expressions of trade.”
Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to
regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the
Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.
“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I
believe we Americans do almost always speak of spending time. It may
be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be
aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression,
and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of
trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly
beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English
friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably
thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”
Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered
out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.
“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences
as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them,
my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language
better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One
frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very
best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that
you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you,
however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and
I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W. M.
Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless
language in which they are――not clothed so much as――armed. He has
little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes in
_chiar-oscuro_.
“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she
continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted
visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behave
themselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities
we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the
impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”
Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself
as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national
habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the
slightest relapse.
Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of
Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with
him after a while, and soon found him a liberal――not one of those who
make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest
man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.
“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said
somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your
country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a
country of which we can boast and be proud.”
Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the
history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride
felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other
nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this
self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and
loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of
boast――war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone
on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never
failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into
another, instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been
ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity
in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her own _unique_
advantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous
sisters. The _rôle_ does not suit her.”
“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and
find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we
can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”
“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other
returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but
worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by
liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he
entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of
starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate
you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern
men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they
should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to
the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in
being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but
only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in
many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize
which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere
looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world,
who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the
mere half trying? You have proved your own weakness, and merely
exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves
so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints
which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have
been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with
contempt.”
The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with
the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end
yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so
easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and
there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our
visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight
against generations of ghosts.”
“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the
American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even
greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of
circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her
proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta,
the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold
to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and
join in the dusty race?”
“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor
Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”
The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she
never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion
the better part of valor.
“How odd it is,” the lady remarked, when they were left alone with
Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most
impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know
when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to
feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of
it, Mr. Vane?”
“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But
may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances
being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?――as, when
we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to
listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be
discordant, is intolerable.”
Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him
arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on
being appealed to.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment?
May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we
may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no
reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health,
like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such
a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of
anything which reminds us that it is not.”
The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when
she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be
surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke,
appeared not to see.
“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the
two went to their rooms together. “I can’t imagine what set me
blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t
know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”
“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly.
“When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and
speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am
almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a
surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red
as――”
“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek.
“Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when
I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”
“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night
without another word.
“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,”
thought her friend, and wondered a little.
TO BE CONTINUED.
ROMA――AMOR
“Strength is none on earth save Love.”
――AUBREY DE VERE.
SUGGESTED BY A STATUE BY MISS A. WHITNEY EXHIBITED IN BOSTON,
APRIL, 1876.
I.
Upon the statue’s base I read its name――
“Rome,” nothing more; so leaving to each thought
To mould in mind the form the sculptor wrought,
The living soul within the dead clay’s frame.
And was this Rome, so weak and sad and old,
So crouching down with withered lip and cheek,
With trembling fingers stretched as if to seek,
The thoughtless wanderers’ idly-given gold?――
Some Roman coins loose-lying in her lap,
Some treasure saved from out her ancient wealth,
Or begged with downcast look as if by stealth,
Fearing her end, and wishing still, mayhap,
Enough to hold to pay stern Charon’s oar
When the dead nations o’er the Styx it bore.
II.
And was this Rome――this shrunken, shivering form,
This beggared greatness sitting abject down;
Her throne a broken shaft’s acanthus crown
Whose crumbling beauty still outlived the storm?
Where were her legions? eagles? where her pride?
The conqueror’s laurel binding once her head?――
She, the world’s mistress, begging so her bread
At her own gates, her empire’s wreck beside!
Withered and old, craven in form and face,
Yet keeping still some gift from out the past
In the broad mantle o’er her shoulders cast,
Where lingered yet her ancient, haughty grace――
Conscious each fold of that far-sounding name,
Imperial still in spite of loss and shame.
III.
And was this Rome? Nor faith, nor hope, nor love
Writ in the wrinkled story of her face,
Where weariness and sad old age had place,
For earthly days no cheer, no light above!
All earthly greatness to this measure shrunk?
With burning heart I gazed. Was this the thought
The sculptor in the answering clay had wrought――
Cæsar’s proud impress in the beggar sunk
For men to mock at in her weak old age?
Was this a living Rome, or one, long dead,
That waked to life a modern Cæsar’s tread,
Claiming with outstretched hand her heritage?
While the strong nations she once triumphed o’er
Scarce heeded her they served with awe before!
IV.
Where, then, was she that was Eternal called?
Bore she no likeness of immortal youth?
Did she lament her cruel dower in truth
As once Tithonus by that gift enthralled?
All joy of youth long perished, living on
In dread possession of the pitiless gift,
In hopeless age set helplessly adrift,
Her bread the bitter thought of days bygone!
No word immortal on the statue writ,
Save the deep bitterness of graven name;
No trumpet telling dumbly of her fame,
Nor unquenched lamp by vestal virgin lit――
Youth, empire, and her people’s love all o’er,
Unqueened, and still undying, evermore!
V.
O artist! lurks there in your sculptured thought
No vision of another Rome than this?
Along the antique border of her dress
I sought in vain to see the symbol wrought
That she has steadfast borne since first its touch
Did her, the holy one, e’er consecrate
The tender mother of the desolate,
Consoler of poor hearts o’erburdened much,
Pure spouse of Him who is Eternal Life,
Inheritor of beauty ever new
Yet ever ancient, ’missioned to subdue
Beneath love’s yoke the nations lost in strife――
Rome’s eagles shadowed not a realm so wide
As lights the cross, her trust from Him that died.
VI.
O Rome! imperial lady, Christian queen!
Art thou discrowned and desolate indeed?
All vainly doth thy smitten greatness plead?
Reads none the sorrow of thy brow serene?
Perished thy eagles, and o’erthrown thy cross?
Thou banished from possession of thine own,
While they who rob thee fling thee mocking down
An ancient Roman robe to hide thy loss,
That the world, seeing thy fair-seeming state,
Shall greet the Cæsar who gives thee such grace,
Nor heed the appealing sorrow in thy face,
Nor hear thy cry like His who at the gate
Of Jericho cried out! Bide thou thy day――
Thy Western children for thee weep and pray.
VII.
So once in Pilate’s hall thy Master stood
In Roman purple robed, and none divined
The holy mystery in those folds enshrined――
The sorrowing God-head lifted on the Rood.
Such was his portion here; with thee he shares
His grief divine. Ah! grandly art thou crowned――
Fair in the light of truth thy brows around――
With thorns like his, while thy strong hand uprears
His wide-armed cross, thou leaning on its strength!
What though thy constant sorrow shade thine eyes?
Undying hope about thy sweet mouth lies;
That faith is thine that has been all the length
Of centuries past, that shall be centuries o’er;
And on thy bosom writ I read――_Amor_.
VIII.
Each letter seeming with a ruddy hue――
Won from His Passion who is Perfect Love――
To glow the whiteness of thy robe above,
Thy own heart staining red thy raiment through.
What though thy hands are fettered as they lift
The blessing of the cross? They still can guide,
Like Israel’s cloud, thy children scattered wide;
Still are they warning to lost flocks adrift
On mist-enshrouded slopes; still can they bless
Thy faithful ones who, weeping, peace implore,
Who, striving, spread thy realm far countries o’er.
Still rulest thou while kings, as shadows, pass;
And still the weary, craving love and home,
Peace in thy bosom seek, Eternal Rome!
CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION.
In no portion of the world will the adventurous traveller feel himself
more impressed by a sense of mystery and of awe than in that vast
plain which rises from the Persian Gulf and stretches away
northwestwardly along the mountains of Kurdistan until it reaches
those of Armenia. From the rivers which water it the Greeks called one
portion of it Mesopotamia. Other portions are known as Chaldea and
Assyria. In this plain it was that the Lord God planted the Garden of
Eden, bringing forth all manner
“Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit.
Blossoms and fruit at once of golden hue
Appeared, with gay enamel’d colors mixed,
On which the sun more glad impress’d his beams
Than in the fair ev’ning cloud or humid bow,
When God shower’d the earth; so lovely seemed
That landskip.”――_Par. Lost_, b. iv.
Here still How the Euphrates and the Tigris, named in Holy Writ as two
of the rivers of Eden. Their waters still fertilize a soil which,
desolate and accursed though it now seems, will yield, even to rude
and imperfect culture, a harvest of an hundred-fold. Here our first
parents spent their too brief hours of innocence. Here, too, driven
for their disobedience from Eden, they wandered in sorrow, and tilled
the earth in the sweat of their brow.
On this plain, when the waters of the Deluge had passed away, did the
children of Noe, as yet of the same tongue, assemble together, and,
forgetful of the power of God, say to each other: “Let us make a city
and a tower, the top of which may reach to heaven; and let us make our
name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands” (Gen. xi.
4). From this centre, when the Lord had confounded their speech and
humbled their pride, did they go forth to people the whole earth.
Here walked Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord, ruling his
fellow-men. Here he built Babylon, afterwards so renowned in history.
On this plain, too, across the Tigris, were founded Resen and Calah
and Ninive, cities of power in the earlier days of history.
For more than fifteen centuries this plain was the most favored spot
of the ancient world. As the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Mede, the
Persian, and the Greek succeeded each other on the throne, the
tributes and the spoils of surrounding nations were brought hither,
and were here lavishly squandered in every mode that could display the
magnificence or perpetuate the memory of mighty sovereigns. Each
monarch seemed, with the land, to inherit the ambitious desires of the
builders of Babel. Each strove to found cities, to erect towers, to
build walls, and to raise structures which neither man nor time nor
the hand of Heaven should destroy. All through those centuries the
work was carried on, each age striving to excel in grandeur and
strength of work all that had gone before. Neither time nor wealth nor
skill was spared; nothing that man could do was left undone.
How vain and futile is man’s mightiest effort! The decree went forth
that Ninive should be laid waste, and that Babylon should be as when
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.
This fertile plain, once filled with gorgeous cities and countless
villages, checkered with fruitful groves and cultivated fields, has
become a wild, deserted, treeless waste, over which the wandering Arab
drives his flock in search of a precarious pasturage, and from which
even he is forced to flee as the grass withers under the burning heats
of summer. The towers and temples and palaces, rich with statuary and
painting, and whose sides, glistening with gold and shining brass,
reflected the dazzling rays of the sun for leagues around, have all
disappeared. In their stead a few mud-walled and thatch-roofed
cottages, pervious to wind and rain, may be seen clustering around
some ancient Christian shrine, or are falling to fragments since the
last raid of the pasha or the rapacity of the Arabs drove the
miserable tenants from even such humble abodes. It is only at Mosul
and Bagdad, seats of Turkish civil rule――such as it is――and at a few
other points, that anything to be called a town can be found. And even
there little more is to be seen than an accumulation of many such huts
around a few rude stone dwellings and churches. For ages the
inhabitants have been ground to the dust by Turkish misrule. Long
since stripped of everything, they are the poorest of the poor. He
holds life and property by a frail tenure indeed whom the greedy pasha
suspects of possessing aught that can be seized. So thoroughly have
the glories of old and the outward traces of ancient grandeur passed
away that for a long time antiquarians disputed where on this plain
Ninive, and where Babylon, stood.
It is a vast, treeless, uncultivated, arid blank on the surface of the
earth. Stern, shapeless mounds rise like low, flat-topped hills from
the parched plains――rude, unsightly heaps, whose sides, here and there
stripped of earth by the rains of winter, disclose within masses of
brickwork and fragments of pottery. Desolation meets desolation on
every side. The traveller sees no graceful column still standing erect
in solitary beauty, no classic capital or richly-carved frieze fallen
to the earth, and half-appearing, half-hidden amid the luxuriant
growth of the soil; nothing that charms in its present picturesque
beauty, nothing that he can rebuild in imagination. He travels on, day
after day, over the parched plain, amid these sombre mounds, and feels
that in truth this is a cemetery of nations accursed for their sins.
The ever-recurring sameness of the dreary prospect around him, before
him, behind him, impresses even more deeply on his mind the grand
truth that, do what man may, God reigns and rules and conquers. Every
step shows him how completely are fulfilled the threats made of old,
in the days of their luxury and pride, against the sensual and sinful
peoples who dwelt here. The words of the messengers of God have indeed
come true.
For the last third of a century a fresh interest has drawn the minds
of men to this plain. The silence of twenty-five centuries has been
broken, and these old mounds are lifting up their voices, as it were,
and telling us of the glories of ancient times, and how men then lived
and battled, what arts they practised and what knowledge they
possessed, in what gods they believed and how they worshipped. The
tale is a wondrous one.
The French government, which still claims throughout the Levant the
right of protecting the Catholic Christians of every rite, under the
rule of the Moslems, who are united to the Holy See, had stationed in
Mosul in 1841, as French consul, M. Botta, a ripe scholar,
enthusiastically devoted to Oriental studies. Across the Tigris, and
in sight of Mosul, stood a huge mound. The natives called it
_Kouyunjik_, and had vague traditions of carved stones and figures
having been found in or about it from time to time. M. Botta bethought
him of excavating the mound to test the truth of such tales. For a
time his labors were without any satisfactory result. He was induced
to leave Kouyunjik for a time, and to work instead on the mound of
Khorsabad, some fifteen miles distant. Here his very first attempt at
excavation brought him down to a thick brick wall. Digging down by its
side, he saw that it was lined with slabs bearing sculptures in
bass-relief, and inscriptions in some unknown language. Continuing his
trench, he groped his way along the wall, until it broke off, with a
face at right angles to the face he had followed. A few feet further
on the wall commenced again as before. He had evidently passed a
doorway. Pursuing his course steadily and eagerly, and turning corner
after corner, he at length came to the point whence he had started. He
had completed the inner circuit of a room. Then, going through the
door already discovered, he led his trenches along the walls of a
second chamber lined, like the first, with slabs bearing illegible
inscriptions and bass-relief figures. In six months six halls, some of
them 115 feet long, were fully explored, and over 450 feet of
sculptures and inscriptions were accurately copied. The copies, with
an able report, were sent to the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris.
These startling discoveries were hailed with enthusiasm by the
antiquarians of France and of Europe generally. The French government
at once supplied M. Botta with ample funds, and sent to his assistance
M. Flandin, an able draughtsman. The work was vigorously pushed on
until the entire mound of Khorsabad had been thoroughly investigated.
On an original elevation or mound of earth, either natural or
artificial, a vast platform of brick-work had been laid. On this rose
the building itself, evidently a magnificent royal palace, over 1,200
feet in front and 500 feet deep. Within, it was divided by thick walls
of masonry into numerous halls or rooms, many of them more than 100
feet long, but few of them exceeding 35 feet in breadth. The external
walls and these party-walls were from twelve to twenty feet in
thickness, and were evidently intended to bear a heavy superstructure
of upper stories. These, however, have all perished; nothing remains
but the walls on the ground-floor. In fact, they rise only about ten
or fifteen feet. Within and without they were lined with limestone
slabs ten feet high, bearing inscriptions and bass-relief figures. The
same subject often occupied many slabs in succession. Thus, the entire
panelling of one long front, of 1,200 feet, seemed to be occupied by a
single subject――the triumphant procession of a king returning
victorious from some war――the whole presented in a long succession of
figures above the natural size. Winged human figures with the heads of
eagles――the deities of Assyria――led the way, each bearing the sacred
pine-cone in one hand and a basket in the other. To them succeeded
priests leading victims for the sacrifice. Then came the monarch in
his richest robes, attended by his chief ministers, his eunuchs, and
his courtiers. Other officials in a long line bore the various
insignia of royalty. Soldiers came next, escorting the tribute-bearers,
laden some with miniature representations of the cities and towns and
castles that had been conquered, others with the tribute itself and
with the spoils of the conquered nations. Lastly, groups of captives,
with fettered limbs and drooping heads, closed the long array which
proclaimed to men the prowess and grandeur of the monarch who reared
this palace. Within the palace the walls were lined with still other
inscriptions and sculptures of battles, of sacrifices, processions, of
royal audiences, and of lion hunts in the forests and mountains.
MM. Botta and Flandin copied as accurately as possible all these
inscriptions and figures as soon as found. It was well they did so.
The palace had been destroyed by fire. The limestone slabs had been
overheated and calcined. A brief exposure to the weather was now
sufficient to cause them to crumble into dust.
In 1845 Mr. (now Sir) Austin Henry Layard commenced excavations first
in a different mound――that of Nimroud, some twenty miles distant from
Mosul in another direction――and then at Kouyunjik, which M. Botta had
abandoned; and afterwards at Karamles, at Birs Nimroud, and elsewhere.
He was rewarded by the discovery of four other royal palaces, and of
an immense amount of inscriptions, bass-reliefs, and curious Assyrian
statuary, large shipments of all of which he sent to the British
Museum in London.
We need not say with what astonishment and what interest men looked at
this vast amount of Assyrian antiquities, so unexpectedly discovered,
and now to be seen in London and in Paris; nor need we follow the
steps of the various exploring expeditions that went forth in
succession from Europe to delve yet again in those rich mines of
archæology. In 1876 they were still at it, and doubtless the work will
long continue; for there remains much to reward a search.
The first emotions of astonishment over, the scholars of Europe left
aside for a time the sculptured figures, and turned to those
multitudinous and inscrutable inscriptions as in truth the richest and
most valuable portion of the find. In what language or languages, and
by what system, are they written? Does each sign, or group of these
curious signs, spell a word letter after letter, as modern writing
does? Or do they give syllable after syllable, after the manner of
some ancient people? Or does each group simply mean a word, as the
Chinese characters do? Can we answer? Is it possible to ascertain the
purport and meaning of these records?
These were the questions puzzling the scholars of Europe as they
looked on the inscriptions placed before them. More puzzling
questions, one would think, could scarcely be devised. How much or how
little was already known about this style of inscriptions, these
strange arrow-headed, nail-formed, wedge-shaped, claviform, or
cuneiform letters, as men styled them?
They were evidently the “Assyrian letters” mentioned by Herodotus. But
neither he nor any other ancient writer gave any aid whatever towards
their interpretation.
The moderns could tell little of them. In 1620 Figueroa, the Spanish
traveller and diplomatist, published some account of the inscriptions
he had seen in Persepolis, and gave a fac-simile of one line of this
arrow-headed writing. A year or two later Pietro Della Valle, who
spent years travelling in Asia, published another specimen, and, from
a general consideration of its appearance, decided that the writing,
be it in what language it may, was to be read from left to right, as
European languages are read, and not from right to left, as the
Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and other Semitic languages are to be read,
nor from top to bottom, as the Chinese read their inscriptions. But
beyond this he could not go.
Fifty years later a French traveller, M. Chardin, published drawings
of the inscriptions he had copied in Persepolis. Other travellers gave
further accounts of such inscriptions at Persepolis, Hamadan, and
elsewhere in Western Persia. They spoke especially of the magnificent
inscription of Bisutun or Behistun. Following the grand caravan route
from Bagdad to Ispahan, the traveller finds himself in the beautiful
valley of the Kerkha River. On his left rise rugged limestone cliffs.
At one spot the road runs at the base of a gigantic perpendicular
cliff, fully 1,700 feet high. In some ancient time workmen made their
way up, by scaffolding, three hundred feet and more above the road,
where they smoothed a large space of the face of the rock, cutting out
weak and soft portions, and carefully plugging the cavities with
firmer and stronger pieces of the same stone. On this smoothed surface
they cut their figures of majestic stature. A monarch, armed and
triumphant, stands erect, one foot pressing on a prostrate foe. Above
his head floats the winged form of a heathen deity. Before him stands
a line of nine other captives, united together by a cord passing from
neck to neck. For the king and for each captive there is a short
inscription. Below, on the face of the rock there are hundreds of
lines of inscriptions, every letter, over an inch in length, being cut
neatly and carefully into the smoothed and perpendicular face of the
cliff. The whole was then floated, as the plasterers would say, with a
wash of fluid glass, which in drying left a transparent, silicious
crust or film, saving the work from the ravages of wind and rain and
time. Much of this coating is still in place, more of it has flaked
off, and fragments of it may be gathered from the debris at the foot
of the cliff.
In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr visited those regions, and, after long study,
came to the opinion that there were here three different styles of
inscription, probably in three different languages. In this case one
of them was probably the Persian. From that date on Niebuhr, Münter,
Grotefend, De Sacy, Saint-Martin, Rask, and others pored over these
strange letters, studied out the Sanscrit and the Zend or ancient
Persian, and, devoting themselves laboriously to the simpler and
presumed Persian portions of the inscriptions, finally succeeded in
making out one letter after another, and discovered that this part, at
least, was of course to be read alphabetically. They began to guess at
the sense of some oft-recurring word or phrase, or of what were
apparently royal names or titles. Great was their exultation when they
were sure at last that a certain oft-recurring group of characters
(which we have no type to print) was to be read “Khsháyathíya
Khsháyathíyánám,” and meant “King of kings.” By 1836 Lassen, Burnouf,
and Sir Henry Rawlinson claimed to be able to make out, at least in a
general way, the sense of those Persian portions. Other scholars
followed them, making still further advances. Those Persian
inscriptions were found to commemorate the deeds of Cyrus, Darius,
Xerxes, and other Persian monarchs of their epoch.
The inscriptions were, as Niebuhr had conjectured, in three languages.
The second, called the Scythic or Turanian, was in characters more
difficult and more complex than the Persian writing. The third, and
still more difficult, portions were supposed to be in some ancient
Assyrian language――perhaps even in several distinct forms or dialects
of it. They had not yet been read when Botta and Layard made their
discoveries in the mounds, and filled the museums of Europe with
thousands of inscriptions, whole or fragmentary, all evidently of this
third class. The task was taken up by the scholars of Europe with
renewed ardor. If the difficulties were great, they had at least a
fair starting point in the Persian portions already deciphered; but
the difficulty was still great. Those groups of arrow-headed
characters seemed to shift their meaning in a bewildering fashion.
Sometimes they represented letters, sometimes syllables, sometimes
words or monograms. Again, the same group sometimes seemed to
represent one letter, and at another quite a different letter; while,
as if to compensate this multiplicity of values of a single sign, it
was evident that frequently several signs had the same identical
value, and might be interchanged one for another. Add to all this the
fact that they were not yet sure in what language or what dialect
these inscriptions of Ninive were written, nor, even in a general way,
what they treated of, and it will be clear that the task of
deciphering them was in truth a puzzling one. The more clearly men saw
what was to be done, the more difficult it appeared to do it. Progress
could be made only by a series of tentative guesses. When one
proclaimed that he had attained some result, however small, that
result was attacked by others, and sometimes proved to be illusory.
However, despite of thousands of failures, despite of ridicule and
disbelief, progress was gradually made. In March, 1857, Mr. Fox Talbot
selected the first cuneiform inscription which had been lithographed
by the trustees of the British Museum, and proposed it as a test. Four
of the chief students of this new literature were to make, each apart,
and without consultation with the others, his own translation of it,
to be sent under seal to the Royal Asiatic Society. When all had come
in, the seals were to be broken and the several translations compared.
In May, 1857, this was done. The following translations of one passage
of the inscription will serve as a sample of how they agreed:
_Rawlinson_: “Then I went on to the country of Comukha,
which was disobedient, and withheld the tribute and
offerings due to Ashur, my lord. I conquered the whole
country of Comukha. I plundered their movables, their
wealth, and their valuables. Their cities I burned with
fire, I destroyed and ruined.”
_Talbot_: “I then advanced against Kumikhi, a land of the
unbelievers, who had refused to pay taxes and tribute unto
Ashur, my lord. The land of Kumikhi throughout all its
extent I ravaged. Their women, etc., I carried off. Their
cities I burned with fire, destroyed, and overthrew.”
_Oppert_: “In those days I went to the people of Dummukh,
the enemy who owed tribute and gifts to the god Ashur, my
lord. I subdued the people of Dummukh; for its
punishment(?). I took away their captives, their herds, and
their treasures; their cities I burnt in fire; I destroyed,
I undermined them.”
_Hincks_: “At that time I went to a disaffected part of
Qummukh, which had withheld the tribute by weight and tale
belonging to Assur, my lord. I subdued the land of Qummukh
as far as it extended. I brought out their women, their
_slaves_, and their cattle; their towns I burned with fire,
threw down, and dug up.”
Such a wonderful agreement of those four translators in deciphering
the text of this inscription was proof that the key had been found,
and that ere long this vast cuneiform literature would emerge from the
tomb in which it had lain buried for over two thousand five hundred
years. The experiment was felt to have been eminently successful.
We need not follow the further labors of those and other Orientalists
in this new field of research, as volume after volume appeared in
French, in German, and in English, giving translations of texts, and
rewriting the ancient history of those Eastern lands. For years it
seemed that this would be the chief literary result of those
discoveries. The lines of monarchs were established, gaps were filled
up, broken links were restored, contested dates were settled. Much
light was thrown on manners and customs, and on the religious systems
of the peoples, their wars and conquests, and on the duration,
successions, and vicissitudes of the various dynasties which ruled
over them. A by no means small library might be formed of the works on
these subjects published within the last quarter of a century.
As it became known that Orientalists were gradually obtaining the
power of deciphering these Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, and as the
extent of the field thus opened to fresh researches was gradually
developed, hopes that seemed extravagant were indulged as to the
results soon to be reached, and not wholly without reason. These
ancient Assyrians seemed to have been possessed with an extraordinary
passion for recording anything and everything in their mysterious
characters. Monarch after monarch had taken pride in putting up
pompous inscriptions to perpetuate the memory of his victories and of
the glorious events of his reign. From such monuments might we not
obtain some record of their successive dynasties, and learn something
of the history of their empires and kingdoms? Those grand bass-reliefs
of marble or alabaster, representing deities, monarchs, sacred bulls,
or other mysterious figures; every representation of a battle-scene,
of a triumphal procession, of the building of a city, of the sailing
of boats, or of what else you please, had each its own cuneiform
lettering, now about to tell us its long-hidden meaning. Everywhere
seals, cylinders, signets, or other small objects of value, whether of
agate, of chalcedony, or of other hard and precious stone, or of
terra-cotta, had its group of emblematic figures, often with an
inscription in minutest characters, nicely cut with a lapidary’s
skill. The very bricks used in building those huge walls, hundreds of
feet long and ten or fifteen feet thick, bore nearly every one of
them, in cuneiform characters, some name; perhaps that of the monarch
who built the palace, or of the architect who planned and directed the
work, perhaps that of the workman who made the brick itself and laid
it in the wall.
And more than all this, all through the _débris_ of earth now filling
chamber after chamber, and more abundantly towards the bottom, the
explorers found countless fragments of terra-cotta or baked clay
tablets, bearing generally cuneiform inscriptions on both sides. Some
of those fragments were not an inch in length or breadth; others were
even a foot square or larger. It was possible sometimes to fit a
number of fragments together. They had been found lying near together,
and had originally formed one piece, that was broken when it fell. A
thorough examination of the character of the material and of the work,
and their present condition, made it clear that originally they were
slabs or tablets of fine clay, well kneaded and pressed into form.
While still comparatively soft, they had received the inscriptions at
the hands of skilled scribes. This the marks of the metal tool or
style used in inscribing the letters on the yielding clay made quite
evident. The tablets so inscribed were then hardened by baking, and
were placed in upper rooms of the palace devoted to the purposes of a
library. When at last the palace itself was destroyed by fire, the
heat may have cracked or otherwise injured some of them. Their fall,
as the rooms were destroyed and the slabs precipitated into a heated
mass of ruins in the lower masonry chambers, must have broken most of
them into fragments. The spade and mattock, as men overturned again
and again this mass of _débris_ to recover gold and silver and jewelry
buried in it, may have continued the work of destruction; and perhaps
time has since done more than all these agencies. For the yearly rains
of twenty-five centuries, sinking into this soil and taking up
chemical agents from the mass on every side, would in turn react on
these plates of clay, producing crystals in every minutest fissure or
cavity, and slowly but surely dividing them into minuter and minuter
fragments. However, the fragments are there, covered with writing. In
the mound of Kouyunjik alone there may be, it is judged, twenty-five
or thirty thousand of them. How many more may be found in other mounds
of Ninive? And as to the mounds of Babylon and its vicinity, so little
as yet has been done to them in comparison with the work at Ninive
that we may say they are still almost untouched.
If the Assyrians had libraries, and if those libraries have come down
to us, be it even only as tattered leaves and torn volumes, may we not
yet gather together these fragments, or at least some portion of them,
decipher what is written, and so become acquainted with something of
this ancient Assyrian literature? What did men then know? What did
they believe? What did they write? It was hoped that we were on the
very eve of discoveries equalling, if not far surpassing, in extent
and in importance, those made in the earlier half of this century by
the discovery of how to read the ancient hieroglyphs of Egypt. We
cannot say that these hopes have so far been fully realized. Far from
it. We are still at the beginning of the work; but the work goes
bravely on.
Attention was at first, and naturally, directed to the grander and
more prominent public monuments and inscriptions. From them much has
been learned of the series of Assyrian monarchs and concerning their
deeds, and light has been thrown on many obscure points of chronology.
The statements of the Holy Scriptures in reference to the relations of
the Jewish people with Babylon and Ninive during the thousand years
preceding Christ, and Biblical references to the character and customs
of the Assyrians and Babylonians, have been wonderfully illustrated.
Other classes of inscriptions, on fragments of the terra-cotta tiles
or tablets, gave accounts of the divisions of the empire, the
character, and almost the statistics, of the provinces. The laws and
usages then in force, and the peculiarities of their domestic life,
are sometimes presented with a vividness that startles us.
Strange to say, and equally to the surprise and the delight of those
now laboring in the work of deciphering this enigmatical writing,
quite a number of tablets were found written for the special purpose
of explaining to the ancient students of Assyria, in simpler and more
legible, or rather more _pronounceable_, characters, the meaning and
the sound of the more abstruse and ideographic characters so
frequently occurring in the texts of the inscriptions. These supply us
to-day with what we may call, and what is in reality, a dictionary of
their hard words, giving their correct pronunciation and their
meaning.
Still other tablets were devoted to astronomy, to astrology, to
medicine, to sorcery, to hymns of religion and prayers of sacrifice,
to history, to geography, to poetry, and to whatever might be embraced
by the term Assyrian belles-lettres.
Acceptable as all this is, something more was expected. Was there
nothing to illustrate the earlier history of mankind, nothing in
relation to those earlier events which are narrated by Moses as having
occurred in this very land? They are dear to us because intertwined
with our religious and moral training. Was it possible that there was
no trace whatever of them, not even an allusion to them, to be found
in all this mass of Assyrian writings?
Berosus, a Babylonian priest of the time of Alexander the Great, about
three hundred years before Christ, wrote a history of Babylon. The
work itself has perished; but we have some accounts of it in sundry
Greek writers. According to them, Berosus distinctly stated that
accounts were carefully preserved in Babylon in which were recorded
the formation of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, the origin of
man, and the chief memorable events of the early history of the world.
Why had we come across nothing of all this? Was it because Berosus
spoke of ancient tablets at Babylon, and the tablets whose fragments
we were scrutinizing are, for the most part, from Ninive, and, in
their present form at least, date back generally only seven, eight, or
nine centuries before Christ?
No other reason seemed assignable; and it appeared that, to obtain
such tablets, we must wait until the mounds of Babylon shall be as
carefully and as thoroughly excavated as those of Ninive. When will
that be done? In the meantime let us be patient and make the most we
can of what we have.
Things were in this condition in 1872. In that year Mr. George Smith,
of the British Museum, a young and ardent Assyriologist, who has
indeed proved himself worthy to continue the labors of Rawlinson,
Hincks, Oppert, Lenormant, Talbot, and the other distinguished
Oriental scholars of Europe, was occupied in the task of examining one
by one the thousands of cuneiform terra-cotta fragments collected in
the Assyrian department of that institution. He intended to divide
them into classes, according to the subjects on which they seemed to
treat, in order that each class might afterwards be more thoroughly
studied by itself.
Taking up one day a fragment, of medium size, the middle lines of
which were entire and could be plainly made out, he read as follows:
“To the country of Nizir went the ship;
The mountains of Nizir stopped the ship, and to pass over it was
not able;
The first day and the second day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The third day and the fourth day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The fifth and the sixth, the mountains of Nizir, the same.
On the seventh day, in the course of it,
I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned;
A resting-place it did not find, and it returned.
I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and turned;
and
A resting-place it did not find, and it returned.
I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and the decrease
of waters it saw, and
It did eat, it swam, and wandered away, and did not return.”
There could be no mistake about it. This was evidently a portion of a
cuneiform inscription which gave an Assyrian version of the history of
the Deluge. Could he pick out, from among the thousands and thousands
of fragments, great and small, around him in the collection, the other
pieces of the same tablet, so as to have the whole? or were they still
lying buried in the mound of Kouyunjik, whence Layard had brought the
fragment he is reading? That was the question before Mr. Smith. He set
himself to the task of practically answering it. Month after month was
spent in the labor of scrutinizing, matching, and deciphering
fragments. Success rewarded this perseverance, almost beyond his
expectation. In December he was able to electrify the literary world
of London. He lectured on the “Chaldean Account of the Deluge,” and
was able to present to his audience the greater portion of the
cuneiform text. It corresponded wonderfully not only in the main
points, but sometimes even in details, with the account of Genesis. It
differed from it chiefly by the introduction of poetic and
mythological imagery, and in a few minor details――such details as men
will naturally vary in, while they retain the substance and general
truth of an account.
About this time the New York _Herald_ had attained a world-wide and
well-deserved celebrity by having sent Stanley on a bold and
successful mission to find Livingstone in the heart of Africa. Other
papers naturally wished to imitate, if not to rival, the great deed.
The London _Daily Telegraph_ saw its opportunity, seized it at once,
and sent out Mr. Smith to Mesopotamia, to make further excavations in
the mound of Kouyunjik and elsewhere, and to obtain more of those
interesting fragments. This he strove to do, though under many
embarrassments from the opposition or the petulance of ignorant and
arbitrary Turkish officials. He was forced to bring his work to a
close just when he felt that he had entered well into it. The results,
however, of that trip have since turned out to be greater and more
important than he then thought. He soon went out again to resume and
continue the work under the auspices of the British Museum, and he
succeeded in obtaining for its collection still another large
instalment of the much-coveted fragments, together with many other
valuable articles. Since his return to England in June, 1874, he has
given himself up almost entirely to the study of those fragments,
classifying, comparing, and uniting them where possible, and
deciphering the inscriptions.[137] In the work before us[138] he
gives to the public some special results attained by a little over one
year’s labor. We catch the words――if only the muttered and broken
words――of this early Assyrian literature, yet words of highest
importance, because they bear directly on the topics narrated in the
earliest chapters of the Holy Scriptures. As we read them, we feel
like one standing by the bedside of a sick man, and listening to his
fitful and feverish utterances. You catch a word here and a word
there, perhaps scarcely enough to guide you. Now and then a sentence
is spoken out with startling distinctness, to be followed only by low,
almost unintelligible murmurings. Still, if you know what the patient
is speaking of, you may follow his train of thought, at least after a
fashion.
We take up the special subjects of some of these deciphered tablets.
Following the Biblical and historical order of events, we commence with
THE CREATION.
It is fortunate that the very commencement of the Chaldean legend on
this subject――possibly the written account which Berosus mentions――is
found on a comparatively large and legible fragment. We give it line
by line as Mr. Smith has translated it, marking the missing portions
by points. It will serve as a favorable sample of the condition of
such fragments:
“WHEN ABOVE were not raised the heavens:
And below, on the earth, a plant had not grown up;
The abysses also had not broken open their boundaries.
The chaos Tiamate [the abyss of waters] was the
producing-mother of them.
Those waters at the beginning were ordained: but
A tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded.
When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them:
A plant had not grown, and order did not exist.
Were made the great gods,
The gods Lahmu and Lahamu they caused to come …
And they grew …
The gods Sar and Kisar were made …
The course of days and a long time passed …
The god Anu …
The gods Sar and …”
* * * * *
These fifteen lines, six of them imperfect, are all that we have of
the inscription on the face or obverse of this tablet. Judging from
the inscriptions on other fragments of similar tablets, there were
probably fifty lines on the face of the tablet when entire, and
perhaps thirty or forty of text on the back, or reverse of it, all
missing as yet, except what we have given.
On the upper portion of the back, above the thirty or forty lines
referred to as missing, and fortunately on the back of the fragment
before us, was placed a curious and interesting inscription, serving
both as title and preface, and throwing light on the history and
character of the material fragments before us. The inscription reads
as follows:
“First tablet of WHEN ABOVE
Palace of Assurbanipal, King of Nations, King of Assyria,
To whom Nebo and Tasmit [_Assyrian deities_] attentive ears have
given:
He sought with diligent eyes the wisdom of the inscribed tablets,
Which among the kings who went before me,
None those writings had sought.
The wisdom of Nebo, the impressions of the god my instructor all
delightful,
On the tablets I wrote, I studied, I observed, and
For the inspection of my people, within my palace, I placed.”
The Assyrians, we see, like the Israelites and other Eastern nations,
frequently designated their books, not by the subjects treated of, but
by the initial words. The book the commencement of which we see on
this fragment of terra-cotta was known to them, and they subsequently
refer to it, by the title, WHEN ABOVE.
We see also that the fragments which we possess are remnants of a
series of tablets which were prepared and placed in his palace at
Ninive by the Assyrian monarch Assurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, the
celebrated Sardanapalus of Grecian writers, renowned for his luxury
and magnificence, and who, seeing his kingdom at length subverted and
his capital taken, preferred to perish with his family in the
conflagration of his own palace, rather than yield himself a prisoner
into the hands of his enemies. He reigned from B.C. 673 to B.C. 625.
From this inscription, and from many other notices, we learn that
during his reign he followed up with ardor the literary work of his
father and grandfather, and of several of their predecessors. He
sought out the more ancient literary treasures of Babylon, Cutha,
Erech, Akkad, Borsippa, Ur, Nipur, and other older cities then under
his sway; caused them to be carefully copied out on fresh tablets of
terra-cotta, and to be placed in his own Royal Library at Ninive. It
is thus almost entirely to Assurbanipal and his patronage of learning
that we owe what we now know, or hope soon to possess, of this oldest
of all national literatures.
Reverting to our fragmentary tablet, and comparing the verbose text of
this remarkable inscription with the brief account of Moses (Gen. i.
1, 2), we cannot but note the contrast between the clear and emphatic
statement of the inspired writer, “In the beginning God _created_ the
heavens and the earth,” on one side, and on the other the vague and
undecided statement of the cuneiform writer, “Those waters [or chaos]
at the beginning were _ordained_.”
It may be presuming too much on our present ability to translate with
accuracy every individual word of these tablets for us to give much
weight to a single word or isolated expression; but it would seem that
the early Assyrians, even if they had lost, or at least were
accustomed to leave in the background, the idea of the unity of God,
and were commencing to indulge in mythological fancies, had not,
however, gone as yet so far astray as to hold the primeval chaos to
have existed of itself from eternity. On the contrary, they believed
that at the beginning it was _ordained_. There is here a trace, at
least, of the idea of creation by a superior Power.
The watery character of the abyss is an idea common to both
narratives. Whence this agreement? Could the void and formless
character of the original chaotic mass be conceived under no other
condition than that of a watery mist?
Moses distinctly indicates the exercise of the power of the true and
supreme God in the further progress of creation: “And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters.” The inscription, leaving that
out of sight, in this instance at least, gives us the primordial
conceptions of mythology. The gods, who at the beginning “had not
sprung up, any one of them,” soon commence to appear――“are made.” They
are evidently personifications or deifications of the divisions or the
powers of nature, perhaps poetic fancies in the beginning, to become
in course of time mythological personages, and then heathen
divinities, to be worshipped with altars and sacrifices.
Here _Lahmu_ and _Lahamu_ (masculine and feminine) represent the
powers of motion and reproduction, the earliest forces recognized as
originally existing, or made to exist, in the chaotic abyss. _Sar_ (or
Assorus) and _Kissar_ are the upper and the lower heavens. _Anu_
represents the firmament, while _Elu_ and _Hea_――whose names (if we
follow an excerpt from Berosus) probably followed that of _Anu_ in the
broken line――stood for the earth and the sea.
The tablet to which this fragment belonged was evidently only a
general introduction to a series of eight, or perhaps more, tablets,
each one forming, as it were, a special portion or chapter or canto to
the entire legend or book known by the name WHEN ABOVE, detailing the
creation of the world.
Of the second, third, and fourth tablets we have as yet only two
fragments. At least, those fragments are judged to belong
here――probably to the third――as they both appear to treat of the
formation of the firm, dry land:
“When the foundations of the ground of rock (thou didst make),
The foundation of the ground, thou didst call …
Thou didst beautify the heavens …
To the face of the heaven …
Thou didst give …”
* * * * *
We have here the poetic form of an address directed to the Creator,
perhaps to the Supreme God. If this be so, the true idea of the
Divinity stands forth more distinctly here than in the former
fragment. But the address may have been to Elu, or to Hea, or to some
other inferior god, now made and acting. Only the recovery of more of
the tablet can decide the question.
The other fragment is longer, and contains portions of a greater
number of lines. But it is so mutilated, and the words recognizable in
each line are so few, that the meaning of the whole scarcely rises to
obscurity. Some words are said about the “sea” and the “firmament,”
and the “earth” “for the dwelling of man.”
We come now to another fragment of larger size and in a better
condition. It speaks of the formation of the sun and the moon and the
stars, and corresponds to Genesis i. 14-19:
“It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great Gods.
Stars, their appearance (in figures) of animals he arranged.
To fix the year through the observation of their constellations,
Twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged,
From the day when the year commences unto the close.
He marked the positions of the wandering stars (planets) to
shine in their courses,
That they may not do injury, and may not trouble any one.
* * * * *
“The god Uru [the moon] he caused to rise out, the night he
overshadowed.
To fix it also for the light of the night, until the shining of the
day.
That the month might not be broken, and in its amount be regular.
At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night,
His horns are breaking through, to shine on the heaven.
On the seventh day, to a circle he begins to swell,
And stretches towards the dawn further,
When the god Shamas (the sun) in the horizon of heaven in the east.
… formed beautifully and …
… to the orbit Shamas was perfected
… the dawn Shamas should change,
… going on in its path.”
* * * * *
On the back of this fragment, at the top, is found this inscription:
“Fifth tablet of WHEN ABOVE
Country of Assurbanipal, King of Nations, King of Assyria.”
If, as we remarked above, the first tablet of WHEN ABOVE be looked on
as a general introduction to the whole subject, the remarkable fact
becomes apparent that the Assyrian writer followed precisely the same
division and order of the details of the creation which we find in
Genesis. Tablet II. would correspond with the work of the first day,
and Tablet III. and IV. with that of the second and third day, as here
Tablet V. clearly is occupied with the work of the fourth day. It is
generally acknowledged that the word _day_ in the Mosaic account does
not mean that the work there mentioned was done in the space of
twenty-four hours. The term _day_ is understood by many to mean an
undetermined and probably a long period of time. It may even be, that
the term _day_ has been used by Moses not in an historical sense, as
we ordinarily would take it, but rather in a liturgical or religious
sense, paralleling and adapting the six divisions of the creative
work, and the cessation from it, to the six days of labor and one day
of rest which constituted the Jewish week. In this way Moses would
give to the Jewish people an ever-recurring cycle of hebdomadal
services, something like that still found in the Eastern liturgies,
where on each day that day’s work is the chief and almost exclusive
theme of religious service. Beyond this agreement in the mode of
dividing the progress of creation――an agreement carried out in the
tablets to follow――there are other points to be noted. In the first
line of this fragment, as also on other fragments, we read an approval
of what has already been done: “It was delightful, all that was fixed
by the great gods.” In Genesis we find the oft-repeated statement,
“And God saw that it was good.” Moses places this approbation at the
conclusion of each day’s work. The cuneiform writer places it at the
beginning of the next day’s work.
We see, too, in the continued use of the personal pronoun _He_, that
the work is attributed to the true and Supreme God. The plural phrase,
the _great gods_, does not militate against this view; for this form,
it seems to us, is a parallel to the early Hebrew name of God,
_Elohim_, likewise a plural form. This form was used to convey to
their minds by the very mode of speech a deeper sense of the infinite
power and majesty of God, and served as a fuller expression of their
reverence for him. Even in our modern languages there is a trace of
some such feeling. It is generally more respectful to address one in
the plural form――_you_, _vous_, _sie_――than in the singular. If we
thus take the phrase, “the great gods,” in our cuneiform texts to
mean, as it certainly may in many places, the one true and Supreme
God, the primitive doctrine of monotheism will be found to stand out
in bold relief in these texts, perhaps the earliest we have of human
writing.
Even the mention of several gods by name, in succession, may have been
consistent with monotheism. On one tablet we have glosses informing
the reader that the six names there given in succession are all names
of the _same_ god; and another tablet speaks of the _fifty names_ of
the Great God. They seem not to have been interchangeable. The use of
one or of another depended, perhaps, on some special character or tone
of the thought to be expressed.
It may be observed, also, that in our text the moon seems to be
preferred to the sun as the more important orb of the two. The account
of Moses is simpler, and, what is more to the purpose, is true, and
has not had to be corrected by the advance of astronomical science in
modern days.
The sixth tablet, referring probably to the work of the fifth day, is
altogether absent. The fifth tablet bore at its conclusion the
catchwords with which the sixth commenced. But they do not help us.
The seventh tablet commences with the statement that “the strong
monsters were delightful … which the gods in their assembly had
created.” We may take it for granted, then, that the sixth tablet
spoke of the creation of fishes and whales and monsters of the deep,
and perhaps also of the birds of the air (Gen. i. 23).
The seventh tablet has fourteen lines, most of them mutilated. But it
tells us that “the gods caused to be, living creatures,” … “cattle of
the field,” “beasts of the field,” and “creeping things of the field”
… and “creeping things of the city,” agreeing even in some of the
terms used with the account of Genesis i. 24, 25.
Lower down on the fragment, where the lines are very much broken,
mention is made of two … “who have been created, and of the assembly
of creeping things … being caused to go” … somewhere or before
somebody; of “beautiful flesh” and “pure presence.” It is unfortunate
that these concluding lines are so shattered, and still more that of
the thirty-five or forty other lines which must have followed, on the
face of this tablet, not one letter has as yet been found. For this is
the passage in which we should look for an account of the actual
creation of the first man and the first woman, and of the bestowal on
man of power and authority over the rest of creation. We may entertain
the hope that some considerable portion, at least, of these missing
fragments may yet be found. It will certainly be an interesting
inquiry to ascertain how far they may, even in details, accord with
the expressions of Moses on this subject.
This seventh tablet corresponded with the work of the sixth day. As
the Assyrian writer does not follow a division by days, he does not
give us another tablet answering to the seventh day of rest. His
eighth tablet, and any others that may have followed, would naturally
narrate subsequent events.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN.
Of the eighth tablet there exists only a single fragment bearing
twenty-seven lines, whole or mutilated, on the face, and fifteen, all
mutilated, on the reverse. The first is evidently an address to the
newly-created man. The opening words are on the question of his eating
something, though whether a command (Genesis ii. 16) or a prohibition
(Genesis ii. 17) is not clear. The occurrence of the single word
“evil” in one of the lines may probably indicate the latter. The text
then goes on to instruct man as to his duty to God:
“Every day thy God thou shalt approach [or invoke];
Sacrifice, prayer of the mouth and instrumen’s …
To thy God in reverence thou shalt carry.
Whatever shall be suitable for divinity,
Supplication, humility, and bowing of the face.
Firs(t), thou shalt give to him, and thou shalt bring tribute,
And in the fear also of God thou shalt be holy.”
* * * * *
In the fragmentary lines that follow further instructions seem to be
given for religious worship and for moral life.
The other side of this fragment contains apparently a discourse to the
newly-created woman. The commencement for many lines is entirely lost,
as is also the termination, and what we have from the middle is
exceedingly broken and indistinct. There is something about her
sharing “the beautiful place,” evidently with the man, and her being
with him or in his presence “to the end”; something apparently about
his beauty and her beauty, and about her giving him drink. She is told:
“To the lord of thy beauty thou shalt be faithful;
To do evil thou shalt not approach him.”
* * * * *
Perhaps the recovery of other fragments may tell us more of this
“beautiful place” which the woman is to share with man. So far we do
not find in the inscriptions any account of the Garden of Eden. But
even before Mr. Smith had commenced deciphering them, Rawlinson had
pointed out how the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ukni and the Surappi,
were, in all probability, the four rivers designated by Moses, the two
latter, under the more ancient names Phison and Gehon, as the streams
of Eden; and how the garden itself might be placed in the district of
Ganduniyas. Many circumstances unite in showing that among the
Babylonians there did exist some religious tradition on this subject,
although we cannot yet know its special form. They certainly spoke of
a sacred grove of Anu, inaccessible now to man because it is guarded
by a sword turning to all the four points of the compass.
The passage in the instruction to the man, in which he is commanded to
offer sacrifice to God――even holocausts (for this is what is meant by
“fire”)――is also worthy of remark. It is an additional argument
showing that from the earliest ages, and in the earliest home of
mankind, men believed that God had commanded our first father to offer
sacrifice――a belief which passed with man from that home to whatever
region he afterwards occupied, and which has led all nations to offer
sacrifice, under some form or other, as a special homage to the Deity.
THE FALL.
Another fragment of a tablet is in the usually tantalizing condition.
The upper half, if not more than half, is gone, as is likewise a
portion at the bottom. On the front we count thirty-two lines, the
first four and the last nine too mutilated to be intelligible. On the
reverse are thirty-two lines, eight of them more or less incomplete.
The beginnings and the terminations of both inscriptions are missing.
In the first inscription six gods are blessing and praising the
newly-created man, who is “good” “and without sin,” and is
“established in the company of the gods,” and “rejoices their heart.”
Though six gods are named separately, glosses in each instance inform
the reader that these are all titles of one and the same god.
On the other side of the tablet, in the second inscription, all is
changed. Every line is a denunciation or an imprecation on man for
some evil which, in connection with the dragon Tiamat, he has done.
Tiamat also is to be punished. The lines referring to Tiamat are very
defective; but the portion against the man is clear and strong:
* * * * *
“The god Hea heard and his liver was angry,
Because man had corrupted his purity.
* * * * *
In the language of the fifty great gods,
By his fifty names he called, and turned away in anger from him;
May he be conquered and at once cut off.
Wisdom and knowledge, hostilely may they injure him.
May they put at enmity also father and son, and may they plunder.
To king, ruler, and governor may they bend their ear.
May they cause anger also to the lord of the gods, Merodach.
His land, may it bring forth, but he not touch it.
His desire shall be cut off, and his will be unanswered;
The opening of his mouth no god shall take notice of;
His back shall be broken and not be healed;
At his urgent trouble no god shall receive him.
His heart shall be poured out, and his mind shall be troubled;
To sin and wrong his face shall come …
Sc front …”
Perhaps the continuation might have softened what we have just read by
some promise of a redeemer coming to rescue man and give him hope of
pardon. The imperfection of the earlier lines, and the want of the
many that preceded them, leave us without any precise account of the
evil act that man had done, and of the motive that prompted him to its
commission. That Tiamat was primarily concerned in it, is evident from
the earlier portion of these lines referring to Tiamat, and also from
another small fragment on which “Hea” called to the man he had made,
and apparently warned him against “the dragon of the sea,” who was
plotting to lead him to “fight against his father.” The part that
wisdom and knowledge shall play in man’s punishment may indicate that
his offence was somehow connected with an unlawful seeking after
forbidden knowledge.
But the special details of the fall of man, according to these
cuneiform legends, can only be known when, if ever, the full text
shall be recovered. Then, it may be, we shall read in words the full
story as indicated by the design on an ancient Babylonian cylinder
taken from the mounds. In the middle stands a tree, laden with fruit.
On either side are seated a man and a woman, stretching out their
hands as if to pluck the fruit. Behind the woman a tortuous serpent
raises his head aloft, as if to whisper in her ear.
In other designs the serpent is replaced by a monster or dragon. The
name of the dragon is frequently written by signs, or ideographically,
“the scaly one.” This might mean either a sea monster, a fish, or a
serpent. The Assyrian idea of a dragon is not altogether alien to the
primitive Scriptural conception; for in the Apocalypse (xii. 7-9)
mention is made of “the great dragon, that old serpent, called the
devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world.”
THE REBELLION OF THE EVIL ANGELS.
Although in the account of the creation of all things, in the
beginning, Moses makes no specific mention of the angels, nor of their
rebellion against God, nor of the punishment which they incurred
therefor, yet, as the subject is referred to by Isaias (xiv. 12-15)
and Ezechiel (xxviii. 14-16), and by St. Peter (2 Ep. ii. 4) and St.
Paul (Eph. ii. 2 and vi. 12) in the New Testament, we may properly
introduce here what the cuneiform writings say on this subject. The
Assyrians seem to have had quite a number of poems on such themes,
various fragments of which are found in the collection before us. As
might be expected, there is an exuberance of poetical imagery and of
mythological fancies in their mode of treating such a subject. But the
main points are salient and clear. We are told in the fragments of one
poem of “the angels,” “the evil gods” “who were in rebellion,” who
“had been created in the lower part of heaven,” of their “evil work”
and “wicked heads,” and of their “setting up evil.” These “evil gods”
“like a flood descend and sweep over the earth. To the earth like a
storm they come down.” The fragments note the preparations of the
great gods to overpower and punish them; but the conclusion is
missing.
There are fragments of another remarkable poem giving an account of
the revolt of the god _Zu_, apparently the greatest of those
rebellious ones, and the leader, who “conceived the idea of majesty in
his heart” and said:
“May my throne be established, may I possess the _parzi_,
May I govern the whole of the seed of the angels.
And he hardened his heart to make war.”
The father of the gods sends his sons (the angels) to combat and
overpower Zu. His punishment is to be:
“Father, to a desert country do thou consign him;
Let Zu not come among the gods thy sons.”
In all this we cannot but be reminded of the pride and ambition of
Lucifer, who said in his heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will
exalt my throne about the stars of God, I will be like the Most
High”; of his overthrow by the archangel Michael; and of his
punishment――perpetual exclusion from the companionship of the angels
and saints, and from the beatific presence of God in heaven, and his
condemnation for ever to hell, his abode of suffering for ever more.
We may here leave these legends, overwhelmed as they are with
mythological fables, and with more satisfaction turn to other plainer
words and more prosaic facts.
THE TOWER OF BABEL AND THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.
One of the most striking events narrated by Moses is the attempt of
the descendants of Noe to build a lofty tower at Babel; how the
attempt displeased God, and how in his anger he confounded their
speech, so that they could no longer understand one another. Thus
their attempt was defeated, and they were scattered from that place
abroad upon the face of all countries (Genesis xi. 1-9).
In none of the Greek writers who epitomize Berosus or make extracts
from his _History of Babylon_ do we find any intimation of, or
reference to, this event. Berosus seems to have been entirely silent
on it. For years nothing relating to it had come to light in all the
searching of inscriptions of any kind. But lately Mr. George Smith,
with his usual good fortune, has come across several small fragments
of a tablet which evidently gave the whole history. The fragments are
small, and the inscriptions brief and more mutilated than usual. But
we catch the sense. The gods in heaven are angry because of the sin of
men on earth――the place specially mentioned is Babylon; there a strong
place or tower which men all the day are building. “To their strong
place in the night God entirely made an end.” “In his anger” “he
confounded their speech,” “their counsel was confused.” “He set his
face to scatter them abroad.”
Even should no additional portions of this text be recovered, these
remarkable fragments will attest that the memory of the event narrated
in Genesis was long preserved, as well it might be, at Babylon. It had
its place in their national traditions. Should the full text be ever
restored, it may likewise be seen that this is the very subject meant
by those frequent representations seen on Babylonian cylinders, where
men are depicted, after a very absurd and conventional style, busily
employed in building some circular or cylindrical structure.
THE DELUGE.
We have inverted the Scriptural and chronological order of events in
speaking of the Tower of Babel before treating of the Deluge. We did
so, however, in order to be able to treat this latter important
subject more at length. The Deluge was, as we have said, the subject
of the fragmentary inscription the discovery of which led Mr. Smith
into this special line of research. By singular good fortune this is
the inscription which has been most fully recovered. Of the two
hundred and ninety lines it contained, there is not one of which some
words are not legible. By far the greater portions of the lines are
perfect. This arises from the fact that in the library of Assurbanipal
there were three copies, at least, of this legend, which seems to have
been very popular. The _lacunæ_ or missing portions of one it has been
generally easy to supply or fill up from the recovered portions of the
others. The inscription filled the eleventh tablet in a series of
twelve, which Mr. Smith calls “The Legends of Izdubar.”
Izdubar, as he warns us, is only a temporary makeshift name or sound,
adopted by him for the present, and to be given up as soon as he shall
be satisfied as to the proper sound to be given to the cuneiform
characters in which the name stands written. Whatever the true sound
of his name, he was a celebrated hero or king in the early days of
Babylon. His name frequently occurs in other inscriptions, and his
exploits are still more frequently figured on Babylonian cylinders.
The peculiar cast of his countenance, and the very marked way in which
his beard and his hair are ever made to fall in long rolls or curls,
cause him to be recognized at a glance, even in the coarsest
representations. We might almost call him the Babylonian Hercules. All
that has been thus far learned concerning him tends strongly to
identify this as yet nameless hero with “Nimrod the mighty hunter
before the Lord” (Gen. x, 8, 9, 10).
The first ten tablets, which exist only in the usual thoroughly-mutilated
condition, tell us of his adventures, wars, victories, and ultimate
attainment of great power. At last, having lost his trusted friend and
counsellor Heabani, and finding himself stricken with a foul disease,
he sets out on a long and difficult journey to seek the sage
_Hasisadra_, in order to be cured by him.
This Hasisadra, as the tablet calls him――or _Xisuthrus_, as the Greeks
have the name――is no other than the patriarch Noe, whom the Chaldean
legend supposes not to have died, but to have been translated from
among men, as Henoch was, without seeing death, and to have been
placed in some divinely guarded spot where, by a special favor from
the gods, he enjoys immortality. To him, after surmounting many
difficulties, Izdubar succeeds in coming; and their speeches to each
other are commenced toward the close of the tenth tablet. On the
eleventh Izdubar questions him about the Deluge, and he replies:
“Hasisadra after this manner also said to Izdubar:
Be revealed unto thee, Izdubar, the concealed story,
And the judgment of the gods be related to thee.”
In the course of the narrative, which he then gives, we are told of
the anger of the gods, and their purpose to destroy the world because
of its sin; of the command given to Hasisadra to build a ship after
the manner they would show him, in order that therein “the seed of
life might be saved”; of the building of the ship; of its size
(different from the measures given in Genesis), the lining of it three
times with bitumen, and the launching of it. Into this ship, at the
proper time, there enter Hasisadra and all his family, and “all his
male servants and his female servants,” as also “the beasts of the
field and the animals of the field,” which God “had gathered and sent
to him to be enclosed in his door.” Hasisadra brought in also “wine in
the receptacle of goats,” which he had “collected like the waters of a
river,” and “food” in abundance “like the dust of the earth,” “his
grain, his furniture, his goods,” all his “gold,” and all his
“silver.” Also, as the text reads, “the sons of the people all of them
I caused to go up.” The number of persons saved would thus far exceed
the number specially mentioned by Moses.
“A flood Shamas made, and
He spake saying in the night: I will cause it to rain heavily;
Enter to the midst of the ship and shut thy door.
That flood happened of which
He spake in the night, saying: I will cause it to rain from heaven
heavily.
In the day, I celebrated his festival;
The day of watching, fear I had.
I entered to the midst of the ship and shut my door.
To close the ship, to Buzur-sadirabi, the boatman,
The palace I gave with its goods.”
The heavy clouds rising from the horizon, the thunder, the lightnings,
the rushing winds, the pouring torrents of rain, are vividly presented
in a mythological garb:
“Of Vul, the flood reached to heaven;
The bright earth to a waste was turned;
The surface of the earth like … it swept;
It destroyed all life from the face of the earth …
The strong deluge over the people reached to heaven.
Brother saw not his brother; they did not know the people.
* * * * *
Six days and nights
Passed; the wind, deluge, and storm overwhelmed.
On the seventh day, in its course was calmed the storm; and all
the deluge,
Which had destroyed like an earthquake,
Quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended.
I perceived the sea making a tossing;
And the whole of mankind turned to corruption,
Like reeds the corpses floated.
I opened the window, and the light broke over my face;
It passed. I sat down and wept;
Over my face flowed my tears.”
Hasisadra proceeds to narrate to his visitor the gradual lowering of
the waters, the appearance of the mountains of Nizir, the waiting
during other days, and the sending forth of the birds, as written on
the first fragment, already given. After this they left the ship; he
built an altar and offered sacrifice, the odor of which was pleasant
to the gods; and finally a promise is made that a deluge shall not
again be sent, but that henceforth man when guilty shall be punished
in other modes.
This concludes the narrative proper of the Deluge. The conclusion of
the eleventh tablet informs us of the healing of Izdubar and of his
return home. Of the twelfth tablet only a few fragments remain. It
evidently narrated subsequent adventures of the great national hero.
One fragment contains the conclusion of the sixth and last column of
this closing tablet. It presents a few lines from a lament over the
death of some one, possibly of Izdubar himself, slain in battle. We
give it, with its refrain, as a veritable and curious specimen of the
poetry in which men delighted three thousand five hundred years ago.
We might call it the poetry of pre-historic man:
“On a couch reclining and
Pure water drinking,
He who in battle is slain
Thou seest and I see.
“His father and his mother carry his head,
And his wife over him weeps;
His friends on the ground are standing.
Thou seest and I see.
“His spoil on the ground is uncovered;
Of the spoil account is not taken.
Thou seest and I see.
The captives conquered come after; the food
Which in the tents is placed, is eaten.”
There immediately follows the closing colophon, written by the scribe
under Assurbanipal:
“The twelfth tablet of the legends of Izdubar;
Like the ancient copy, written and made clear.”
When we place side by side this Chaldean account of the Deluge and
that given by Moses, the minor discrepancies between them as to the
size of the ship, and as to the duration of the rain and the deluge,
sink, as it were, out of sight. These are such variations as would
naturally arise in a case like this, where a legend, after having been
transmitted orally from generation to generation, is at length reduced
to writing, with, of course, careful corrections and supposed
emendations, and where many centuries later it is again written out
with other emendations, in order to “make it clear” for the benefit of
those that would then read it. Some such discrepancies must
necessarily creep in, even if the original form were supposed to have
been without any error. This, however, can scarcely be taken for
granted. Neither in its original form, nor in any later form which it
may have had, does this legend enjoy the guarantee of divine
protection which the inspired account of Moses possesses.
On the other hand, we are irresistibly startled by the wonderful
agreement of those two accounts in the main and substantial facts of
the narrative. We feel that this agreement is not factitious. The
writers were too widely separated in time and in country, as also by
education, to allow it. If they agree, it can only be because of the
historical verity of the facts they both record.
What may have been the actual age of those “ancient tablets” which
Assurbanipal caused to be copied and placed in his library, and of
which we have treated, cannot at present be ascertained with any
degree of precision. Sufficient data are not yet at hand to determine
the points. Most probably they are not all of the same, or nearly the
same, date. Perhaps light may be thrown on such questions by further
decipherings of the mass of cuneiform writings. At present our
judgment or our guesses must be based on two points: first, the
occurrence, in the text deciphered, of certain local or historical
references given as contemporary, or very recent, at the time when the
inscription was written; and, secondly, such a minute knowledge on our
part of the geography, history, and chronology of those regions as
will enable us to decide accurately when and where such statements,
allusions, or references can be verified. The difficulty is that, with
all the progress made up to this in deciphering these inscriptions, we
are still liable to mistakes, especially in such passing allusions and
references as are for our purpose important data, but originally were
to the writer almost _obiter dicta_. A second difficulty is found in
the obscurity and uncertainty which still hang around the vicissitudes
of early Chaldean history and the geographical divisions then
existing.
Mr. Smith, however, after studying the matter and weighing all the
data, thinks that none of the original tablets we are considering can
have been written less than fifteen hundred years before Christ. Most
of them, indeed, especially the legends of Izdubar and the account of
the creation, he believes should be dated back as far as 2,000, or
even 2,200, years before Christ.
How many Voltairean sneers, and how many crude utterances of crude
criticism by the so-called “advanced thinkers” in Germany and
elsewhere, against Moses and his narrative, are deprived of all their
force, and have been made utterly ridiculous and nonsensical, by the
discovery of this ancient and indisputable corroborative testimony!
Verily, the men of Ninive have risen up in judgment against them, and
have condemned them.
It has been a standard line of argument with the apologists and
defenders of Christianity, from the second century down, to prove the
truth of our divine religion, and of the primitive facts recorded in
Scripture, by the general and substantial agreement of all nations on
those points. This agreement, it was evident, could only spring from
the fact that originally such truths were known by men, and had been
retained by them ever since in some form. Such truths are still to be
found in the common principles of morality, in the agreement or
similarity of national traditions; and philosophic research will show
that they generally constitute the central _nuclei_ around which
mythological fables subsequently gathered or grew up. Many modern
writers have devoted themselves to this theme. One of the latest is
the Abbé Gainet. In his very full and learned work, _La Bible sans la
Bible_, he seems almost to exhaust the subject. Leaving aside, for
argument’s sake, the testimony of the Bible itself, and loading his
pages with quotations and testimonies, heathen, infidel, or
Mahommedan, taken from every quarter, he strives to establish, by this
independent and non-Biblical line of proof, the truth, one by one, of
the chief Biblical statements. What a splendid chapter would he not
have added to those in his work had these discoveries been made when
he wrote! To appeal to men two thousand years or more before
Christ――witnesses living in the very region of the earth where man was
created, and which after the Deluge became, as it were, a second
birthplace to him――to receive from such witnesses this clear,
unimpeachable testimony as to the creation of man, the fall, the
punishment, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of
tongues, would indeed supply him with another irrefragable argument in
support of divine revelation, in addition to those he had already
collected. With our limited space, however, we can only take a simpler
view.
Compare those Chaldean legends, fragmentary as they are, often turgid
and verbose, with their poetic forms and Oriental license, and with
the variations which are sometimes exhibited in different versions of
the same legend――compare them, we say, with the clear, straightforward,
and almost tame narrative of Moses. Need one ask which is the simple
narrative of truth, and which seeks to wear the adornment of human
fancy?
Other questions on this matter call for an answer: How came it that
Moses, born in Egypt, and trained in all the knowledge of the
Egyptians, should, when undertaking to write his history in the
desert, so utterly cast off all the ideas of Egypt, and write a simple
narrative in absolute contradiction to all the science of Egypt in his
day? Above all, how comes it that the truth of his narrative should be
so unexpectedly and so strongly supported three thousand years later
by the resurrection of long-dormant testimony from a land he had never
visited and a people with whom he never had any communication?
Obviously, Moses wrote, not as the Egyptians or any other men taught
him, but as the God of all truth inspired him to write.
[137] Since this article was written we regret to have
received the announcement of Mr. Smith’s death. In 1876 he
made a third trip for the purpose of further explorations,
and on his way homeward died at Aleppo, August 19, of fever,
or, as some suspect, of foul play at the hands of the
Turkish officials, in revenge for his published censures of
them.
[138] Chaldean Account of Genesis.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1868.
René has sent you a minute account of our 8th of September, to which I
will add nothing, except that I understand better than ever the words
of the Gospel, “Mary has chosen the better part!”
Since then we have seen Lizzy and Isa’s mother, who is marvellously
consoled, and is recovering the activity of her youth, in order to
occupy herself with the works of her daughter. How truly does God
order all things well! “O blessed journey!” repeated Isa. “O
well-inspired friend!” Dear Kate, it is _you_ to whom all thanks are
due. You it is who ever taught me to occupy myself in making others
happy. But this is already a thing of the past, and another case for
self-devotion presents itself. Edith L―――― has come back from
Australia with three children. The establishment set on foot by her
husband did not succeed, and she returns a widow and poor. Her first
thought was of us. With what eagerness I received the poor exile! How
she has expiated her fault――that marriage, contrary to her aunt’s
wishes! I was young then, but I still seem to hear your exclamation of
sorrowful astonishment at Paris on hearing the news, and of the
departure for a land then almost unknown. Poor Edith! I have installed
her at the _châlet_; our numbers made her afraid. Her children also
are a little wild, and it required all the amiability of the _Three
Graces_ to persuade them to speak. What shall we do? I do not at all
know as yet; inspire me, dear Kate. Edith is grave and sad, she has
suffered so much! I have surrounded her with every possible comfort.
Only think: she arrived here on the 8th, and was received by Marcella,
who had the greatest difficulty in the world to induce her to remain.
Her son, the eldest child, is eight years old; he is very tall and
strong, and of an indomitable nature. The two little girls are like
wild fawns, and cling together at a distance from their mother, who
seems to me severe towards them. René has been very kind and
compassionate, and has left me free to act as I think well. Edith is
embarrassed with me. Why are you not here to console this dear,
afflicted one? She ought not to reckon upon her Scotch relations, who
have entirely cast her off; and she is utterly without resources. Ah
heavens! what distress. She sold her jewels to pay her passage: “But I
would not die without seeing Ireland again!” Poor, poor Edith, whom my
mother loved! I wish to stand towards her in the place of my mother
and of you, dear Kate.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1868.
Beloved sister, your kind letter is here before my eyes, and I will
answer it before this day ends. Edith fell ill on the 13th. A
fictitious energy sustained her up to that time, and then she had a
fainting fit which lasted two hours. Marcella was alone with her; I
was in the park with the dear _Australiennes_, as Picciola calls them.
I heard a cry of anguish. My first impulse was to hasten to send for
the doctor. He came. Edith, returning to animation in a state of
delirium, made our hearts bleed by her sorrowful revelations. She was
in this condition for three days. Now she is better, but so pale! The
good doctor has pronounced the terrible verdict of an affection of the
lungs. She needs constant care, and that her mind should be interested
and free from any anxieties.
Your intentions are the same as mine, dear Kate. I give Edith an
indefinite freedom of the _châlet_, where nothing will be wanting to
her. Reginald will be her steward, Arabella and Françoise will be in
her service; and as she needs a companion to whom she can entrust the
education of her girls, Mistress Annah offered herself of her own
accord, and Margaret has consented. And thus everything is settled,
and Edward will accompany us to France. Edith breathes again, and
thanks me so fervently that I weep with her. Admirable simplicity,
nobleness of soul, and great tenderness of heart――this is her
portrait. She has accepted my offers with the same generosity with
which I made them. I told you that I thought her severe towards her
children; I ought to have said towards her daughters only, and this,
she has owned to me, because she has learned by experience how much
harm it does children to spoil them. Our good priest has promised me
to watch over his new parishioner; but, thank God! I myself will watch
over her also, for we shall wait until November before returning to
Brittany. My mother desires whatever pleases me. René approves of all
our arrangements. He has had a sort of miniature park made round the
_châlet_. Edward already loves him, and follows him about without
speaking. Strange child! I can discover nothing in him but an intense
love for his mother, and fear, therefore, that we shall not be able to
take him away. René, to whom I am talking while I write, proposes to
leave him here, where the priest will attend to him, and so also will
the wise Mistress Annah. How grateful I am to the dear old lady!
Margaret is a little displeased at not giving the half of _Edith’s
dowry_. Lord William has promised to appease her. You know how ardent
she is.
Write to us again, dear Kate. It is in _your name_ that I have been
acting. You are the good angel of Ireland.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1868.
We had such an alarm yesterday! There was a _grande battue_: René and
Lord William at the head, with our brothers and all the gentry of the
neighborhood. We were in carriages: my mother with Lucy and Gertrude;
Berthe and the _Three Graces_; Johanna and her girls; Marcella, Edith
and I; Margaret with Mary and Ellen. We were quietly following the
chase, which became more and more distant, when a cry from Edith made
us start. Edward had just passed like lightning, proudly seated on a
large horse. Only think――a child of eight! Profiting by the absence of
the grooms, he had managed matters all by himself. He looked beautiful
thus, but it was frightful. Edith trembled. We took her home and sent
off the coachman for the child; but his search was fruitless, and
Edward did not return until evening, when he came in breathless, but
proud and happy. “Only see,” said Edith, “how he is already master!
This child will be the death of me!” René gave him a moral admonition,
but this son of Australia is for liberty. His black eye sparkled, and
when René said to him, “Your mother might die in consequence of any
strong emotion,” some tears fell, but not a word escaped from his
compressed lips. You see that your first plan was the best. Impossible
to leave him with Edith――the poor mother feels this; we shall
therefore place him with the Jesuits. You would say he was twelve
years old. He is accustomed to the free life of the woods; he has
constantly to be scolded, and never yields.
Margaret is sent for by her mother-in-law, who is keeping her room
with the gout. She takes with her Marcella, Anna, Lucy, and Edouard.
We shall all go and take leave of her before quitting Ireland. O Kate!
if you were not in France, I could not leave my mother’s house for any
place but heaven.
Margaret _has stolen_ a poor woman from me, to _revenge_ herself, she
says. It is old Ludwine, a stranger from we know not whence, and who
has all the appearance of a saint. She knows very well how to rock a
cradle, and it is under the title of cradle-rocker that Margaret has
persuaded her to accompany them. Kind Margaret!
Lord William admires his wife as much as he loves her. They are going
to found a hospital, a _crèche_ or day-nursery, and an _ouvroir_ (to
provide work for women and girls). What would not riches be worth, if
they only helped always to do good!
We are now in comparative solitude; for Margaret is to every one like
a ray of sunshine.
God alone――he alone suffices to the soul. It is in him that I love you.
OCTOBER 8, 1868.
Long walks with René all this week among our good farmers. Made
presents everywhere. Held at the font a little flower of Ireland whom
I named Kate. Old Jack is very ill, without any hope of cure. All the
tribe of Margaret send us most affectionate letters almost daily. In
the evenings, under the great trees, Adrien reads to us _St. Monica_,
by the Abbé Bougaud, while the children play at a little distance.
What say you to this page: “The perfection of sacrifice, and the
extremity of suffering, is to give up the life of those whom one
loves. The greatest martyrdom, to a mother, is not to sacrifice
herself for her child: it is to sacrifice even the very life of her
child; it is so highly to prize truth, virtue, honor, true beauty of
soul, the eternal salvation of her child, that, rather than see these
holy things fade and wither in his soul, she would see him die.” Edith
listened nervously to these words, and then said: “This sacrifice may
be required of me!” Poor mother! “St. Augustine,” writes M. Bougaud,
“passionately loved his mother, and constantly spoke of her. Almost
all the writings which have issued from his pen are embalmed with the
memory of her. More than twenty years after her death, when he had
become aged by labors yet more than in years, and had attained the
time when it seems that the love of God, having broken down every
embankment and inundated the heart, must have destroyed within it
every other love, the name and memory of his mother never recurred to
him, even when preaching, without a tear mounting from his heart to
his eyes. He would then abandon himself to the charm of this
remembrance and allow himself to speak of it to his people of Hippo,
and even in the sermons where one would scarcely expect to find them
we meet with words of touching beauty in which breathe at the same
time the faith and grateful piety of the son and the double elevation
of the genius and the saint”――noble and beautiful words which delight
me. To love one’s mother――is not this one of the happinesses of this
earth, where so few are true? M. Bougaud is admirable, whether in
defining eloquence, “the sound given by a soul charmed out of herself
by the sight of the good and true,” or in speaking of the complaint of
Job, “this song of death which we all sing, and which makes us better,
even when we have but wept its first notes――this song of two parts,
the first sad, where all passes, all fades away, all dries up from the
lips of those who wish to drink and slake their thirst; the first song
which does good to the soul, even when we know but this one note, and
cast on the world only this sorrowful look. What is it, then, when we
rise to a loftier height, to the second part of this song of death,
where sorrow is absorbed in joy? Yes, everything passes away, but to
return; everything fades, but that it may bloom again; everything
dies, to return to life transfigured.” Kate, in the beauty of this
book there is to me incomparable splendor. Would you like a few more
fragments from it――precious pearls which I would enshrine in my heart
and memory, there to ruminate upon and enjoy them? I will send you the
definition of Rome: “That delectable land full of holy images and
tranquil domes, whither one goes in order to forget the world and rest
the soul in the memories and associations which are there alone to be
found.” Again, this about the second age of life: “In which, after
having tasted every other love, we return to that of our mother; and
seeing the years which accumulate upon her venerable head, not
venturing to contemplate the future, desiring still to enjoy that
which remains of a life so dear, we feel in ourselves the renewal of
an indescribable affection which rises in the soul to something akin
to worship.” Or this portrait of Plato: “There was in ancient times,
in the palmiest days of Greece, a young man of incredible loftiness of
mind, and of a beauty of speech which has never been surpassed; the
disciple of Socrates, whom he immortalized by lending him his own
wings; and the master of Aristotle, whose power he would have tripled
could he have communicated to him some of his own fire!”
A letter from Isa, a _Nunc Dimittis_. She would like us to be present
when she takes the veil. Will it be possible? Oh! how much it will
cost me to quit my own Ireland――our lakes, mountains, and mists, all
the poetry of our green Erin. Where shall I find it in France?
Adieu and _à Dieu_, dear sister of my life.
OCTOBER 12, 1868.
Margaret’s mother-in-law is better, and all the dear tribe will arrive
this evening. Impossible to live apart when the ocean is not between
us!
The expectation and preparations please the twins, who are placing
bouquets everywhere. Poetry, youth, and flowers go together. I did not
tell you that René had brought Margaret the volumes which have
appeared of the _Monks of the West_. Dear Kate, all our memories of
Ireland there find a voice. Do you recollect the touching manner in
which our mother used to relate the story of St. Columba? I have been
this week with René on a pilgrimage to Gartan. “The love of Ireland
was one of the greatnesses and one of the passions of Columba. Even in
the present day, after so many centuries, they who fear to be unable
to do without their native air ask help from him who required special
assistance from God to be able to live far from Ireland, her mountains
and her seas.” These are the words of a French writer quoted to me by
René. And we looked at the salt sea and the sea-gulls, and spoke of
the stork, which is not forgotten by the sailors of the Hebrides.…
Delightful journey! My mother had advised us to take it alone. However
much I enjoy the lively gambols of the children, I have still more
enjoyed this, our intimate solitude, together. Thus I am delivered
from the fear of nostalgia. It was this terrible home-sickness which
undermined the health of Edith. Thanks to prompt treatment, we shall
save her, I trust. Already she is less pale, more cheerful and
resigned. She has been making some projects on the score of her
talents as an artist, but all her scruples of _obligations_ have been
forced to yield to my solicitations. She is not and cannot be here
otherwise than as my mother’s friend, and as such she ought to be
treated.
The two _Australiennes_ are gradually becoming civilized, and consent
to take part in the lessons with the twins. The good _abbé_ herborizes
with great enjoyment, takes long walks, makes acquaintances among the
clergy of the country, makes himself a doctor to the poor, and
announces his intention of settling near Gartan, against which we
protest loudly.
Let me quote you a few more pages from _St. Monica_, this perfectly
beautiful book, which you will not read, since it is for mothers; but
the passages I take from it are good for all souls possessed by the
only veritable love.
When, immediately after his conversion, St. Augustine retired to
Cassiacum with his mother and so select an assemblage of friends, it
was at the close of summer. “The autumn sun shed its warm rays over
the campagna. The leaves were not yet falling, but they were already
beginning to take those glowing tints of red and yellow which in the
month of September give the country so rich a splendor. It was the
moment when the whole of nature appeared to clothe itself in something
more grave and almost sad, as though preparing to die. There are
certain states of soul in which one finds an infinite charm in
contemplating nature at such a time.” Have we not felt this charm,
dear Kate, a hundred times in our own Ireland, and also in the Roman
Campagna and at Sorrento?
Listen to this admirable comparison between the disciple of Socrates
and the son of St. Monica: “Plato and Augustine are two brothers, but
of unequal ages. The first, at the dawn of life, in his sweet and
poetic spring, has more flowers than fruits; he dreams of more than he
possesses. He has glimpses of a sublime ideal, which fill him with
enthusiasm, but he does not attain it. He seeks the way, he sees and
describes it, but knows not how to enter; and he dies without bearing
in his soul the fruit of which his youth had the flowers. The second,
after painful struggles, after years of toil and courage, enters
resolutely on the road which the former had pointed out. Plato had
said: ‘To be a philosopher is to learn to die’; and again: ‘What is
needful in order to see God?――to be pure and to die.’ Augustine
studied this great art; he put it in practice at Cassiacum, and the
light, like a river whose embankments have been broken down, flooded
his vast intellect. What Plato hoped for and conjectured he saw. That
which passed in the rich imagination of the philosopher as a confused
though sublime presentiment existed with clearness and precision in
the luminous intelligence of the saint, and sprang forth from his
heart in accents such as Plato never imagined. He who would know
Augustine when first trying his wings, before his full strength of
flight, should study the conversations and conferences of Cassiacum.
There is in these a first flower of youth which is not to be found
again; something softened in the light, like that of the dawn of day;
a freshness of thoughts and sentiments, a tranquil enthusiasm, and a
gentle gayety. His mind, imprisoned until then, had recovered its
powers, and with a joyous elasticity mounted upwards to the true, the
good, and the beautiful.”
May God keep you, my best beloved!
OCTOBER 23, 1868.
Margaret, René, and Marcella have written to my dear Kate, and
Georgina has been absorbed in her cares as mistress of the house. We
shall certainly not leave before December. Isa is to take the veil on
the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. My mother forgets herself for
us. Adrien and Raoul set out at once for Brittany, where they will act
on behalf of all, and return here to fetch us.
Edith and Mistress Annah get on together as well as possible. Dear
Edith laments her own helplessness. Our worthy friend replaces her
everywhere and for everything. The handsome little _savages_ (is there
a feminine?) are become radiant with health, and are greatly in love
with Margaret, who loads them with presents. Marcella pays frequent
visits to Edith. No need to say that old Homer is sadly neglected. We
prefer the poetry of Ireland!
Anna had another of her feverish attacks while with Margaret. The air
of Ireland suits her better. Oh! what eyes she has.
René and Lord William have decided on an excursion into Scotland,
declaring that the French owe this to the memory of Mary Stuart and
the noble royal family which sheltered its misfortunes beneath the
sombre, vaulted roofs of Holyrood. A thing decided is a thing
accomplished. Every one is ready, and we set out to-morrow. Reginald
is amazed at this perpetual movement, the coming and going of our
colony. We have persuaded Edith that this journey would be of use to
her children, so we shall form a veritable caravan. Before starting I
will once more give you a quotation from M. Bougaud.
Notice how well he comments upon these beautiful words of Adeodatus:
“No soul is truly pure but she who loves God and attaches herself to
him alone.”
“Nothing human, nothing terrestrial, suffices to the soul. She can
only be happy in the possession of God; and the only means of
possessing him here below, as well as above, is to love him. For love
laughs at distance and makes light of space; unites souls from world
to world, and, in uniting, beatifies and transfigures them. Moreover,
if it be true that, even in attaching itself to finite beings, love
renders the soul indifferent to fatigue, pain, and privation; if it
communicates to it a peace, security, and strength invincible; if it
fills the soul not only with joy, but even with ecstasy――what, then,
must be the love which attaches itself to God? Thus the saints have
always been happy, even upon the cross; and if the world sees their
joy without comprehending it, the reason is that it does not know what
it is to love. Purity and love have, towards God, lofty flights which
genius would envy. The works of God have all proceeded from his heart.
They who love most will understand them best. St. Augustine said: ‘The
soul is made for God. The soul is an open eye which gazes upon God.
The soul is a love which aspires after the infinite. God is the soul’s
native land.’ Deep and noble words! And this cry which he was
constantly repeating: ‘Let us live here below in an apprenticeship for
our immortal life in heaven, where all our occupation will be to
love.’ St. Augustine called death ‘the companion of love――she who
opens the door by which we enter and find Him whom we love.’”
Dearest Kate, I have given you here the fairest flower in the basket,
but the whole basketful is superb. Good-by for the present, dearest;
you will hear next either from the Highlands or the Lowlands, or the
borders of the lakes. How much I enjoy travelling! My mother is
delighted at the idea of making acquaintance with Scotland; and I sing
her its ballads.… Send us the angel Raphael, my Kate!
OCTOBER 31, 1868.
We are, then, in Scotland――a beautiful country, picturesque and
charming, full of old memories and legends, and where the mountaineers
have a very noble air, proudly draped in their many-colored plaids.
Yesterday we met with a MacGregor. The shade of Walter Scott seemed to
rise at our side. This brave Highlander did the honors of the country,
and expressed himself with an antique grace that is indescribable. On
leaving us he kissed the hands of the ladies, pressed those of the
_lords_, and kissed all the young _misses_. Was it not fine? But we
found better still――a white-haired bard, “with trembling gait and
broken voice,” who gave us his benediction with all the majesty that
could be desired. Every rock has its legend, every ruin its tradition,
every lake its spectre. But there is no need for me to describe
Scotland to you, my learned sister; you know its exact portrait better
than I. This wandering life, these encampments in the woods, these
steeple-chases, have their charm, and are of great interest to Edith.
I fear she may miss us too much later on. Dear Kate, Reginald sent
your last letter after me. I enjoyed reading it in the country of Mary
Stuart.
Quick!… I slip this note into Réne’s packet. Always union of prayers.
I have still a few minutes. We are seeking here the traces of the
martyr-queen, the beautiful and unfortunate Mary Stuart. There was,
then, no more pity in France? Was the chivalrous enthusiasm which
breathes in the old songs of the _Gesta_ merely a poet’s dream, or was
it crouching in the _oubliettes_ of the past when England’s axe
severed that royal head on which had shone the crown of France?
Who, then, will sing as they deserve the youthful victims cut off in
their flower――Stuart, Grey, the gentle Jane who did not wish to be
made queen, Elizabeth of France, Joan of Arc, Mme. de Lamballe, Marie
Antoinette, and all the legion of martyrs whose blood cries for
vengeance?
_Where are the snows of Antan?_ where are the personages of Walter
Scott? where are Rob Roy, Flora MacIvor, and so many others? Marcella
just now pointed out to me a singular individual who must be, she
insists, _my father’s son_.
Will the day ever come when the triumphant cross of the Coliseum will
surmount, with its beauty and its love, the crown of the United
Kingdom? O my own Ireland! what heart could forget thee?
Let us pray for her, dear sister of my life, dear daughter of Erin!
NOVEMBER 5, 1868.
Our All Souls’ day was sad and sweet. We all have losses to deplore.
My mother loved her Brittany at this anniversary. How maternal this
mother of my René is towards your Georgina! How gracious and tender
her daily greetings! All our friends feel the charm of her elevated
nature. Edith loves to be with her. Dear Edith! She said to me
yesterday: “Thus far all is well; how I trust that it may so continue!
In the depth of my soul I have that inexorable sadness of which
Bossuet speaks; I feel it hourly. For a time I thought that I should
die of a broken heart, but you have revived me. I feel that in Heaven
alone all sorrows will be for ever consoled, and, like the Alexandrine
whom you have described to me, I love, hope, and wait!” Oh! how sweet
it is, dear Kate, to belong to God. How could we live without feeling
that we were of use, without giving ourselves up, devoting, spending
ourselves in the service of God and of souls? Isa writes to Margaret:
“M. l’Abbé Lagrange speaks admirably of virginity in his _St. Paula_;
it is like reading a page of Mgr. Dupanloup: ‘How beautiful in the
church are those forms of devotedness to which the Christian virgin is
called, whether she silently immolates herself in solitude and prayer,
consumed by the flames of the noblest love which a creature can
possess, a pure victim whose sacrifice is profitable to us, whatever
we are, by the communion of saints of which we are taught by the
church; whether she gives a sister to the sick, a daughter to the
aged, a mother to orphans, or a friend to the poor, the consoler here
below in every neglect and every infirmity, and taken for these works
in the spring-time of her life and the flower of her youth――taken away
from all maternal sweetnesses, from the joys of home, from future
hopes, for ever! Doubtless the mother also devotes herself; does
Christianity ignore it? But it must be allowed that the devotion of a
mother is at the same time her duty and her happiness, whilst these
sublime sacrifices of themselves for the relief of every kind of
ignorance and sorrow are entirely voluntary and disinterested, without
other compensation here below than the love of God; and it is true
that this is worth all the rest.
“‘Christian virginity is a state of intimate union with Jesus Christ,
in which, in spotless love and the perfection of purity, souls here
below consume themselves for God, whom they call into themselves, and
are the fragrance of earth and the delight of heaven. The Gospel,
knowing human nature, makes not a precept of this celestial ideal,
since it would surpass the ordinary strength of mankind; but it gives
a counsel for those who have the courage to follow it, because it
feels that there are chosen souls who have this strength, and because
this marvel of virtue, this life of angels in a mortal frame, while it
embalms the world, is, in the church, one of the most evident and
touching marks of her divine origin.’”
How beautiful it is! What a pen of gold! Dear Kate, all this is very
suitable for you!
Met Lady Cleave and her nice children at Edinburgh. Spoke of Kate――a
thing as natural to me as singing is to the bird. Had a delightful
conversation yesterday evening with Margaret and Marcella, both of
whom are as clever as they are saintly, and love each other like old
friends, keeping for me, they say, a throne of honor in their hearts.
No one appreciates more than I do the charm of a pure and intellectual
friendship. This will assuredly be one of the joys of eternity, since
on high all souls will be united in the plenitude of intelligence,
purity, and love.
It is very cold. We are making some happy people. Picciola is charming
in the exercise of charity.
Good-night, dear Kate, it is eleven o’clock.
NOVEMBER 18, 1868.
From the window of an ancient Scottish castle I am watching for the
return of the _abbé_ and his pupils from a _walk of beneficence_. But,
like “Sister Anne” in the old story, I see nothing come, and have not
even the compensation of beholding the “sun’s golden sheen and the
grass growing green,” any more than I am in the same peril as that
inquisitive _châtelaine_. We are intending simply to do honor in
Scotland to my mother’s _fête_, one of her names being Elizabeth. It
was René’s idea, and applauded by all. Edith herself, with her fairy
fingers, has made a charming bouquet from the flowers in the
conservatories. Marcella is practising on the piano, Edouard singing;
Lucy has undertaken to keep Mme. de T―――― out of the way for a few
hours. I hear joyous voices; goodby until this evening.
_Evening._――Superb, dear Kate! A scene of ancient times, and,
moreover, in a romantic dwelling, where Walter Scott has been, and
where kings have displayed their splendor. The effect produced by the
voices of René, Edouard, Marcella, and Margaret is unique. Our mother,
surprised and touched, was only able to answer by her tears; and just
now, when I was accompanying her to her room, she said: “Dear
Georgina, I regretted Hélène!” Ah! this is the ever-open wound, the
ineffaceable regret!
God keep you, my Kate! Your spirit accompanies me everywhere, my
beloved companion, my invisible guardian; and how sweet a nest your
love has made me!
This will be the last sheet that I shall date from Scotland; we are
far from the post. I shall not send it until the moment of our
departure.
_November 25._――News from Paris, and of every kind; the best comes
always from you. Adrien and Raoul will arrive in Ireland at the same
time as we do.
It will be a day of rejoicing to me to return to our own house. Long
live home, my country, the place of many memories! I have taken some
views, and bought quantities of things for Lizzy, Fanny, and all our
friends there. These good mountaineers regret our departure. O
Ireland, Ireland! Marcella has set to music the poetry of the sweet
and terrible Columba; impossible to hear it without tears. Decidedly,
I must go on another pilgrimage to Gartan.
The _Three Graces_, dressed in the tartans of which I have made them a
present, have a Scottish appearance which is charming. They send
kisses to Mme. Kate.
A thousand loving messages to you, my beloved sister. May all the
blessed angels be with you!
DECEMBER 9, 1868.
Dear Kate, with what joy we find ourselves in Ireland again! Adrien
and Raoul have brought with them quantities of books. I must give you
some quotations from the _Life of the Saints_ by MM. Kellerhove and de
Riancey――a splendid volume, presented by Gertrude to Margaret――and a
remarkable work by the Comtesse Olympe de Lernay: “Born with the
century, and dying on the 30th of March, 1864, she realized in her
admirable life the high ideal of the truly Christian woman. Her
existence wholly of faith, labor, and love was visited by the heaviest
trials, but her resignation was profound. She said: ‘The triumph of
self-renunciation over enthusiasm will not be without fruit with
reference to the eternal future; and when God’s day of reckoning shall
come, I will say to him, Father, I wished to labor at thy vine with my
golden pruning-knife, but this was not thy will; and therefore is it
that, instead of adorning its summit, I have remained at its foot.’”
Do you not find in this a finished beauty? “To glorify God and gain
hearts to him was the supreme desire of this saintly and amiable
woman, who, endowed with artistic, poetic, and literary talents, as
varied as they were remarkable, worked as one prays, and prayed as one
sings.”
Adrien is reading us fragments of the _Mahâbhârata_――“the book of the
people which has meditated most.” How much more sublime than ever does
the Bible appear after this reading! No; outside of the love of God
there is nothing completely beautiful or great.
_Immense_ party this evening; _sixty invitations_! The preparations
are complete, except that much is still going on in the region of the
kitchen. And I, the happy giver of the invitations, tranquilly seated
at my writing-table of island-wood, am chattering like a school-girl
in the holidays. Dear Kate, it is because I have been making all
diligence, and because I have before me your thrice welcome pages, so
charming and affectionate, and which appear to me to breathe a perfume
of our native land. Yes, truly, the sweetest is there――this fragrance
of delightful and unalloyed affection which comes to me from you!
Jack is still in a distressing state, suffering incessantly. He
yesterday received our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, the sovereign
Comforter, and, resting lovingly on the adorable Heart which gave
itself for him, he has promised to love the cross. Poor old man! His
children have the evil of the age――the loss of respect. René prepared
him for the visit of his Saviour, and I went later to arrange
everything; on entering I heard the sick man speaking with animation,
and paused involuntarily. “I suffer too much, your honor.” “My friend,
say with me: O Life of my soul, O most sweet and merciful Saviour, put
into my heart much indulgence, patience, and charity.” “But then I am
so often thrown back! Ten years of suffering; and what have they
brought me? Oh! how my loneliness weighs upon me. I am left so much
alone!” “My poor brother, dear privileged one of our Lord, say with
me: My God, I accept these sufferings in union with thy Agony and
Crucifixion. Pardon me my involuntary murmurings; accept my daily
torments as an expiation. Eternity is near! My God. I will all that
thou willest.” Jack repeated the words with docility.
After communion he appeared happy. The doctor wonders that he can
endure so much suffering and live. “Will the good God grant me to die
before you go?” the poor man asked of René. Oh! how sad it is to die
thus――to become the _outcast_ in the home of which one had been the
life.
Kate dearest, let us pray for all in their agony.
TO BE CONTINUED.
TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO THE PRIMACY OF ST. PETER.
In our former article[139] the evidence which we adduced as to the
testimony of the Catacombs on a disputed point of Catholic doctrine
was drawn almost exclusively from their inscriptions; and that
evidence was very abundant, because the doctrine in question was
precisely that on which we should look to tombstones for information.
It was only natural that, in writing the last earthly memorial of
their departed friends, the survivors should spontaneously――one might
almost say unconsciously――give utterance to the thoughts that were in
their mind as to the present condition and future prospects of those
to whom they had now paid the last offices. The subject now before us
is of a very different kind. We are going to inquire of the Catacombs
whether they can tell us anything as to the idea entertained in
primitive times about the position held in the Christian hierarchy by
St. Peter and his successors; and we think most persons would consider
it very strange indeed if we should elicit any answer to this inquiry
from the inscriptions upon gravestones. Mr. Withrow, however, is of a
different opinion; he thinks that if in those early days the bishops
of Rome enjoyed any superior dignity over other bishops, it ought to
have been, and probably would have been, mentioned on their epitaphs;
and, accordingly, he chronicles as items worthy of being noted in the
controversy such facts as these: that “the tomb of the first Roman
bishop bore simply the name _Linus_” (p. 507), and that in the papal
crypt, or chamber where the popes of the third century were buried,
they are only honored with the title of bishop, and even that appears
in a contracted form, ΕΠΙ or ΕΠΙΚ (p. 508). The Dean of Chichester
seems to entertain a somewhat similar opinion; only, as he has formed
a higher estimate of the episcopal dignity, this opinion shows itself
in him in a different form. He thinks the extremely “curt and
unceremonious” character of these papal epitaphs almost a conclusive
argument against their authenticity.
Mr. Withrow further adds (p. 509), that the word _Papa_ or pope does
not occur in the Catacombs till at least the latter part of the fourth
century, when it is found, applied to Pope Damasus, in the margin of
an inscription by that bishop in honor of one of his predecessors,
Eusebius. Even with reference to this, however, he insinuates that, as
this inscription in its present condition is “admitted” by De Rossi to
be a badly-executed reproduction, of the sixth or seventh century, of
a previous inscription, “this title may very well belong to that late
period.” Our first impression upon reading this was a grave doubt,
which we cannot even now altogether suppress, whether Mr. Withrow had
ever read either what De Rossi or his English epitomizers have written
on the subject of this monument. Certainly, he cannot have appreciated
the curious and interesting story they have told of this stone; or, if
we may not call in question his intelligence, we shall be obliged to
accuse him of wilful misrepresentation. One of the most striking
features in the story, now _lippis et tonsoribus notum_, is that the
ignorant copyist, so far from being capable of forging a link in the
chain of evidence for the papal supremacy, was only able to transcribe
the letters actually before his eyes, and even left a vacant space
occasionally where he saw that a letter was missing from the mutilated
inscription before him, which, however, he was quite incompetent to
supply. We are afraid, therefore, that Mr. Withrow must be content to
acknowledge that this obnoxious title of pope was certainly given to a
Bishop of Rome before the close of the fourth century. At the same
time we offer him all the consolation we can by pointing out that it
was given to him only by an artist, an _employé_ of his, and one of
his special admirers――he calls himself his _cultor atque amator_――and
perhaps, therefore, Mr. Withrow may suggest that the title was here
used in a sense in which he is aware that it was originally
employed――viz., as an expression of familiar and affectionate respect
rather than of dignity.
But we must go further, and, in obedience to the stern logic of facts,
we must oblige Mr. Withrow to see that the title was used of the
Bishop of Rome some seventy or eighty years before Damasus. If he had
ever visited the cemetery of San Callisto, he might have seen the
original inscription itself in which the title is given to Pope
Marcellinus (296-308); and this time not by a layman, an artist, but
by an ecclesiastical official――in fact, the pope’s own deacon, the
Deacon Severus, who had charge of that cemetery:
_Cubiculum duplex cum arcisoliis et luminare
Jussu PP. sui Marcellini Diaconus iste
Severus fecit.…_
Observe that the title is here abridged into the compendious formula
PP., as though it were a title with which Roman Christians were
already familiar, just as in pagan epigraphy the same letters stand
for _præpositus_ or _primopilus_, and those words are not written at
full length, because everybody interested in the matter would know at
once from the name and the context what was to be supplied.[140] So,
then, it seems impossible to determine when the title was first used
of the bishops of Rome; it is at least certain that it occurs in the
Catacombs a century earlier than Mr. Withrow imagined, and that even
then it was no novelty. However, we do not care to dispute the facts,
to which he attaches so much importance, that the title of pope was in
those ancient days neither “peculiar to the Bishop of Rome,” nor, so
far as we know, _first_ applied to him. Moreover, we cannot even
accept, what Mr. Withrow in his ignorance is ready to concede, that
“the name of the Bishop of Rome was used as a note of time in the
latter part of the fourth century”――a distinction, however, which he
contends “was also conferred on other bishops than those of Rome.”
Again, we must observe that this remark seems to indicate an entire
ignorance in its author of all that De Rossi has written on the same
subject. Of course Mr. Withrow is referring to the two epitaphs which
conclude with the words _sub Liberio_ _Episcopo, sub Damaso Episcopo_;
but he gives no sign of being acquainted with the history of those
pontiffs, and with the reasons which De Rossi has so carefully drawn
out,[141] wherefore there might have been special mention of their
names on the tombs of persons who died during their pontificates.
We have now noticed, we believe, all Mr. Withrow’s observations upon
the testimony of the Catacomb inscriptions with reference to the papal
supremacy; it remains that we ourselves should make one or two
observations upon it which he has _not_ made. And, first, it seems to
have escaped his notice that there _is_ a title given to the popes by
one of themselves on three or four of these monuments――a title
stronger and of more definite meaning than _Papa_, and quite as
unwelcome to Protestant ears. Pope Damasus calls Marcellus, one of his
predecessors, _Veridicus Rector_, or the truth-speaking ruler or
governor, in the epitaph with which he adorned his tomb. Two others of
his predecessors, Eusebius and Sixtus II., he simply calls _Rector_,
without any qualifying epithet at all. And next we would ask Mr.
Withrow and all who sympathize with his objection what title they
would suggest as possible for the tombstones of the earliest bishops
of Rome, even supposing their position in the Christian hierarchy to
have been at that time as clearly defined and fully developed as it is
now. Do they think it would have been either seemly or possible for a
Christian bishop in the first three centuries to assume the highest
official religious title among pagans, and to be addressed as
_Pontifex Maximus_? It is true, indeed, that this title has been given
to them in modern epigraphy since it was moulded on the classical
type――_i.e._, ever since the Renaissance. But nobody could dream of
such a title as compatible with the relative positions of paganism and
Christianity during the period that the Catacombs were in use for
purposes of burial. Nevertheless, it is well worthy of note that even
at a very early period of the third century, when Tertullian wished to
jeer at a decree which he disliked, but which had been issued by the
pope, he spoke of him in mockery, as though he were _Pontifex scilicet
maximus et episcopus episcoporum_, thereby intimating pretty clearly
what position in the Christian hierarchy the bishops of Rome seemed to
assume.
And now, taking our leave of all discussions about mere titles and
verbal inscriptions, let us inquire whether any other evidence can be
produced from the Catacombs bearing upon the question before us――the
question, that is, of St. Peter’s position under the New Law. Let us
inquire of the paintings and sculpture, and other similar monuments,
as explained and illustrated by contemporary writings. And we ask our
adversaries to deal fairly with the evidence we shall adduce; not to
weigh each portion of it apart from the rest, but to allow it that
cumulative weight which really belongs to it, interpreting each
separate monument with the same spirit of candor and equity which they
claim on behalf of any evidence which the Catacombs afford for
doctrines which they themselves accept. Take, for instance, the
doctrine of the Resurrection. We saw in our last article that Mr.
Withrow’s assertion that this doctrine was everywhere recorded
throughout the Catacombs rested virtually upon the existence of
certain oft-recurring paintings there――paintings of the story of Jonas
and of the raising of Lazarus; that it was not supported by any
contemporary sepulchral inscriptions, but that certain more explicit
inscriptions of a later date undoubtedly contain it. In other words,
Mr. Withrow (and we might add Mr. Burgon, Mr. Marriott, and the whole
race of Protestant controversialists who have entered this arena at
all) can recognize, when it suits his purpose, the justice of reading
ancient monuments in the light of more modern and explicit statements
of Christian doctrine, and of interpreting the monuments of Christian
art in one age by their known form and meaning in another. Let them
not deny the privilege of this canon of interpretation to others
besides themselves. We shall use it as occasion may require in our
examination of the monuments which to all Catholic archæologians seem
to bear testimony to the exceptional position of St. Peter in the
Apostolic College.
A subject represented from very early times, and frequently repeated
both in paintings and in sculpture, is that of Moses striking the rock
in the wilderness, and the waters gushing forth for the refreshment of
the children of Israel in their passage through the wilderness. What
does this subject mean? The stories of Jonas and of Lazarus were
meant, we are told, as types of the Resurrection, and are to be
admitted as proofs of the belief of the early Christians in that great
doctrine. What part of their belief is typified in this incident from
the life of Moses? Let us first see how it was understood by the Jews
themselves.
The Royal Psalmist refers to it more than once in accents of fervent
gratitude as for a signal act of God’s mercy towards his people, and
also of lively hope, as having been typical and prophetic of further
mercies. Isaias, in that magnificent prophecy wherein he recounts the
marvels that shall happen in the world when “God shall come and save
it,” recalls the memory of the same event, and makes use of it as a
fitting image of the spiritual graces that should then be poured forth
on the children of men. “God himself,” he says, “will come and will
save you. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened; and the ears of
the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart,
and the tongue of the dumb shall be free: for waters are broken out in
the desert, and streams in the wilderness. And that which was dry land
shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water.”[142] At
length the period so long looked for, so frequently promised, “in the
fulness of time” arrived; Jesus was born and manifested among men,
and, standing in the Temple on a great feast-day, he offered himself
to all men as “a fountain of living waters.” “He stood, and cried,
saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that
believeth in me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow
rivers of living water.” And St. John, who has preserved to us this
history, immediately adds, for the more certain interpretation of his
words, that Jesus “said this of the Holy Spirit, whom they should
receive who believed in him.” Finally, St. Paul comes to complete the
explanation, and, in that chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians
which one may almost call the key to the history of the children of
Israel, gives more clearly than any before him the mystical
interpretation of the prodigy of the rock. Taking the first and last
links of the long chain of inspired writing about it, he couples the
original physical fact with its far-distant spiritual interpretation
in those words with which we are so familiar: “Our fathers all drank
the same spiritual drink: and they drank of the spiritual rock that
followed them: and _the rock was Christ_.”
It cannot be disputed, then, that the water represented as flowing
from the rock struck by Moses in the wilderness was intended to be
typical of the spiritual blessings which flow to the church from
Christ. Was there anything typical also in the _person_ striking the
rock? Or was this a mere historical accessory of the scene,
represented of necessity in order to the completeness of the story,
but having no particular meaning of its own――merely the historical
Moses, and nothing more? It might very well have been so; and
everybody who suggests a mystical interpretation is bound to produce
substantial reasons for departing from the literal sense. De Rossi
then leads us into a chapel in the Catacomb of San Callisto, and bids
us notice the marked difference between the two figures of Moses
painted side by side on the same wall――in the one scene taking off his
shoes before going up to the holy mountain; in the other, striking the
rock. They cannot both be meant to represent the historical verity; it
looks as though the distinction between them was intended to point out
their typical or symbolical character, and we almost fancy we can
discern a resemblance between one of the figures and the received
traditional portrait of Peter. But we advance further into the same
cemetery, and enter another chapel in which the same scene is again
represented. This time there is no room for doubt: the profile, the
features, the rounded and curly beard, the rough and frizzled
hair――are all manifest tokens of the traditional likeness of St.
Peter, and we are satisfied that it is he who is here striking the
rock. The same studied resemblance may be noted also in the figure of
the man striking the rock on several of the sculptured sarcophagi.
Still, we are not satisfied; we should be loath to lay the stress of
any important argument upon any mere likeness which we might believe
that we recognize between this and that figure in ancient painting or
sculpture. It would be more satisfactory if we could find an
inscription on the figure putting its identity beyond all question.
And even this, too, is not wanting. In the Vatican Museum there are
two or three specimens of this same subject on the gilded glasses that
have been sometimes found affixed to graves in the Catacombs, and on
them the name of PETRUS is distinctly engraved over the scene. It is
true that these glasses were probably not made till the fourth
century; neither were the sarcophagi. But we argue with Mr. Marriott
that “the existence of these later monuments can hardly be accounted
for except on the supposition of their being reproductions of still
older monuments.” In fact, in the present instance, these older
monuments still exist; only their interpretation might have been
disputed, had not the later monuments been found with the
interpretation engraved upon them. With these glasses in our hands,
showing indisputably that the Christians of the fourth and fifth
centuries looked upon Moses in the act of striking the rock as a type
of St. Peter, we feel confident that the Christians of the second and
third centuries, who continually represented the same scene, did so
with the same idea. In a word, the evidence for the identification of
St. Peter with Moses in the conceptions of the ancient Christian
artists seems to be complete and convincing. Such, at least, is our
own conclusion; we subjoin Mr. Withrow’s:
“In two or three of the gilded glasses which are of
comparatively late date, the scene of Moses striking the
rock is rudely indicated, and over the head or at the side
of the figure is the word PETRUS. From this circumstance
Roman Catholic writers have asserted that in many of the
sarcophagal and other representations of this event it is no
longer Moses but Peter――‘the leader of the new Israel of
God’――who is striking the rock with the emblem of divine
power: a conclusion for which there is absolutely no
evidence except _the very trivial fact above mentioned_” (p.
292).
Mr. Withrow’s observations suggest one or two additional remarks.
First, he calls St. Peter “the leader of the new Israel of God,” but
he omits to mention from whom he borrows this title or description of
the apostle. They are the words of Prudentius, the Christian poet of
the fifth century, who thus becomes an additional witness to the truth
which we have been insisting upon――that the position of St. Peter
under the New Law was analogous to that of Moses under the Old.
Prudentius was in the habit of frequenting the Catacombs for
devotional purposes, and he has left us a description of them. Perhaps
in the line which we have quoted he was but giving poetical expression
to a fact or doctrine which he had seen often represented in symbols
and on monuments.
But, secondly, Mr. Withrow speaks of the rod in the hands of Moses as
“the emblem of divine power.” And here it should be mentioned that
this rod is never seen on ancient monuments of Christian art, except
in the hands of these three: Christ, Moses, and Peter――or should we
not now rather say of two only, Christ and St. Peter?――and that these
two hardly ever appear without it. Either in painted or sculptured
representations of our Lord’s miracles he usually holds a rod in his
hands as the instrument whereby he wrought them. Whether he is
changing the water into wine, or multiplying the loaves and fishes, or
raising Lazarus from the dead, it is not his own divine hand that
touches the chosen objects of the merciful exercise of his power, but
he touches them all with a rod. Even when he is represented not in his
human form, but symbolically as a lamb――_e.g._, in the spandrels of
the tomb of Junius Bassus, A.D. 359――the rod is still placed between
the forefeet of the mystical animal, its other end resting on the
rock, the water-pots, or the baskets. In one of the sarcophagi,
belonging probably to the year 410 or thereabouts, we almost seem to
assist at the transfer of this emblem of power from Christ to his
Vicar. In the series of miracles in the upper half of the sarcophagus
to which we refer it appears three times in the hand of Christ; in the
lower series it occurs the same number of times in the hand of Peter.
In the last of these instances, indeed, it may be said that it was
necessary, as it was the scene of striking the rock; but in the other
two it can hardly be understood in any other sense than as an emblem,
and, if an emblem at all, we suppose all would admit that it can only
be an emblem of power and authority. In the first of these two scenes
we are reminded, by the cock at his feet, that our Lord is warning his
apostle of his threefold denial, whilst we are assured by the rod in
the apostle’s hand that his fall would not deprive him of his
prerogative, but that after his conversion it would be his mission to
“confirm the brethren.” In the second scene the firmness of faith
foretold or promised in the first is put to the test by persecution,
which began from his first apprehension by the Jews and still
continues, yet the rod or staff remains in his hands, no human malice
having power to wrest either from himself or his successors that
authority over the new Israel which he had received from his divine
Master.
We are told that there was an ancient Eastern tradition that the rod
of Moses, the ministerial instrument of his great miracles, had
originally belonged to the patriarch Jacob, from whom it was inherited
by his son Joseph; that upon Joseph’s death it was taken to Pharao’s
palace, and thence was in due time given by the daughter of Pharao to
her adopted son, Moses. Moreover, the same author mentions that in
like manner when our Lord said the words, “Feed my lambs, feed my
sheep,” he gave to Peter a staff significative of his pastoral
authority over the whole flock; and that “hence has arisen the custom
for all religious heads of churches and monasteries to carry a staff
as a sign of their leadership of the people.” We do not in any way
vouch for the authenticity, or even the antiquity, of this tradition.
The only authority we have found for it does not go further back than
the first years of the fifteenth century; but it aptly expresses the
same truth which (we maintain) was clearly present to the minds both
of Christian writers and Christian artists in the early ages of the
church. We have seen how it was illustrated by symbol in the monuments
of the Catacombs; we have heard the language of Prudentius, calling
St. Peter the leader of the new Israel; to these we must add the
testimony of an Eastern solitary, the Egyptian St. Macarius, who lived
some fifty years earlier, and who states the same thing more
distinctly, saying that “_Moses was succeeded by Peter_,” and that “to
him [St. Peter] was committed the new church and the new priesthood.”
We are far, however, from having done justice to the idea as it
existed in the mind of the ancient church, if we separate the notion
of Peter being a second Moses from that particular act in the life of
the Jewish leader which we have seen specially attributed to the
apostle――viz., the striking of the rock; and in our interpretation of
this act we must be careful to take into account all that the ancient
Fathers understood by it. Let us listen to the commentary upon it
preached in a public sermon somewhere about the middle of the fifth
century. Speaking in Turin on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, St.
Maximus uses these words:
“This is Peter, to whom Christ the Lord of his free will
granted a share in his own name; for, as the Apostle Paul
has taught us, Christ was the rock; and so Peter too was by
Christ made a rock, the Lord saying to him: ‘Thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church.’ For as water
flowed from a rock to the Lord’s people thirsting in the
wilderness, so did the fountain of a life-giving confession
come forth from the mouth of Peter to the whole world
wearied with the thirst of unbelief. This is Peter, to whom
Christ, when about to ascend to his Father, commends his
lambs and sheep to be fed and guarded.”
The doctrine which is here taught is plain and undeniable. Allusion is
clearly made to a twofold idea: first, Christ in his own nature is the
shepherd of the sheep, and the rock whence flows the fount of living
water in the desert; but by an act of his own sovereign will, by his
own special appointment, when about to leave the world, he assigns the
office of chief shepherd to Peter, and he communicates to Peter a
share in his own attributes, so that he too from henceforth becomes a
rock whereon the church is built, and from him flows the fount of
heavenly doctrine and life-giving faith which was first revealed to
him by the Father, and then by him proclaimed and preached throughout
the whole dry desert of the world.
Did this thought originate with the Bishop of Turin? Was it a conceit
of his own fancy, the fruit of a lively imagination? Or are his words
only a link in the chain of ancient tradition, handing on to others
the same truth which he had himself received from his forefathers?
One thing is certain: that the pope was preaching the very same thing
in Rome about the same time. Each year, as the feast of SS. Peter and
Paul――which was also the anniversary of his own consecration――came
round, Pope Leo exhorted the bishops and others who heard him to lift
up their minds and hearts, to consider the glory of the Prince of the
Apostles, who was inundated (he said) by such copious irrigations from
the fount of all graces that whereas there were many which he alone
received, none passed to anybody else without his having a share in
them. “The divine condescension,” he says again, “gave to this man a
great and wonderful participation in his own power, so that, though he
chose that some things should be common to him with the other
apostles, yet he never gave except through him what he did not
withhold from the rest”; and then he goes on to interpret the words of
Christ to Peter in this manner; he says: “The formation of the
universal church at its birth took its beginning from the honor of
Blessed Peter, in whose person its rule and its sum consist; for _from
his fountain the stream of ecclesiastical discipline flowed forth into
all churches_.” Twenty years earlier Pope Innocent praises an African
council for having referred some question to Rome, “knowing what is
due to the Apostolic See, since all we who occupy this place desire to
follow the apostle himself, from whom the very episcopate and all the
authority of this title spring; that nothing, even in the most distant
parts of the world, should be determined before it was brought to the
knowledge of this see; … that so all waters should flow from their
parent source and the pure streams of the fountain should well forth
uncorrupted throughout the different regions of the whole world.”
It may be said, perhaps, that these are mere figures of speech and
rhetorical illustrations, and that there is no proof that the writers
intended any reference whatever to the miraculous stream from the rock
in the desert.
We cannot, in reply to this question, undertake to trace back an
unbroken catena of authorities, from the fifth century to the first,
clearly expressing the same idea; but we can say with truth that it is
continually recurring in all writings which have occasion to speak of
the unity of the church, especially in the controversies of the third
century against the Novatians; that the types of the rock and the
fount, symbols of the origin and unity of the faith, of baptism, and
of the church, seem then to have been inseparable in the minds of
writers and preachers from the mention of St. Peter, on whom Christ
had founded that origin and that unity; that those who impugned the
validity of baptism administered by heretics considered that they
urged an irrefragable argument against their adversaries as often as
they invoked the prerogative of Peter and the undoubted unity of the
rock whence alone all pure waters flowed; finally, that the earliest
writer in whom we find the waters of baptism spoken of as flowing from
the rock (Tertullian) was a frequent visitor at Rome about the very
time when some of the most remarkable paintings in which they are so
represented――those in the so-called sacramental chapels in the
Catacomb of San Callisto――were being executed; _i.e._, at the very
commencement of the third century.
We conclude, then, that the paintings and other monuments of ancient
Christian art belonging to the Catacombs, when placed side by side
with the language of contemporaneous and succeeding Christian writers,
mutually explain and confirm one another; and that it is impossible
not to recognize in the perfect agreement of these important witnesses
the faithful echo of a primitive tradition――to wit, that to St. Peter
was given the authority to draw forth the true living waters of
sacramental grace from the Rock of ages, and to distribute them
throughout the whole church.
There is yet one more incident in the life of Moses which ancient
Christian art has reproduced, and with a distinct reference to St.
Peter――viz., the receiving of the law from the hand of God. This is a
subject very commonly repeated on the sarcophagi of the fourth and
fifth centuries, but there is not, so far as we know, any emblem
attached to these sculptured representations which obliges us to refer
them to the apostle. Other monuments, however, of the same or an
earlier date, supply what is wanting. We find both paintings and
ancient gilded glasses in which St. Peter receives from our Lord
either a roll or volume, or sometimes (as if to make the resemblance
more striking) a mere tablet with the inscription _Lex Domini_, or
_Dominus legem dat_. Now, in pagan works of art the emperors were
sometimes represented in the act of giving the book of the laws or
constitutions to those officials whom they sent forth to govern the
provinces, and the magistrates receive the book, for greater
reverence, not in their bare hands, but in a fold of their toga.
Compare with this a Christian sarcophagus, belonging to an early part
of the fourth century, and published by Bosio. In it we see Christ,
already ascended and triumphant, having the firmament under his feet,
giving the book of the New Law to Peter, who in like manner has his
hands covered with a veil, that he may receive it with due reverence.
It is as though Christ were visibly appointing him his Vicar and
representative upon earth, and making him the expounder and
administrator of his law. And the same scene is represented, without
any essential alteration, in a number of monuments of various kinds,
frescoes, sculpture, glasses, and mosaics. By and bye, in some
artists’ hands, it lost something of its precise original
signification; at least, in two of the later monuments (one of them
undoubtedly by a Greek artist) it is St. Paul who receives the law,
instead of St. Peter. But then there is, of course, a certain sense in
which this might be as truly predicated of St. Paul, or of any other
member of the Apostolic College as of St. Peter himself. Sometimes,
also, all the apostles appear together with St. Peter when he receives
the law――only he receives the volume opened; they stand each holding a
closed roll in his hand. In some monuments, as in the mosaic of Sta.
Costanza, the legend is _Dominus dat pacem_ instead of _legem_. This,
however, is hardly an essential difference. It is only through his law
that Christ gives peace, and peace or unity of the church is a primary
dogma of his law. Hence this interchange of the two words: the
substitution of one for the other, or occasionally even their union,
as on the cover of a Book of the Gospels at Milan, which is inscribed
_Lex et pax_.
But it is time to draw this paper to a close. Let it be remembered
that it is not an attempt to prove the papal supremacy by means of
inscriptions or other monuments from the Catacombs, but an answer to
an oft-repeated challenge upon one point at least which lies at the
root of that subject; and incidentally it throws light upon some other
points also, more or less closely connected with it. And we claim to
have established against these controversialists that there is
evidence to be gathered from these subterranean cemeteries; that those
who made and decorated them were conscious of a special pre-eminence
belonging to St. Peter over the rest of the apostolic body; that they
knew him to be in a certain singular manner the representative of his
divine Master, whose rod of power or staff of rule he alone was
privileged to bear; that it was his prerogative to be the head of the
Christian church, its leader and its teacher, having received the law
from the hands of Christ, and the commission to feed and govern his
flock; that he had the special guardianship of the fountain and river
of living waters, only to be found within the church, and special
authority to draw them forth and distribute them throughout every
region of the thirsty world.
[139] “Testimony of the Catacombs to Prayers for the Dead
and the Invocation of Saints,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec.,
1876.
[140] _R. S._, ii. 307.
[141] _Inscr. Christian._, i. 80, 100.
[142] C. xxxv. 4-7.
MODERN THOUGHT IN SCIENCE.
When we were informed that Professor Huxley, during his visit to
America, was to give a few scientific lectures, we could easily
anticipate that from a man of his character nothing was to be expected
so likely as a bold effort to exalt science at the expense of
religion. The three lectures on the _Evidences of Evolution_, which he
delivered in New York on the 18th, 20th, and 22d of September last,
are an evident proof that we had guessed right. These lectures, though
free from open and formal denunciations of religious faith, are deeply
imbued with that spirit of dogmatic unbelief which pervades other
works of the same professor, and especially his _Lay Sermons_. His aim
is always the same: he uniformly strives to establish what Mr. Draper
and other modern thinkers have vainly attempted to prove, that
_science conflicts with revelation_; and he labors to impress upon us
the notion that _none but the ignorant can believe in revealed truth_.
Such is the main object which the professor has had constantly in view
since he preached the first of his _Lay Sermons_. A friend of ours,
who happened to be in England when this first lay sermon was
delivered, disgusted at the arrogance and levity displayed by the lay
preacher, hastened to write a short popular refutation of that sermon.
This refutation, owing to some unforeseen accident, was brought over
to America without being published, and it is now in our hands.
Believing, as we do, that, although written some years ago, it is by
no means stale, and that its perusal will effectually contribute to
expose the gross fallacies of the scientific lecturer, we offer it to
our readers as an appropriate introduction to the direct criticism of
the lectures themselves, which we intend to give in an early number.
The manuscript in question reads as follows:
The _Fortnightly Review_ (Jan. 15, 1866) has published “A Lay Sermon
delivered at St. Martin’s Hall on Sunday, January 7, 1866, ON THE
ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, _by Prof. T. H.
Huxley_.” The lay preacher thinks that the improvement of natural
knowledge, besides giving us the means of avoiding pestilences,
extinguishing fires, and providing modern society with material
comfort, has produced two other wonderful effects: “I say that natural
knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas that
can alone still spiritual cravings”――this is the first. “I say that
natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has
been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundation of
a new morality”――this is the second. Though Mr. Huxley is a great
professor, or rather because he is a great professor, we make bold to
offer him a few remarks on the subject which he has chosen, and
especially on the manner in which he has treated it. The reader, of
course, will understand that when we speak of Mr. Huxley we mean to
speak, not of the man, but of the preacher.
That natural knowledge is a good thing, and its improvement an
advisable thing, is universally admitted and requires no proof. Hence
we might ask: What is the good of a _lay sermon on the advisableness
of improving natural knowledge_? Does any man in his senses make
sermons on the advisableness of improving one’s purse, or health, or
condition? A student of rhetoric would of course take up any
unprofitable subject as a suitable ground for amplification or
declamation; but a professor cannot, in our opinion, have had this aim
in view in a lay sermon delivered at St. Martin’s Hall. Had Mr. Huxley
been under the impression that natural knowledge is nowadays, for some
reason or other, in a deplorable state, every one would have seen the
advisableness of remedying the evil, if shown to be real. Had he
proved in his sermon that natural knowledge nowadays is superficial,
sophistical, or incoherent with other known truths, the opportunity of
talking about the advisableness of improving it would have struck
every eye and stirred every soul. But this was not the case. Natural
knowledge is assumed by the lay preacher to be in a splendid and
glorious state; our scientific men are accounted great men, our
conquests in science admirable, and our uninterrupted progress
unquestionable.
“Our ‘mathematick,’” says he, “is one which Newton would have
to go to school to learn; our ’staticks, mechanicks,
magneticks, chymicks, and natural experiments, constitute a
mass of physical and chemical knowledge, a glimpse at which
would compensate Galileo for the doings of a score of
inquisitorial cardinals; our ‘physick’ and ‘anatomy’ have
embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open
such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not
unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of
Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the
tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard-seed” (pp.
628, 629).
Such being the state of things, we might have expected a sermon _on
the means of diffusing and promoting natural knowledge_; but a sermon
laying stress on such a triviality as _the advisableness of improving
natural knowledge_, when natural knowledge is quite flourishing and
dazzling, seems to us to have no object at all. Unfortunately, the lay
preacher did not see that it was a triviality, or, if he saw that it
was, thought that his own way of dealing with it was so new and
untrivial that the merit of his novel conceptions would redeem the
triviality of the subject. Let us see, then, what such novel
conceptions are.
That natural knowledge may help us to keep back pestilences and to
extinguish fires is not a discovery of the lay preacher; we all knew
it. His first discovery is that pestilences are not punishments of
God, and that fires have little to do with human malice.
“Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting for each
of these calamities. They submitted to the plague in
humility and in penitence, for they believed it to be the
judgment of God. But towards the fire they were furiously
indignant, interpreting it as the effect of the malice of
man, as the work of the republicans or of the Papists,
according as their prepossessions ran in favor of loyalty or
of Puritanism. It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with
one who, standing where I now stand, in what was then a
thickly-peopled and fashionable part of London, should have
broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now propound
to you――that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the
plague was no more, in their sense, a divine judgment than
the fire was the work of any political or of any religious
sect; but that they were themselves the authors of both
plague and fire, and that they must look to themselves to
prevent the recurrence of calamities to all appearance so
peculiarly beyond the reach of human control――so evidently
the result of the wrath of God or of the craft and subtlety
of an enemy” (pp. 626, 627).
We think that natural knowledge will not be much improved by this
Huxleyan discovery. God’s existence and providence are notoriously a
most substantial part of natural knowledge; so the relegation of Deity
out of the world, and the suppression of his providence over it, is no
less a crime against science than against God himself, and shows no
less ignorance than impiety. We cannot admit that pestilences “will
_only_ take up their abode among those who have prepared unswept and
ungarnished residences for them,” nor that “their cities _must_ have
narrow, unwatered streets, foul with accumulated garbage,” nor that
“their houses _must_ be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated,” nor
that “their subjects _must_ be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed” (p.
630). Our reasons for denying such conclusions are many. To cite one
only――of which we think that Mr. Huxley will not fail to appreciate
the value――we read in one of the most authentic historical books the
following:
“The word of the Lord came to Gad the prophet and the seer
of David, saying: Go, and say to David: Thus saith the Lord:
I give thee the choice of three things: choose one of them
which thou wilt, that I may do it to thee. And when Gad was
come to David, he told him, saying: Either seven years of
famine shall come to thee in thy land: or thou shalt flee
three months before thy adversaries: or for three days there
shall be a pestilence in thy land. Now therefore deliberate,
and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me. And
David said to Gad: I am in a great strait: but it is better
that I should fall into the hands of the Lord (for his
mercies are many) than into the hands of men. _And the Lord
sent a pestilence upon Israel_, from the morning unto the
time appointed, and there died of the people from Dan to
Bersabee seventy thousand men. And when the angel of the
Lord had stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy
it, the Lord had pity on the affliction, and said to the
angel that slew the people: _It is enough: now hold thy
hand_” (2 Kings xxiv.)
This fact is as historical as the London plague; nor is it the only
one that could be adduced. Hence we are at a loss to understand how
natural knowledge can be _improved_ by a theory which is annihilated
by the most positive facts.
The next discovery of the lay preacher is no less remarkable: “I say
that natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found
the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings” (p. 632). What
great ideas has natural knowledge introduced into men’s minds? 1st.
That the earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling no man knows
whither, through illimitable space (p. 634); 2d, that what we call the
peaceful heaven above us is but that space, filled by an infinitely
subtle matter, whose particles are seething and surging like the waves
of an angry sea (_ibid._); 3d, that there are infinite regions where
nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, but matter and
force (_ibid._); 4th, that phenomena must have had a beginning, and
must have an end; but their beginning is, to our conception of time,
infinitely remote, and their end is as immeasurably distant (_ibid._);
5th, that all matter has weight, and that the force which produces
weight is co-extensive with the universe (_ibid._); 6th, that matter
is indestructible (p. 635); 7th, that force is indestructible
(_ibid._); 8th, that everywhere we find definite order and succession
of events, which seem never to be infringed (_ibid._); 9th, that man
is not the centre of the living world, but one amidst endless
modifications of life (_ibid._); 10th, that the ancient forms of
existence peopling the world for ages, in relation to human
experience, are infinite (_ibid._); 11th, that life depends for its
manifestation on particular molecular arrangements or any physical or
chemical phenomenon (_ibid._); 12th, that “the theology of the present
has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not
only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the
necessity of breaking into pieces the idols built up of books and
traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the
noblest and most human of man’s emotions by worship, ‘for the most
part of the silent sort,’ at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable”
(p. 636).
It appears that Mr. Huxley assumes that these ideas have been of late
“implanted in our minds by the improvement of natural knowledge,” that
they suffice to “still spiritual cravings,” and that they alone
suffice, as “they alone _can_ still spiritual cravings.” Now, the
indestructibility of matter is not a new idea implanted in men’s minds
by modern science. The ancient and the mediæval philosophers knew it
as well as Mr. Huxley, and, if we may be allowed to state a simple
truth, even better, as they could give a very good reason of the
fact――a thing which would probably puzzle those great men who despise
“the products of mediæval thought,” and dedicate themselves
exclusively to the acquirement of the so-called “new philosophy.” That
life depends for its manifestation on particular molecular
arrangements is, in substance, an old story, as physicists and
philosophers of all times taught that not only the manifestation, but
also the very existence, of life in the body required a particular
organization of matter; so that, to judge by this test, the
improvement of knowledge would here consist in the suppression of the
soul――that is, in a mutilation of knowledge. That phenomena must have
had a beginning is an axiom as old as the world, though some pagan
philosophers denied it; and that phenomena must have an end is but an
assumption which modern men have hitherto failed to prove. But let
this pass.
What a refreshing thought for “stilling spiritual cravings” to know
that phenomena must have had a beginning and must have an end! What a
consoling idea to think that the earth is but an atom among atoms,
whirling no man knows whither! What a subject of delicious
contemplation――the infinite regions, where nothing is known but matter
and force! And then what a happiness to know that what we call
“heaven” is but space filled by an infinitely subtle matter; to know
that all matter has weight; to be certain that all matter is
indestructible! At such thoughts, surely, the heart of man must wax
warm, and spiritual cravings be stilled! Is not this a very strange
discovery?
With regard to the idea that “man is not the centre of the living
world, but one amid endless modifications of life,” we must confess
our ignorance. We thought that such a view had been ere now
peremptorily condemned as absurd by all competent men. But if Mr.
Huxley, in a future lay sermon, is able to show that natural knowledge
obliges him to reckon crabs, monkeys, and gorillas among his own
ancestors, we do not see how much “our spiritual cravings” will be
gratified at the thought of such a noble origin. In any case, we shall
leave to Mr. Huxley the privilege of enjoying personally all the glory
of a bestial genealogy.
And now we must say a word on “the theology of the present, which has
become more scientific than that of the past.” The improvement of
knowledge, according to our lay preacher, led theology first to
renounce the idols of wood and the idols of stone. Very good; yet we
may observe that such an improvement of knowledge had its origin in
divine revelation, not in experimental science, and that the sect
which now preaches the progress of natural knowledge has had no part
in breaking the idols either of wood or stone. Then the improvement of
knowledge must lead theology to break into pieces――What? “Books,
traditions, fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs”! And men――that is, Mr.
Huxley’s friends――“begin to see the necessity” of breaking all such
things. This is but natural. As the outlaw detests the police and the
army, and “begins to see the necessity” of breaking both into pieces,
so these lovers of matter detest books and traditions on higher
subjects, and their “spiritual (!) cravings” cannot be stilled unless
they break traditions and books into pieces. At this we do not wonder;
but as for “ecclesiastical cobwebs,” what are they? Does Mr. Huxley
know any cobwebs but his own――and those, too, not very “fine-spun?”
Next comes “the worship, ‘for the most part of the silent sort,’ at
the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable.” This is the last degree of
the climax; and this gives us the measure both of the “new
philosophy,” and of the acute mind of the lay preacher. Our “spiritual
cravings” cannot be stilled until we have done away with that portion
of knowledge which concerns our Lord and Creator. Our scientific
Titans do not want a Master and a Judge. The improvement of knowledge
must lead us back to the time when a few fools worshipped at the altar
of an unknown God; and, since the absurdity of this pretension had not
the merit of being modern, it became necessary to show the high degree
of ignorance which may be united with the _improved_ natural knowledge
by proclaiming that the noblest and most human of man’s emotions is
cherished by a worship which is a moral, not to say physical,
impossibility.
We have now reached the bottom of the “new philosophy”; we are edified
about the _improvement_ of natural knowledge; we know what is aimed at
in the lay sermons on the _advisableness_ of improving natural
knowledge; and we thank Mr. Huxley, not without a deep sense of
melancholy, for his open profession of infidelity, which will very
likely make harmless all lay sermons which he may venture to preach
henceforward. At one thing only we are astonished; that is, that the
champion of such a cause――a professor――has not been able to deal with
his subject except by a strain of whimsical assertions. Is it
necessary for us to teach a professor that mere assertions are good
for nothing in science? A professor like Mr. Huxley should have
understood that, in the case of new theories, the absence of proof
makes men suspect the intellectual poverty of the orator. Still, the
fact remains: the lay-preacher asserted much, and proved nothing. The
only excuse which we think he can offer may be that a layman has no
special vocation and no special grace for preaching; or, perhaps, that
_nemo dat quod non habet_; or, lastly, that the _improvement_ of
natural knowledge is in no need of proof, the assertion of any
professor being considered as a sufficient demonstration. And this
leads us to the third of Mr. Huxley’s discoveries.
Let us hear him. He asks: “What are among the moral convictions most
fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people?” And he answers:
“They are the convictions that authority is the soundest
basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to
believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and
scepticism a sin; that when good authority has pronounced
what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason
has no further duty. There are many excellent persons who
yet hold by these principles, and it is not my present
business or intention to discuss their views. All I wish to
bring clearly before your minds is the unquestionable fact
that the improvement of natural knowledge is effected by
methods which directly give the lie to all these
convictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be
true.”
Then he adds:
“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to
acknowledge authority as such. For him, scepticism is the
highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And
it cannot be otherwise; for every great advance in natural
knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority,
the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation
of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of
science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men
he most venerates hold them, not because their verity is
testified by portents and wonders, but because his
experience teaches him that, whenever he chooses to bring
these convictions into contact with their primary source,
nature――whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to
experiment and observation――nature will confirm them. The
man of science has learned to believe in justification, not
by faith, but by verification” (pp. 636, 637).
This language is undoubtedly clear, and its meaning unmistakable. All
Englishmen who have any disposition to believe on good authority, from
Queen Victoria down to the meanest of her subjects, are to be ranked
among barbarians or semi-barbarians. And as Mr. John Stuart Mill has
already decided, in his high wisdom, that barbarians can be justly
compelled (for their own good, of course) to bear the yoke of a
tyrant, we can, by a genial union of the views of these two great men,
substantiate the result of their combined teaching. “Barbarians, for
their own good, can be subjected to tyranny”――this is the major
proposition drawn from Mr. Mill. “But Englishmen who respect authority
and believe are but barbarians”――this is the minor of Mr. Huxley. The
consequence is brutal but evident, and gives us the measure of the
liberality of a certain class of liberals. Fortunately, Prof. Huxley
is a very amiable man, and perhaps he does not hold without limitation
the aforesaid principle of his philosophical friend. He even
condescends to declare that “there are many excellent persons who yet
hold those convictions of barbarous people,” and says that “it is not
his present business or intention to discuss their views.” Still, we
are sorry that these “excellent persons” are condemned without a
hearing; and as for discussion, our impression is that Mr. Huxley is
much afraid of it, at least “for the present.” We should prefer that
our views were discussed before we are insulted on account of them.
Who knows whether the issue of such a discussion would not show that
the true barbarians, after all, are those very worshippers of
“scepticism” or of the “Unknown” and of the “Unknowable”?
But let us abstain from retaliation; we are barbarians, and our word
is worth nothing as long as we continue to hold that “authority is the
soundest basis of belief.” And yet we fancy that the London plague
could only be believed because the authority of a great number of
eye-witnesses was the soundest basis of belief. Mr. Huxley will say
that we are mistaken, as “the improver of natural knowledge
_absolutely refuses_ to acknowledge authority as such”; but he has
forgotten to tell us on what grounds he himself believes the London
plague. Is it perchance because “his experience teaches him that,
whenever he chooses to bring his convictions into contact with their
primary source, nature――whenever he thinks fit to test them by
appealing to experiment and observation――nature will confirm them”? We
are exceedingly anxious to know the truth. Will the lay preacher, who
is so kind, enlighten us by a clear answer?
We have just said that a little discussion would very likely show that
Mr. Huxley’s remarks apply to his equals rather than to those whom he
endeavors to stigmatize. And as we do not belong to the school or sect
of which Mr. Huxley is the representative, and accordingly do not
enjoy the privilege of boldly asserting what cannot be proved, so we
are obliged to show what are the reasons of our conviction.
Mr. Huxley believes that “man is not the centre of the living world,
but _one amid endless modifications of life_.” Whence does this
conviction come? The learned professor cannot be ranked among
_civilized_ people unless he be able to show that his conviction is
_not_ grounded on authority, but on scepticism, which is “the highest
duty” of an improver of knowledge. He must be prepared to show that
“he holds it, not because the men he most venerates hold it, not
because its verity is testified by portents and wonders, but because
_his experience teaches him_ that, whenever he thinks fit to test it
by appealing to experiment and observation, nature will confirm it.”
Unfortunately for him, and in spite of his uncommon power of making
broad assertions, he cannot have recourse to such an answer, inasmuch
as it would be received with loud peals of laughter even by his devout
flock of St. Martin’s Hall. In conclusion, he has caught himself in
his own trap, and we are afraid he must declare himself to be
(horrible to say!) a _barbarian_, and an awful barbarian too; for it
is with open eyes, and with other aggravating circumstances, that he
has done what, according to him, only “barbarous people” do.
This being the case, no one needs to ask why Mr. Huxley informs us
that it is not his present business or intention to discuss the views
of those “excellent persons” who still believe. He believes himself
more than they believe. They believe “when _good_ authority has
pronounced”; the lay preacher believes even without good authority.
Those “excellent persons” smile with the “keenest scepticism” at his
theory of the Unknown and of the Unknowable; but the lay preacher
believes in his theory without proof and against proof, and thinks
that “reason has no further duty.” And it is remarkable that he does
not content himself with believing what may appear to be a view of the
present or a fact of the past. This would be too little for him; he
believes a great deal more: he believes in what may be called a dream
of the future. Yes:
“If these ideas be destined, _as I believe they are_, to be
more and more firmly established as the world grows older;
if that spirit be fated, _as I believe it is_, to extend
itself into all departments of human thought, and to become
co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as our race
approaches its maturity, it discovers, _as I believe it
will_, that there is but one kind of knowledge, and but one
method of acquiring it――then we, who are still children, may
justly feel it our highest duty to recognize the
advisableness of improving natural knowledge” (p. 637).
Who would have thought or imagined that a man could be so ill-advised
as to condense three professions of blind faith in the very lines in
which he intends to conclude in favor of scepticism?
The consequence of all this is appalling. For how now can Mr. Huxley
again present himself to his devout congregation of St. Martin’s Hall?
What can he say in his defence? The best would be to dissemble, if
possible, and to ignore with a lofty unconcern his numerous blunders;
but men are shrewd, and the expedient might seem an implicit
confession of failure. As for “discussing the views of those excellent
persons” who still hold the principles of faith, there can be no
question. This would be too much and too little: too much for the man,
too little for the purpose. And, in fact, since Mr. Huxley is himself
guilty of that of which he accuses others, he cannot strike others
without wounding himself. The only practical thing would be, in our
opinion, an explicit, generous, and humble confession of guilt. Why
not? The lay preacher is not the first professor who has spoken
nonsense, nor will he be the last. We are all liable to error and sin;
and recantation and repentance are a right of humanity. On the other
hand, he is not the only man who is guilty of believing――he is in very
good company; for “there are many excellent persons who still
believe,” though undoubtedly he goes further than they do. Still, we
apprehend that a lay preacher may find himself a little embarrassed in
a subject of this sort; and as we have already shown what a deep and
sincere interest we feel in lay sermons, and have gained, perhaps, a
title to a special hearing on the part of the lay preacher, so, to
relieve him, at least partially, from the heavy burden, we venture to
offer him the following plan of a new _Lay Sermon to be delivered at
St. Martins Hall on a day not yet appointed_.
The exordium might contain the following thoughts: “My friends, a
sorrowful duty calls me to speak unto you. On January 7, 1866, a
professor from this very place preached a sermon on the improvement of
natural knowledge by unbelief, and maintained that to believe on good
authority was a principle of barbarous or semi-barbarous people.… That
professor, alas! was myself.… Well, it is my painful duty to tell you
to-day that you have been humbugged.… (Cheers from the audience.) Do
not cheer; have pity on me, my dear brethren. I have sinned against
myself, against you, and against mankind. This is the distressing
truth of which I am now ready to make the demonstration.”
The confirmation would have three parts. In the first he might say: “I
have sinned _against myself_ in two ways: First, because I uttered
assertions calculated to show that I am more credulous than those whom
I reprehend. Now, if men are condemned by me on the ground that they
believe ‘on _good_ authority,’ what will be the sentence reserved for
me, who believe on bad authority and on no authority? Secondly,
because I put myself in an awkward position as a scientific man. The
distance of the earth from the sun I hitherto admitted on authority;
the specific weight of most bodies on authority; the discovery of
certain geologic curiosities on authority; the ratio of the
circumference to the diameter on authority, etc., etc. Verification
would have taken too many years of work; and this seemed to me a good
excuse for assuming that there was no harm in believing. But now, as I
have declared ‘scepticism to be the highest of duties,’ to be
consistent, I shall be obliged to appeal without intermission to
experiment and observation, and even to calculation; ‘for the man of
science has learned to believe in justification not by faith, but by
verification.’ And so good-by to my lay sermons! It will be quite
impossible for me, while calculating anew the basis of the Napierian
logarithms or the circumference of the circle, or while testing
Faraday’s discoveries by actual experiments, or travelling to verify
the assertions of geological writers, to dream of popular eloquence.”
After developing these or similar thoughts, he would pass to the
second part and say: “I have sinned _against you_; for the principal
aim of my sermon was _to make you believe_ what I was then saying. How
is it possible, dear friends, that I should have taken pleasure in
thus treating you as barbarians or semi-barbarians? Civilized men,
according to the theory which I then advanced, ‘refuse to acknowledge
authority as such.’ ‘Scepticism,’ according to the same theory, ‘is
the highest of duties,’ and ‘blind faith an unpardonable sin.’ Such
was my doctrine on January 7. Yet this very sin, this unpardonable
sin, I suggested to you on that same day, and you committed it! In
fact, you have _believed_ me.… Now, for this no one is more
responsible than myself. I have been your tempter; I did my best to
extort your belief; I caused you to believe on my authority, to
believe as barbarians believe! I plead guilty. Still, as you are so
kind, I hope that you will excuse me. I admitted, after all, that
‘there are many excellent persons who yet hold the principle that
merit attaches to a readiness to believe,’ and therefore both you and
myself, in spite of all that you have believed, may be excellent
persons. Another very good reason in my favor is that the subject of
that sermon was ‘the advisableness of improving natural knowledge’;
now, our common fault is a very good demonstration of such an
advisableness. I might add a third reason. I told you, and I trust
that you have not forgotten it, that ‘we are still children.’ Now,
children, when they err, deserve indulgence, etc., etc.”
In the third part he would say something like the following: “I have
sinned _against mankind_; for my sermon was calculated to create the
impression that those who believe ‘when _good_ authority has
pronounced what is to be believed’ are all barbarians or
semi-barbarians. This, I must be allowed to say, was a very great
mistake, and perhaps an ‘unpardonable sin.’ The London plague is
believed ‘on _good_ authority,’ by all Englishmen at least, and
yet――let me frankly say it――Englishmen are not all barbarians. All
civilized nations believe that there has been a king called Alexander
the Great, a mathematician called Archimedes, a woman called
Cleopatra, an emperor called Caligula, and they believe it only ‘on
_good_ authority’; and how could this be, if belief were the lot of
barbarous or semi-barbarous people? What I say of profane history must
be said of the Biblical also, and even of the ecclesiastical. No
doubt, dear brethren, there has been a man called Moses, who was a
great legislator and prophet; there has been a man called Solomon, who
was wiser than you and myself; there has been a man called JESUS, who
wrought miracles in the very eyes of obstinate unbelievers, and rose
from death (a thing which we, men of progress, have not yet learned to
do), thereby showing that he was no mere man, but man and God. To say
that this God is ‘unknown’ or ‘unknowable’ is therefore one of the
greatest historical blunders. Men have known him, have loved him, and
have obeyed him. Those who have believed in him became models of
sanctity, of charity, and of generosity; millions among them were
ready to die, and really died, for his honor, and many of them were
the greatest and most cultivated minds that have enlightened the
world. We scientific infidels, as compared with them, ‘are still
children.’ Our Newton believed, Galileo believed, Leibnitz believed,
Volta believed, Galvani believed, Ampère believed, Cauchy believed,
Faraday believed. These were men; these have created modern science.
But what are we unbelievers? What have we done? Where are our
creations?――creations, I say, not merely of modern time, but of
unbelievers? ‘We are children’――I am glad to repeat it. We have
invented nothing. We, in our capacity of unbelievers, are only
parasitic plants which suck the sap of a gigantic tree――Christianity――and
live upon it, and yet we have been so ill-advised as to call ourselves
‘improvers of natural knowledge,’ and, worse still, we have attached
the name of barbarians to ‘excellent persons,’ even though we are no
better than they, etc., etc.”
In the _peroration_ he might say: “And now we come to our conclusion.
The conclusion evidently is that true barbarians are not those who
believe ‘on _good_ authority,’ but those who endeavor to ‘still
spiritual cravings’ with purely material objects. No, dear brethren,
spiritual cravings cannot be stilled by knowledge of material things
alone. Spiritual cravings imply the existence of a spiritual soul: and
a spiritual being cannot be satisfied with the knowledge of matter
alone, etc. etc. As for the idea of drawing ‘a new morality’ from the
improved natural knowledge, I need scarcely tell you that it was only
a joke. You know too well that morality transcends the physical laws,
and cannot come out of matter; and you know also that a ‘new’ morality
is as impossible as a new God, etc.” And here the orator might give
way to the fulness of his feelings, according to the penitent
disposition of the moment.
Hitherto we have addressed ourselves to the lay preacher exclusively;
we will now address a word to the man. We trust that Professor Huxley
will not feel offended at our remarks and suggestions. It is true that
unbelievers, whilst ready, and even accustomed, to attack all mankind,
are often very sensitive when they themselves are either unmasked or
criticised. But we feel persuaded that Professor Huxley will not be
angry with us. Our reason is, first, that we might have smiled in
secret at the lay sermon on the advisableness of _improving_ natural
knowledge by unbelief; and if we did it the honor of a lengthy
refutation, we have given the orator a greater importance than he
himself would have expected. On the other hand, we have been attacked;
and, accordingly, we would have been cowards had we been afraid of
answering. Moreover, we have treated him not only fairly, but with
great indulgence. What we have said is only a small part of what we
might have said. We made no remark on his proposition that “whether
these ideas (which alone can still spiritual cravings) are well or ill
founded, is not the question” (p. 636); and yet this assertion on
account of its neutrality between truth and error, would have supplied
abundant matter for criticism; but we abstained. We could have
animadverted on the very phrase “natural knowledge,” which he takes as
meaning the knowledge of physical laws, and yet it is presented by him
as comprehensive of all possible knowledge; whereas it is evident that
natural knowledge extends far beyond physical things. We might have
objected to the captious expression “_blind_ faith,” on account of the
latent assumption that faith is not prompted by reasonable motives and
has no reasonable grounds. We might have pointed out the recklessness
of the proposition: “There is but one kind of knowledge and but one
method of acquiring it”――a proposition which, considering the general
spirit of the sermon, would mean that philosophy, theology, and
religion are a heap of impostures. We might have dwelt on the
assertion that “verities testified by portents and wonders” are not to
be admitted on this ground by the votary of science; as if portents
and wonders were not facts, or as if the votary of science were
obliged by his profession to blind himself to the natural evidence of
supernatural facts.
It appears, then, that we had copious materials for further criticism;
but we have not found it necessary to dwell upon them. What we have
said is, in our opinion, sufficient for the defence of those
principles which every enlightened man most cherishes as the very
foundations of human society. We have remained, therefore, within the
limits of a fair and equitable reply; and if we have laughed at the
ignorance of the unbeliever, we have respected as far as possible the
person of the professor.
A CHRISTMAS LEGEND.
’Twas midnight, and the Christmas bells were chiming loud and clear:
Peal after peal glad tidings bore to Christians far and near.
Those throats of metal seemed to chant in solemn tones and slow:
_En puer nobis natus est: laus Jesu Domino_.
The night winds heard, and thereupon took up the holy song
First learned by them when angel hosts surprised the shepherd throng.
The very river caught the strain, and whispered as it ran:
“Glory to God in heaven above; on earth be peace to man.”
The ocean from the river took the tidings glad and good;
Like monks white-cowled its crested waves in mighty chorus stood;
Then, hastening on with joyous shout, cried loud from shore to shore:
The Christ is born: let all the world its King and God adore.
Floating flakes of fleecy snow fell fast o’er frozen earth,
Just as they fell that winter night that saw the Saviour’s birth;
Through painted casements all ablaze with saintly forms and fair
Streamed light that tinged the drifted snow with color here and
there;
The mighty organ loudly pealed and mingled in accord
With holy voices chanting high the anthems of their Lord:
“_Venite Adoremus_” sang the choristers that night
Within the old cathedral church, which shone with many a light;
“_Et Verbum Caro factum est_,” thus sung the chant again,
While clouds of fragrant incense rose and floated through the fane.
Many a frocked and cowléd monk and many a hooded friar,
Many a knight of high degree and many a faithful squire,
Many a youth and many a maid and many a lady fair,
Knelt side by side, and, kneeling, prayed upon the pavement bare.
But, lo! beside a pillar’s base where scarce the taper’s ray
Could light the gloom that hung around or pierce the shadows gray;
There knelt a son of Israel’s creed, whose dark and swarthy face,
Black raven hair, and liquid eyes bespoke his Jewish race.
What did he there, that Hebrew boy, that scion of the East?
Why knelt he there ’mid Christian souls to keep a Christian feast?
Why were his eyes devoutly fixed upon an image fair?
Why prayed that unbaptizéd child, why sang, why knelt he there?
* * * * *
Of wealthy Jewish parents born, young David oft had heard
The boys of that old city tell of Jesus Christ the Word,
Who, of a Jewish Virgin born, came down on earth to dwell,
To save mankind from sin and death; and oft had heard as well
How Mary, God’s dear Mother, loved all Christians great and small,
And how she never failed to hear a contrite sinner’s call.
So he, too, learned to love her well, and each and every day
That Jewish lad would clasp his hands and most devoutly say
“O Mary of the Christians, who wast born of Israel’s race!
Take pity on a Hebrew boy who longs to see thy face.”
Thus day by day and month by month young David ever cried,
And more to learn of Christian truth with fondest ardor sighed.
On Christmas Eve he heard the bells ring sweetly from the spire,
And of one Mark, a chorister, did earnestly inquire:
“Dear Mark, why chime thy church’s bells so joyously to-night,
While all the painted windows shine with such unwonted light?”
“O David!” quick his friend rejoined, “the bells are ringing clear.
In greeting to the holiest feast throughout the Christian year;
For on this night, long years agone, was born our Blessed Lord,
By Mary in a manger laid, by angel hosts adored.
But see, dear friend, I cannot now to speak with you delay;
For swiftly to the sacristy I needs must haste away.
I am a chorister, you know,” he said with honest pride;
Then added, as he turned to leave his young companion’s side:
“My voice to-night in holy song to faithful souls shall tell
How Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down on earth to dwell.
Good-night, good-night,” at last he said, and then away he ran.
Poor David’s eyes were filled with tears, his cheeks were pale and
wan;
But as he listened to the chimes that quivered on the air,
From out his inmost heart the boy sent up his simple prayer:
“O Mary of the Christians, who wast born of Israel’s race!
Take pity on a Hebrew boy who longs to see thy face.”
While thus he prayed he turned his steps towards the sacred fane,
Nor paused until he gained the porch, where such a wondrous strain
Of holy music greeted him that, trembling, half with fear
And half with joy, he hid himself, and there saw passing near
A noble rank of men and boys in wonderful array,
With flambeaux in their hands which made the church as light as day.
First came a fair-haired Christian boy, of figure tall and slight,
A smoking censer in his hand, and clad in robe of white.
Then came two acolytes, who bore two candlesticks of gold,
With tapers tall of perfumed wax of costliness untold.
A young subdeacon slowly marched these acolytes between;
A massive silver cross he bore aloft with reverent mien.
Then, two and two, came choristers in linen fair and white;
The younger first, in order due, each holding to the light
His psalter, silver-clasped, and all in vellum richly bound.
Here David gazed intently, and, so gazing, quickly found
His little friend, the chorister, who walked with steady pace,
Whose silvery voice in ringing tones filled all the holy place.
The bishop then with lordly train walked last of all the band,
A golden mitre on his head, a crosier in his hand.
His vestments ’broidered were with pearls, and rays of green and red
From emeralds fair and rubies bright on every side were shed.
When all had passed, poor David crept from out his hiding-place,
And slowly followed up the throng with soft and stealthy pace.
Then, fearing lest his Jewish dress might some attention draw,
He sank down at the pillar’s base where first his form we saw.
Then, as the holy service rose to God, and voice of prayer,
And hymns and canticles of praise filled all the listening air,
The Hebrew lad fell prone upon his face, and there adored,
Whilst once again to Mary he the oft-said prayer outpoured:
“O Mary of the Christians, who wast born of Israel’s race!
Take pity on a Hebrew boy who longs to see thy face.”
“Thou seest it!” cried at David’s side a clear and heavenly voice,
Whose very tones, though soft and low, made David’s heart rejoice.
He raised his face, and forthwith saw a vision standing nigh,
Around whose head there brightly shone the glory of the sky.
’Twas Mary’s self, and thus she spoke in accents sweet and mild:
“Fear not. Arise and come with me, my well-belovéd child.”
The lad arose; Our Lady dear then grasped his trembling hand,
And led him to the chancel gates unseen by all the band.
Just as they stood beneath the Rood loud rang the sacring-bell,
Which did to all the holy time of Consecration tell.
This when she heard, our Mother knelt upon the marble floor;
For Mary’s Son is Mary’s God and Lord for evermore.
She then arose and stood unseen till Holy Mass was o’er,
Then forward stepped, and, with the lad, the prelate stood before.
“Behold,” she said, and as she spoke the church was filled with light,
And all fell down upon their knees in wonder at the sight.
“Behold. I bring you here a soul who, though he knew me not,
Has ever called upon my name, and aye bewailed his lot
Because he knew not as he wished the true, the Christian creed:
I bring him that he may become an Israelite indeed.”
She spoke, and bright the radiance gleamed around her saintly head,
And odors most celestial were throughout the building shed.
Then, as the whole assembly gazed on all with mute surprise,
She vanished in a silver cloud from ’fore their wondering eyes.
The holy bishop first found voice, and thus devoutly said:
“Mother of God, thy blest command shall be at once obeyed.
Divine behests brook no delay; so here, before the night
Doth older grow, let me bestow the laver’s saving rite.”
The water brought, redemption’s stream o’er David flowed that hour,
And sparkled on his forehead white like dewdrops on a flower.
“_Te Deum laudamus_” chanted then the choristers with joy,
And rushed to give a kiss of peace unto the happy boy.
But what is this? He does not stir nor lift his bended head!
David, his white robe yet unstained, was kneeling calm and dead.
On that _Te Deum’s_ outstretched wings his soul had upward soared
To keep in heaven its Christmas morn with Mary and his Lord.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE_
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
XVII.
When the great city lay buried in that obscurity which the mantle of
night had thrown over all, and while she seemed to sleep, resting on
her bed of earth, by the banks of the river that flowed for ever with
a measured sound――when she seemed to sleep at last, although neither
the scholar, nor the afflicted, nor the criminal whom she enclosed in
her bosom could have extinguished in the depths of their being the
fire of intelligence which consumed them――there was to be seen a
silent and fugitive figure gliding along by the walls of the Tower,
upon which a noble and slender form was reflected. The light footfall
made no sound, the sighs of her heart were stifled, and the folds of
her veil hung motionless. She seated herself on the stone threshold of
the awful gate, and for a long time wept in silence.
“Naught!” she said. “Not a sound to be heard. These walls are like the
hearts of the judges. Children weep,” she said again. “What are tears
but weakness and water? Not a gleam! It seems they have here neither
fire nor life. What is this that consumes my heart? Weep, women! weep
in your silken robes, under your downy coverings! As for me, it is the
night wind dries my tears, and the damp earth drinks them up! When
wilt thou cease to weep, and when will the heart of Margaret feel
revived?… But why be astonished to feel it tremble? Has it not been
broken like a precious vase which can never more be mended?
“‘Come, Margaret, white Margaret!’ they used to say when you trod on
the grass of the fields, Come, death, or yet a moment of life.”
And the young girl, standing on tiptoe, with strong arm and powerful
effort, raised the heavy bronze griffin, which fell resounding upon
the brass of the doors, and then she started, for at times she was a
woman.
But there was no response; and when the sound of the iron had ceased
to vibrate, and, it seemed to her, had exhausted itself in the air,
nothing was heard but the monotonous dashing of the waves which came
to die at the foot of the wall; and nothing more disturbed the silence
of the night.
“Deaf as the pity in their souls!” she said after some moments.
And this time she knocked without flinching; for already Margaret had
recovered from her fears. But a long and mournful silence continued to
reign.
Whilst she was trying so ineffectually to reach her father, Sir Thomas
re-entered the Tower, exhausted by fatigue. He had been confined in a
still more gloomy and narrow cell. A miserable lamp, high placed,
dimly lighted the obscurity. He was seated in a corner, and, alone at
least, he went over in his mind the agonies he had endured in that
fatal journey. “Where is my daughter now?” he said to himself. “Alas!
I saw her but an instant going out from before the judges. She will
have seen that axe turned toward me. She will have said to herself
there is no more hope; that I was branded with the seal of the
condemned; that what she had heard was indeed true. If only she had
returned to Chelsea! For they will not permit me to linger: Cromwell’s
eyes gleamed with a ferocious light. Yet what have I done to this man
to make him hate me so intensely? My God, permit me not to be betrayed
into an emotion of hatred against” (Sir Thomas hesitated)――“against my
brother,” he continued with courage; “for, after all, he is a man like
myself, formed in the same mould, animated by the same intelligence;
and it is better to be persecuted than to be the persecutor. Pardon
him, then, O my God! Let your mercy be extended toward him, surround
him on all sides, and never remember against him the evil he has
wrought on me.”
While reflecting thus Sir Thomas suddenly heard a slight noise. He
paused, and, seized with inexpressible anxiety, listened almost
without breathing.
“It was in such manner he walked! It is he! It is Rochester!” he
cried. “But no, I am mistaken; that cannot be,” he said, casting his
eyes around him. “They have changed my cell; alas! I could not hear
him even should he be there. It is an error of my troubled
imagination.”
But the noise increased, and Sir Thomas soon heard them opening the
doors which led to his cell. Some one was approaching.
“Again!” he said. “They will not, then, allow me a moment of repose.”
And he saw Sir Thomas Pope coming in, bearing a roll of paper in his
right hand.
Pope approached More and presented the paper.
Sir Thomas calmly took it from his hands, and, looking at Pope, said:
“What! Master Pope, the king has already signed the death-warrant?”
Glancing over the paper, he saw that his execution was set down for
the next morning at nine o’clock.
“The king, in his ineffable clemency,” said Pope with an air of
constraint, “commutes your punishment to that of decapitation.”
“I am much beholden to his majesty,” said Sir Thomas. “Still, good
Master Pope, I hope that my children and my friends may never have
need of any such favor.”
More smiled at first; then he regarded Pope with an expression of
indefinable melancholy, and was silent.
“It is true――it is too true,” stammered Pope, “that this is not a
great favor. But permit me, Sir Thomas, to avow to you that your
conduct appears to me so strangely obstinate that I cannot explain it,
and that you yourself seem to have had the wish to irritate the king
against you to the last degree. Thus, you abandon your family, you
leave your home, you lose your head, and all rather than take an oath
to which our bishops have readily consented.”
“Yes, consented, and not wished to take,” replied Sir Thomas, “partly
through fear, partly through surprise. They have taken it, you say;
but I fear that they may be already repenting it. Good Master Pope, if
you live you will surely see many strange events taking place in our
unhappy country. In separating herself, in spite of the law of God,
from the Church of Rome, you will see England change her face;
intestine wars will rend her; the blood of her children will flow in
every direction for centuries, perchance. Who can foretell whither the
path of error will lead us when once we have taken the first step?
Doubtless we are still Christians; but Christians who, separated from
the mother that gave them birth, will soon have lost the revivifying
spirit they have received from her. The Catholic faith, I know, cannot
perish from the earth; but it can depart from one country into
another. If, in three hundred years from now, we were permitted to
return, you and I, to this world, we should find the faith, as to-day,
pure from all error, one, and resting upon the indivisible truth, yet
submitting to that supreme Head, to this key of St. Peter, which
indeed some mortal men shall have carried a moment in their hands, and
which is so violently attacked to-day. But my country, this land that
I love――for it holds the ashes of my father――what is it destined to
undergo? The incoherence and diversity of human opinions; the
violence, the absurdities of the passions which shall have dictated
them. Divided into a thousand sects, a thousand clashing opinions, you
will not find a single family, perhaps, where they are united in one
common faith, in the same hope and the same charity! And this divine
Word, the Sacred Scriptures, which we have received from our fathers,
abandoned to the ignorance and the pride of a pretended liberty, will
have, perhaps, become only the source of horrible crimes and frightful
cruelties, in place of being the foundation of all good and of every
virtue!”
“Verily, Sir Thomas,” said Pope, “you frighten me! How can it hap that
the ruin and disasters you have described should be in store for us?
No, no, I do not believe it; because it is then you would see us all
bound up around the centre of unity which they think to destroy to-day
by a word!――expressions of a spiritual power which the prince may not,
in fact, exercise.”
“He may not, as you say,” replied Sir Thomas; “but he will exercise it
nevertheless, and at least I shall not have to reproach myself with
having contributed to it. Oh! no,” he continued, “no; and I am happy
to shed my blood in testimony of this truth. For listen, Master Pope:
I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life in the service of the
state without having studied what were her true interests, and
consequently those of society, which is at the same time her
foundation and support; and I declare to you that I have recognized
and am thoroughly convinced that the Catholic religion, the
realization of the figurative and prophetic law given to the Jews, the
development and complete perfection of the natural law, can alone be
the foundation of a prosperous and happy society, because it alone
possesses the highest degree of morals possible to attain; it alone
bears fruit in the heart; it alone can restrain, and is able even to
destroy, that selfishness, natural to man, which leads him to
sacrifice everything to his desires and gratifications――a selfishness
which, abandoned to itself and carried to its greatest length, renders
all social order impossible, and transforms men into a crowd of
enraged enemies bent on mutual destruction.
“All that tends to disrupt, then, all that would alter or attack, this
excellent religion, is a mortal blow aimed at the country and its
citizens, and necessarily tends to deprive them of that which ensures
their dignity, their safety, their happiness, their hopes, and their
future. Look around you at the universe, and behold on its surface the
people of those unhappy countries where the light of the Catholic
faith has been extinguished or has not yet been kindled. Study their
governments, and behold in them the most monstrous despotisms, where
blood flows like water, and the life of man is considered of less
value than that of the frivolous animal which amuses him. Read the
cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying
acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing
lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as
slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they
inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without
appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection,
sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and
terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without
restraint. Ah! these noble ideas of right, of justice, of order and
humanity, which govern us, and ensure among us the triumph of the
incredulous and proud philosopher, which makes him say and think that
they alone are sufficient for society――he perceives not, blind as he
is, that these are prizes in the hand of religion, who, extends them
to him, and that, if he speaks like her, she speaks still better than
he. I do not say――no, I do not say――that we will fall as low as the
Turk, the Indian, or the American savage. So long as one glimmer of
the Gospel, one souvenir of its maxims, shall remain standing in the
midst of us, we will not lose all that we have received since our
ancestors came out of the forests where they wandered, subsisting on
the flesh of wild animals; but we will begin to recede from the truth,
we will cover it with clouds; they will become darker and darker, and
soon, if we still go on, it will be no longer with a firm and resolute
step, but rather like gloomy travellers wandering in a vast desert
without a breath of air or a drop of water.”
Pope listened to Sir Thomas without daring to interrupt him, and felt
his heart touched by what he said. For this admirable man possessed
the faculty of attracting all who saw him immediately toward him; and
when they heard him speak, the strength, the justness of his thoughts
and his arguments penetrated little by little into their minds, until,
almost without perceiving it, they found themselves entirely changed,
and astonished to feel that they were of the same opinion as himself.
Pope leaned against a stool which was there, and remained very
thoughtful; for he had taken the oath himself, without dreaming that
it could result in such serious consequences. Neither his convictions,
however, nor his courage were such as would make him desire to give
his life for the truth; but he could not refrain from admiring this
devotion in the illustrious man before him. He looked at him without
speaking, and seemed entirely confounded.
Mistaking the cause, and seeing him abstracted and silent, Sir Thomas
supposed the conversation had wearied Pope; he therefore ceased
speaking, and, taking up the death-warrant, he read it a second time.
At the end his eyes filled with tears and his sight grew dim.
“It is, then, fixed for to-morrow!” he exclaimed――“to-morrow morning.
One night only! Oh! how I wish they would permit me to write to
Erasmus.[143] Pope,” said he, “shall I not be permitted to see once
more, for the last time, my dearly-beloved daughter? I fear that she
may be still in the city. I would like her to be sent away――that Roper
should take her. Ah! Master Pope, it is not the riches or honors of
this world which are difficult to sacrifice, but the affections of the
heart, of the soul that lives within us, which is entirely ourselves,
without which the rest is nothing.” And he again relapsed into
silence.
“I do not think you will be able to see her,” said Pope, replying to
the question of Sir Thomas; “and――even――” he added with painful
hesitation, “I am also charged to ask you not to make any remarks to
the people on the scaffold. The king hath expressly so willed, and
then he will permit your wife and children to assist at your
interment.”
“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas, “I thank his majesty for manifesting so much
solicitude about my poor interment; but it matters little where these
miserable bones be laid when I have abandoned them. God, who has made
them out of nothing, will be able to find the ashes and recall them a
second time into being when it shall please him to restore them to
that indestructible life which he has so graciously vouchsafed to
promise them.”
“You wish to speak, then?” answered Pope. “Nevertheless, I believe it
would be better not to anger the king more.”
“No, no!” replied Sir Thomas, “my dear Master Pope, you are mistaken.
Since the king desires it, I will not speak. Most certainly I intended
doing so; but since he forbids it, I will forbear. If they refuse me
permission to see my daughter,” replied Sir Thomas, “I hope, at least,
I may be able to see the Bishop of Rochester; since he has taken the
oath, they will not fear.”
“Taken the oath!” cried Pope. “Why, he has been executed; he died
to-day!”
“He died to-day!” repeated Sir Thomas. “My friend died to-day! O
Cromwell! May God, whose power is infinite, hear my voice, grant my
requests: may the same dangers unite us, that, following close in thy
footsteps, my last sigh may be breathed with thine!”
And More, plunged in the deepest grief, slowly repeated the memorable
words, the solemn words, which the holy bishop had pronounced in
presence of the Lord and of his friend during the vigil of St. Thomas,
when they were alone together in his home at Chelsea.
“Rochester would not take the oath, then!” continued More in a stifled
voice, clasping his hands and elevating them toward heaven.
“Alas! no,” replied Pope.
“Cromwell told me he had.”
“He lied,” answered Pope, and his eyes filled with tears.
“He would not swear?”
“Never!”
“Pope,” said More, “I beg you to let me write to Erasmus. To-morrow I
shall be no more! You are the last living man to whom I shall be able
to speak.”
“Ah! Sir Thomas,” cried Pope uneasily, “if that letter were seized,
what would become of me?”
“Let me write a few words on this leaf,” replied Sir Thomas, looking
at a leaf of white paper belonging to the book which contained his
condemnation――“a word on this leaf,” he continued. “Pope, you can cut
it off and send it later when there will be no danger for you. Nay,
good Pope, grant me this favor,” he added. “I have neither pen nor
ink; but I have here a piece of charcoal, which I have already tried
to sharpen.”
“Ah! Sir Thomas,” replied Pope, “I have not the heart to refuse you;
however, I shall have cause, perhaps, to repent it.”
“No! no!” cried Sir Thomas. “If you cannot send him this last farewell
without being afraid, you can burn it.”
“Write, then; I consent,” said Pope; and he handed the death-warrant
to Sir Thomas, who had returned it to him.
More seized it, and wrote the following words:
“Erasmus! O Erasmus! my friend, this is the last time I
shall have the happiness of pronouncing your name. An entire
life, O my friend! is passed; it has glided by in a moment.
Behold one about to end like a day that is closed. I have
loved you as long as I have had breath; as long as I have
felt my heart throb in my bosom the name of Erasmus has
reigned there. Alas! I have so many things to say to you.
Though the words die on my lips, your heart alone will be
able to comprehend mine. May it enter; may it hear in my
soul all that More has wished to say to Erasmus!
“When you receive this page, I shall be no more; it is still
attached to the writ which contains my sentence of death.
Erasmus, I am going to leave Margaret. I abandon my
children! Our friend Pierre Gilles is here. I saw him for a
moment――the moment when they were pronouncing sentence on
me. Without doubt, to-morrow morning, I shall see him at the
foot of the scaffold. I shall be kept at a distance from
him; I shall not be able to say a single word to him. My
eyes will be directed toward him, my hand will be stretched
out; but my heart will not be permitted to speak to him! O
Erasmus! how I suffer. And Margaret――O my friend! if you had
seen her, how pale she was, what anguish was painted on all
her features. I could wish that she loved me less: she would
not suffer so much in seeing me die. Erasmus, not one
minute! Time is short; the hour approaches. Oh! when I could
write those long letters so peaceably, when science alone
and the good of humanity occupied us both; when I saw those
letters despatched so quietly to go in search of you, and
said to myself: ‘In so many days I shall receive his
reply!’… No more replies, Erasmus! If ever you come to
England, you will ask in what corner they have thrown my
ashes. Oh! what would become of me if I were not a
Christian? What happiness to feel our faith rising up from
the depths of wretchedness, to hear all our groans and
lamentions, and to answer them! I die a Christian! I die for
this faith so pure and beautiful! for that faith which is
the happiness and glory of the human race. At this thought I
feel myself reanimated; new strength inspires my heart; hope
inundates my soul. I shall see you all again. Yes, one
day――one day after a long absence――I shall clasp you once
more to my bosom in the presence of God himself. I shall see
again my daughter! We will find ourselves invested with our
same bodies. ‘I shall see my God,’ said Job; ‘for I know
that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall rise again at the
last day; I will go out of this world into that which I am
about to enter, and then I shall see my God. It will be I
who shall see him, and not another.’
“Erasmus, to live for ever, to love for ever! Farewell.
“Your brother, your friend,
“THOMAS MORE.”
The charcoal began to crumble in his hands. He was scarcely able to
trace the last words. He pressed his lips on them and returned the
book to Pope.
Meanwhile, Margaret, tired of knocking, and losing all hope of
reaching her father, was seated upon the stone step before the door of
the prison, and, being wrapped in her veil, she remained motionless
and mute, like a statue of stone whose head, bowed upon its garments,
is the personification of sorrow and silence.
Thus she sat absorbed in thought, and the burning tears had bathed her
hands and ran down on her knees, when the footstep of a man who was
approaching from the quay aroused her from her reverie. Alarmed, she
arose abruptly, and, placing her hand upon a long and sharp dagger she
had attached to her side, she stood awaiting the intruder; but she
recognized Roper.
“Margaret,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing there?” And he spoke
these few words to her in a melancholy tone of voice more expressive
of pain than reproach; because he sought her, knowing well where he
would find her.
“It is you, Roper,” said the young girl, and she resumed her seat as
before. William Roper then came and seated himself by her side; taking
her cold and wet hand, he pressed it to his lips with an inexpressible
oppression of heart. “O Margaret!” he said at last with a deep sigh,
“why stay you here?”
“To see him again to-morrow――yes, to-morrow! But tell me, Roper, why I
feel so weak; why my blood runs so cold in my veins; why I no longer
have either strength or energy; why, in fact, I feel myself dying,
without being able to cease to exist! O William! look at that dark
river in front of us, and that black hill lifting its head beyond.
Well! when the sky begins to grow white on that side, that will be the
light of to-morrow which will dawn; that will be the hour of the
execution approaching; and then you will see the eager crowd come
pressing around the boards of the scaffold, come to feast on the
cruelty of the misfortune it applauds, to enjoy the death its
stupidity has not ordered. You will see them decked out in their
ribbons, while the bells of the city will ring for the feast――the
great feast of St. Thomas; for that is to-morrow, and to-morrow they
will come to see my father die. Then all that I love will be torn from
me, and nothing more will remain to me on earth. Oh! how happy are the
strong: they break or perish. Roper, speak to me of Rochester. I loved
him also, that venerable man. No, do not speak of him. Hush! I know
all; I have seen everything. They dragged him to the scaffold; he
prayed for them while holding his feeble, attenuated neck upon the
fatal block; and, detached from the earth, his soul continued in
heaven the canticle it had commenced in this world.”
“Alas! yes,” said Roper. “They had to carry him to the scaffold on a
chair, because he was no longer able to sustain himself.”
“Ah! Roper,” cried Margaret, “behold the fatal light! Here is the
day!” And she fell, almost deprived of consciousness.
“No, Margaret, no; the hour strikes, but it strikes only the small
hours of the night. It is not yet day, my beloved――it is not day!”
“Oh! how cold I am,” said the young girl, shaking the veil which
enveloped her, all humid with the dews of night. “Roper, is there no
more hope, then? Do you believe it? Do you believe there is no more
hope――that to-morrow I will see my father die?”
“Alas!” said Roper, “Pierre Gilles has gone to seek the queen and
throw himself at her feet.”
“Say not the queen!” cried Margaret. “Give not the name of queen to
that woman!”
“At least, so they call her,” said Roper. “She is all-powerful; if she
would only ask his pardon! But they press her so much! But, no, she
will not do it, Margaret; she is a hyena covered with a beautiful
skin. She managed to procure the head of Rochester, and with her foul
hand dealt it an infamous blow.[144] Ah! Margaret, I have done wrong
in speaking to you thus.” And Roper was silent, regretting the words
that indignation had forced him to utter.
“She struck it!” cried Margaret. “She recoiled not before those white
locks dripping with the blood her crimes caused to flow! William, I
shudder at it! Oh! can you believe it? The only time that I have seen
my father he spoke to me of her with tears in his eyes; he said that
he prayed God to raise her soul from out the miserable depths into
which she had fallen. Roper, look!――there is day!”
“No, Margaret, no!”
“But it will come! Ah! how the hours fly, and yet I would be willing.…
No! no! nothing. William, I feel as though I were dying! Yet I would
wish to see him again――again once more!”
Roper took the hand of his affianced. It was burning; the irregular
and rapid throbbing of her veins betokened the agony that her soul
endured.
“Well,” she continued after a moment’s silence, “speak, then――speak to
me of Rochester; tell me how the saints die.”
“Margaret, I can talk no more; I feel so crushed by the excess of
these afflictions that I have not even dared to glance at them.”
“Yes, you were deaf and blind; you always will be, and for a long time
I have been telling you so. It is a long time, also, since I saw all,
since I felt this horrible hour coming on, since I measured the
weakness of my hands and curbed the strength of my mind. It is long
since I knew that I must remain alone in this world; for this life
will not depart from my breast, and without crime I cannot tear it
away! I must live, and live deprived of everything. Do you see this
weapon, Roper?” And Margaret drew the poignard, the blade of which
flashed. “Were I not the daughter of More; feared I not the Lord; if
his law, like a seal of brass, had not engraven his commandments on my
lips and in my heart, you should see if I would not deliver my
father――if Cromwell, if Henry, struck down suddenly by the arm and the
hatred of a woman, would not have already, while rolling in the dust
and pronouncing my name, cried to the universe that cursed was the day
when they had resolved to assassinate my father! In giving my life I
became mistress of theirs! Ah! where would they be to-day――this brave
king, this powerful favorite? A little infected dust, from which the
drunken grave-digger would instinctively turn away! But, William,
raise your eyes; look at those numberless stars that gleam so brightly
above our heads! The word of Him who has suspended them thus in the
immensity of the heavens humbles my spirit, enchains my will. He
ordains, I am silent; he speaks, I obey. Impotent by his prohibition
alone, I can die, but not resist him.”
And Margaret, pressing her lips upon the blade of the threatening
weapon, cried: “Yes, I love thee because thou art able to defend or
avenge me; and if thy tempered blade remains useless in my hands, say
that it is God himself who has ordered it. Let them render thanks,
then, to that God whom they provoke and despise; let them return
thanks to him; for neither their guards nor their pride, their crimes
nor their gold, could have prevented Margaret from sweeping them from
the earth which they pollute, and breaking their audacious power like
a wisp of straw that is given to the winds!”
She turned toward Roper, transported by courage and grief. But she saw
that he was not listening, and that, entirely crushed by the misery he
experienced, he had not sufficient energy in his soul to try to resist
it.
“He is already resigned!” she said. An expression of scorn and disgust
contracted the features of the young girl; she abruptly withdrew the
hand he held in his own; moving away from him, she went and seated
herself farther off, and, remaining with her eyes fixed upon the east,
awaited the moment of harrowing joy which, while restoring her father
to her, would tear him away from her for ever.
As the hours slowly tolled, each one awaking a dolorous echo in her
heart――when at last she saw the first rays of morning stealing over
the heavens, and the rosy tint which precedes the flame of Aurora――she
turned again toward Roper; but, happy mortal! his heavy eyelids had
lulled his afflicted soul to sleep. As a reaper reposes sweetly in a
field covered with rich grain, so Roper slept peacefully with his head
resting against the walls of a prison.
Margaret arose instantly, and, seized with indignation, she advanced
toward him, and, with her hands clasped, stood regarding him. “He
sleeps!” she said――“he sleeps! Truly, man is a noble being, full of
courage, of energy, of impassibility, of strength of mind. It is thus
that they accomplish such great things! Dear Roper, you belong to this
mass of men which crowds us in on every side, absorbing and devouring
our lives! You are their brother, their friend; like them, during the
day, you love that which laughs, that which sings, and you sleep
during the night. Well! I will laugh with you, with them. Are you
worthy of beholding me weep? No; my father alone shall have my last
tears, and carry with him the secret of my soul.”
And Margaret, seizing the hand of Roper, shook it violently. He awoke,
startled.
“It is day!” he said. “Ah! it is day! Margaret――eh! you are weeping.”
“No, I am not weeping,” replied the young girl. “I have slept also,
slept very well――and I am comforted!”
“Comforted! What do you mean? Has Pierre Gilles obtained his pardon?
Have they granted his freedom?”
“Yes, they have granted his freedom――from life. In a word, they will
shorten it, they will drag him from the midst of you. Is that a
misfortune or a benefit, an injury or a favor? This is what I cannot
decide. But as for me, I remain here!”
“Margaret,” cried Roper, “what is wrong with you?” And he gazed at
her, astonished at the cutting irony and the bitter despair expressed
in the tone of her voice and imprinted on her features. “I no longer
recognize you.”
“Yes, I am changed, Roper. Henceforth you shall be my only model. Who
is that young woman dressed in gauze, crowned with flowers, whom the
light and rapid dance carries far from the banquet and the cups filled
with fragrant cordials――who casts far away from her the memory of her
father, and has forgotten the grave of her mother? That is the wife of
William, Margaret Roper. No, I do not want that name. Go, keep it;
give it to some one who resembles yourself, to whom you may bear
presents, and who, on hearing you say it, will believe that one can be
happy――yes, will believe that it is possible to be happy!”
“Margaret,” said Roper, more and more surprised, “I cannot comprehend
what you would say.”
“Nor do I any more,” replied the young girl, wiping her forehead; for
she was warm. “But do you understand at least, Roper, that the city is
awake, that they are preparing the scaffold down below, that the
soldiers are astir within, that I hear the clanking of their arms,
that we are very soon going to see my father pass? Tell me, Roper, how
do you contrive to become so unfeeling, to love nothing, to regret
nothing? Have you a secret for this? Give it to me――give me that which
makes one neither feel nor speak; that one can sleep beside the axe
and the prison, when within the prison lies a father whom they are
about to immolate!”
And she fixed her piercing eyes on him.
“Ah! Margaret. Yes, I have slept, I have done wrong; but fatigue
overcame me. It seemed to me I saw him; I dreamed that I had rescued
him.”
“Yes, your dreams are always happy; but look, Roper, here is the
reality.”
Margaret withdrew to one side under the walls of the Tower; for the
door of the fortress was opened, and they saw a troop of soldiers,
fully armed, preparing to march out.
“Tower Hill!” cried their commander; and they filed out in great
numbers. Others succeeded them; they arranged themselves in two
columns, which extended from the gate of the lower to the place of
execution, still dyed with the blood of Rochester.
Meanwhile, the rumor spread abroad rapidly that they had sent for the
two sheriffs; that Sir Thomas More, former lord chancellor, was going
to be executed; and from all directions crowds of people rushed
precipitately――some remembering the lofty position the condemned had
occupied; the greater number, without thinking of anything (coming to
see the criminal as they would come to see any other), impelled by
instinct, habit, or want of occupation, arrived without aim, as
without reflection.
Who can paint the anguish of Margaret when she felt herself
surrounded, jostled, elbowed, by this turbulent throng, crowding and
shouting, which pushed her up against the prison walls, threatening to
carry her forcibly from the inch of ground which she had held all
night; and more still by this ignoble mob of malefactors, vagabonds,
of adventurers of all kinds, who came in those days of murder to learn
in the public square what their own end would be, and to behold the
funeral couch society had destined for them on the day they should
fail in audacity or skill. Who can describe, express, or feel the
shame that overwhelmed her soul in spite of her reason, and suffused
her pure brow with the blush of ignominy, when she heard them
pronounce the name of her father, howling and clapping their hands
because the criminal was slow in appearing and the tragedy they
awaited did not begin? Her weary eyes sought Pierre Gilles in this
tumult, and he was not there. He, at least, would have understood
Margaret. She was unable to explain his absence; he had no more
hope――unless the queen had detained him. But he must know that the
execution was near, that the hour had arrived. And if he had obtained
it, and should this pardon arrive too late! A thousand times Margaret,
rendered desperate, was on the point of addressing the fickle crowd
surrounding her. She wanted to say to them: “I am his daughter! Oh!
save my father. He who sacrificed his life, his comforts, his
happiness, to govern you wisely, to render you full justice, to
reconcile your families, is going to perish unjustly!” But her anxious
gaze fell only on faces coarse, stupid, indolent, impassible, or
vicious. Then she felt the words die on her lips, while courage and
hope expired in her heart.
The hours glide away in these mortal agonies; for they pass as rapidly
in the excess of sorrow as during the intoxicating seasons of joy and
happiness. Presently Margaret heard a confused noise arise. The masses
moved; the soldiers drew up closer, brandishing their arms――they were
afraid of being overwhelmed. The crowds climbed on everything they
could find: the quay, the carts, carriages, steps――they took
possession of all, made ladders of everything. Margaret is drawn into
this frightful whirlpool; she struggles in vain, trying to make room
and to stand firm. A loud clamor arose, re-echoed, increased, was
reproduced in the distance. “He comes! he comes!” they cried on all
sides. “How pale he is! That is he! that is Sir Thomas More, the old
lord chancellor! Oh! how poor he looks. He walks with difficulty; he
leans on a stick; he has a cross of red wood in his hand; he bows on
each side of him. There are the sheriffs walking behind him. There is
a tall black man who follows them. Do you see the lieutenant of the
Tower? He is there also. Hush! he makes a sign with his hand. He
smiles! How fast they carry him along! One has not time to see him.
Are they afraid, then, that we will take him away by force? Eh! no
person thinks of that. He has done something very bad, they say. We
believed him so good! Ah! here is somebody stopping him. Look! look!
He speaks! he speaks! Yes, he speaks!” For Margaret, reduced to
despair, animated by a superhuman strength, has broken through the
ranks, passed through the guards. She throws herself on the neck of
More; she sees him, she embraces him, she clasps him to her throbbing,
palpitating bosom.
“My daughter! my daughter!” said More, pressing her to his heart; “oh!
what anguish to see you here.”
And his cheeks, pale and furrowed by suffering, were wet with tears
that brought no relief to his soul.
At this spectacle the guards themselves were moved. “That is his
daughter, his poor daughter!” they exclaimed on all sides; and by a
unanimous movement of respect and compassion they stepped aside,
forming a circle around him, while the tears flowed from all eyes.
“How beautiful she is!” said the men. “How young she is!” exclaimed
the women.
“My father! my beloved father!” cried Margaret, shuddering, “beg of
God that I may not survive you; that I also may soon leave this world
when you abandon it! O my father! bless me again, and swear to me that
you will ask God to let me die also.”
She threw herself on her knees without letting go his hands, which she
bathed with a torrent of tears and pressed against her face as though
without power to release them.
“Dearly beloved daughter!” said More, resting his hand upon her long,
dishevelled locks, “oh! yes, may the Lord bless you as I love and
bless you myself. You have been a sacred charge, a treasure of joy and
happiness which he has given me; I return it to him! He is your first
Father――he will never abandon you; and one day――a day not far distant,
for the life of man is but a breath that passes in a moment――we shall
be reunited, to be no more separated, in a blessed eternity! Margaret,
since I have had the happiness of seeing you before I die, take my
blessing to your brothers and your sisters; tell them, and also all my
good friends, to pray the Lord for me! You know them? O Margaret! let
Pierre Gilles learn from you how much I have loved him; how deeply I
am touched, and grateful for this voyage he made, I doubt not for me
alone. Alas! if I feel a regret in dying, it is because of not being
able to tell him this myself. Why is he not with you? But I perceive
Roper, my beloved daughter; give him also a thousand blessings. You
know that I have regarded him for a long time as my son; love him as
you have loved myself, and let your tears flow not without
consolation, because, since it pleases God to permit me to die to-day,
I am perfectly resigned to his will, and I would wish nothing
changed.” And Sir Thomas, bending over her, clasped her closely to his
heart.
“Let me follow you!” she gasped in a low voice; for she was no longer
able to speak.
“Margaret, you give me pain.”
“I would follow you,” she said in still more stifled tones.
“Ah! Kingston,” exclaimed More (and the perspiration poured from his
forehead), “my good friend, assist me in placing her in the hands of
her husband.”
“I will do it,” cried a bellowing voice well known to Sir Thomas.
“Master Roper, come and take your wife away.” And they saw the hideous
face of Cromwell pass, who surveyed those who accompanied the
condemned.
In the meantime William Roper had succeeded in pushing his way through
the crowd; he took the hand of More, and kissed it, weeping.
“Take her, my son,” said More, entirely occupied with Margaret. “I
confide her to you, I give her to you; be her support, her friend, her
defender!” And he turned to resume his march.
Margaret, observing this movement, again endeavored to rush toward
him; but the crowd hurried on, the guards closed around, and she found
herself separated from her father.
He cast upon her a last look, which he carried to the skies. She
uttered a piercing cry; but already he had moved on and far away.
She rushed forward, endeavoring again to break through the crowd; but
curiosity had made them form like a rampart, growing every instant
around her.
She heard the commands of the military authorities; already she could
not see beyond the group that surrounded her; then she almost lost the
use of reason. “Save my father! save him!” she cried, extending her
suppliant hands toward those who environed her, whose sympathies were
diversely excited according to their different characters.
“Why have they brought this young woman to this place?” said the good
ones. “His daughter, his poor daughter!” murmured the more
compassionate. “She looks like a lunatic!” replied the others. “She
will die from this; it will kill her. It is most cruel! If the king
had only granted his pardon! He might have done it.”
“Yes, pardon, pardon!” repeated Margaret, frenzied and wandering.
“They have granted his pardon, I assure you. Pierre Gilles has been to
Hampton Court to find that woman. Roper, is it not so? Roper, I am
dying; take me away.” And she grew pale and seemed ready to faint.
Three or four hands were immediately advanced to sustain her; but
Roper would not suffer them to touch her, and, raising her in his
arms, he asked them to make way for him to lead her out of the crowd
and from the place. The crowd opened with respect, and he assisted
Margaret to the same place where she had passed the night awaiting,
with her eyes fixed on the horizon, the terrible day which was to
remove her for ever from her father.
“It is daylight, daylight,” said Margaret. “Yonder, Roper! And when
night comes on, he will be already cold in death! O Roper! all this in
one day. William, give him back to me! What have they done with him?
Oh! no, he will not die. He is going to the king!”
She kept her eyes fast closed, and poor Roper regarded her with
anxiety.
“They have forced him away! You know the place where the soldiers have
taken him. I have seen it――I have seen everything. But that was
yesterday, Roper. I have lost my reason,” she suddenly exclaimed,
opening her eyes, filled with terror. “Tell me, where is he? They will
let me bury his body, will they not? I will kiss his face, I will
embalm him; and you will bury me beside him, will you not, Roper? They
will not leave it on the bridge――that head; I will remain on my knees
until they give it to me! O Heaven! dost thou hear――dost thou hear the
cries of the people? All is ended; the crime is consummated! My father
has left the earth! Roper, let us go to the church; I want to pray――to
pray until eternity!”
Alas! Margaret spoke truly. Arriving at the scaffold, More, after
having embraced the executioner and given him a gold angel in token of
forgiveness, was beheaded by the same axe, upon the very block on
which the head of his friend Rochester had fallen a few hours before.
Thus perished these two illustrious men, the glory and honor of
England. Thus began the cruel schism which since then has torn so many
children from the church, separated a great number of Christians from
the common trunk, and deprived, in the course of centuries, so many
souls of the knowledge of the eternal and indivisible truth.
And now, when old England unrolls before the eyes of the eager
explorer of the past the long list of her kings, she places one of her
fingers upon the bloody diadem which encircles the brow of Henry
VIII., and with the other she points out to the moved heart the spot
where, their dust mingled together, sleep within the walls of her most
ancient fortress the victims of the fury of this king. For she also,
that first cause of so many woes――the young Anne Boleyn, so proud of
her fatal beauty――passed from the throne to the scaffold at the very
moment when Catherine was dying of misery, pain, and neglect in the
depths of an obscure city. The odious Cromwell, who had guided her to
that scaffold, was not long in following her, and his ignoble blood
was at last brought to expiate in the same place that of the
illustrious More.
* * * * *
Such, reader, is the recital which as a faithful historian I resolved
to set before you. A book is a thought. Mine has been written to
emphasize a truth in our days too often forgotten――which is, that
religion alone can lead men to happiness and perfection; that, being
the most perfect law which it is possible to conceive of or attain, it
is to her alone we should attach ourselves, and it is by her alone the
state will see reared in its midst wise and just rulers or noble and
generous citizens; that all, in fine, will see wisdom, science, order,
and prosperity flourish.
PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
[143] The learned Erasmus was then at the height of his
brilliant fame. After numerous visits to England, where he
had formed an intimate friendship with Thomas More, he fixed
his residence at Bâle, in Switzerland. Admired by all the
princes of his time, by all his learned contemporaries and a
crowd of illustrious men, he contributed by his powerful
writings to restrain Germany from barbarism.
[144] This fact is related by an English historian, who has
written the life of the Bishop of Rochester. The same author
adds that Anne Boleyn, in giving the blow, cut her finger
against one of the teeth which the axe had broken; that
there came a sore on the finger; that they had the greatest
difficulty in getting it healed, and she carried the scar
until her death.
THE END.
ADVENT.
Clear as the silver call
Of Israel’s trumpets on her holy days,
Calling her children from all walks and ways,
The church’s accents fall.
With sweet and solemn sound
Where winter’s ice imprisons lake and stream,
Where tropic woods with fadeless summer gleam
They make their joyful round――
Joyful, and yet how grave;
Bidding us kneel with faces to the east,
And watch for Him, our sacrifice and priest,
Who cometh, strong to save.
As, at a mother’s feet,
The children of one household sit to learn
Some sweet domestic lesson, each in turn
His portion to repeat,
So, at this holy tide,
Calling us round her for exalted talk,
From each loved haunt, from each familiar walk,
She bids us turn aside
And list while she relates
The blessed story――old, yet ever new――
Of Him, the Sun of Righteousness, the True,
Whose dawn she celebrates.
Now the rapt prophets sing
Their anthems in each bowed and listening ear;
Now the bold Baptist’s clarion voice we hear
Down the glad centuries ring;
Till, fired with joy as they
Who spread their garments ’neath his precious feet,
With rapture we go forth our Lord to meet,
Our glad hosannas pay.
Yet list! Another note
Blends with the holy song our Mother sings,
And, high above the harp’s exultant strings,
Clear, trumpet-like doth float.
He comes to judge the world;
To garner up his wheat, to purge his floor,
While into flames of fire for evermore
The worthless chaff is hurled.
Lord! we would put aside
The gauds and baubles of this mortal life――
Weak self-conceit, the foolish tools of strife,
The tawdry garb of pride――
And pray, in Christ’s dear name,
Thy grace to deck us in the robes of light;
That at his coming we may stand aright
And fear no sudden shame.
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1876.
The year has been one of grave anxiety to all the world. It opened in
shadow; it closes in gloom. Among nations as among individuals there
prevails a feeling of uneasiness, of dread at a something impending.
Here at home we are happily removed from the dangers that the European
nations have for centuries invited. We have no national crimes to
answer for. We have not persecuted God’s church. We have not martyred
his confessors. We have not sealed our Constitution with heresy. We
have not betrayed a faith committed to our keeping. And these are
things worth priding ourselves on, worth confirming ourselves in, in
the centennial year of our Republic. They are the brightest jewels in
the nation’s crown, and may they shine there for ever!
Of course we have had our faults――abundance of them. We have made
mistakes, and in the course of human events will probably make many
more, for nations never become great without suffering and sacrifice;
they can no more hope to escape these fiery proofs than individuals.
But at least we have, as a nation, been guiltless of the graver sins
against God, his church, and humanity. And it is on this fact above
all that men who believe in a God ruling over this world found their
hopes for the future.
It is not our purpose here even to glance at our history in the past
hundred years. Our present business is with the year just closing.
Looking at the plain, level facts before us, we confess that they wear
an ugly aspect. It is painful to be compelled to acknowledge that the
dawn of the hundredth year of our national existence might have been
far brighter. Unhappily, the legacy of many years of mistakes,
misgovernment, and――let it be confessed with pain――of malfeasance in
high places, both in State and national offices, has accumulated to
fall upon this year of all others. One good, at least, has come from
it. The nation, in American fashion, injured as it was, has at length
faced the evil, which is in itself and due to no extraneous influence
at all. The year opened with investigations. Indeed, it has been
pre-eminently a year of investigations; and much matter there was to
inquire into. The result showed a wide-spread corruption in the
national administration. This corruption was probably one of the
results of the war; but it was none the less corruption on that
account. The Rebellion had been crushed, heroic deeds had been done.
_Væ victis!_ There was an army of political heroes waiting for their
reward. There are more ways than one of sacking a city. In these days
we sack nations――as witness Germany and France――and arrange the terms
of the sacking in peaceful convention. There are insects that thrive
and grow fat on corruption. Some of these set on the carcase of the
dead South. Others settled on the offices of national, State, and
municipal government. They have been eating their way into the body
politic for sixteen years. There is only a rotten shell left, and this
year that shell fell to pieces.
In treating of the last Presidential election in our annual review of
four years back, we wrote: “General Grant was re-elected. The
opposition arrayed against him … utterly broke down. General Grant’s
is undoubtedly a national election; we trust, therefore, that his
future term may correspond with the confidence placed in his rule by
the nation; may be productive of all the good which we expect of it
for the nation at large; may heal up old wounds still sore; and may
lead the country wisely into a new era of prosperity and peace.”
It is plain that we bore no ill-will to the President. What shall we
say of his administration to-day? What need we say in face of the
action of the country regarding the administration?
The heart sickens at going over the record of the year. It is only the
culmination of the preceding years of ill-government which have been
duly noted in this review, and which there is no special reason now to
enumerate. We would not undertake to say that the government under
President Grant has, _as a whole_, been a failure; but in great part
it undoubtedly has been. We use a studiously mild term in describing
it as eminently unsatisfactory, and the verdict of the nation, as
given in the recent Presidential elections, endorses our opinion.
Whoever may be seated in the President’s chair for the next four
years, President Grant and his party have been condemned by the
feeling and vote of the county, not because he was so foolish as to
aspire to a third term on the strength of an administration that fell
to pieces of its own rottenness and on a proposed anti-Catholic
ticket, but simply because the country was sick of it. The disgrace
and fall of the Secretary of War, the recall of the American Minister
at the English court, the disclosures of corruption and inexcusable
expenditure in the civil service, the plain traces of corruption in
every department of the public service down to the most obscure, such
as the peddling in post-traderships by the brother of the
President――all of which came to a head within the present year; the
stanch support given by the President to men whom he had appointed to
office, many of whose dealings were shown to be of a most doubtful
character, so much so that some of them just escaped the fate of
thieves by technicalities of the law that in themselves were moral
condemnation――all this was only the rotten ripeness of a growth
diseased from the beginning.
But if the year, notwithstanding gloomy forebodings, to which we had
grown accustomed, has been one of disgrace and disaster where pride
and glory ought to have had place, it has not been without its bright
side. The Presidential elections have been a series of surprises. Late
in last year, as we noted at the time, President Grant made what not
only we but all the world regarded as a bold and infamous bid for a
third term in his speech at Des Moines. He aimed at riding into power
on that favorite, and too often successful, hobby of a hard-pressed
politician――an anti-Catholic ticket. This, in politics in these days,
we take to be the last resource of an ignoble mind. Nevertheless, the
bid was undoubtedly well timed. All the world is up in arms against
the Catholic Church. No government dare hold out a hand to help her
and hope to live. It is only recently that the President of Ecuador
did so, and what was the result? He fell at the hand of an assassin,
as De Rossi fell before him. The sentiment of English speaking peoples
had been appealed to with all the force and violence of which such a
man as Mr. Gladstone is capable, and his words were widely read in
this country, being multiplied and confirmed by the secular and
sectarian press. The President saw this opportunity, and took it at
its flood-tide in a speech that was as ingenious as it was malignant.
A Methodist bishop, in a large and important conclave of Methodist
ministers, took up the cry, and, amid the acclamations of his
brethren, nominated General Grant for a third term. Then came out from
the holes and corners those imps of mischief, who are always at hand
to do evil work at a time when the minds of men are excited――secret
societies――and tendered their services and votes to President Grant.
An adroit bidder for the Presidency bade higher and went further even
than the President on the same ticket. He looked the winning man, and
the secret societies transferred their allegiance to him.
This was undoubtedly a clever diversion for the Republican party. Dark
clouds hovered over them, but there stood the Pope. He was their old
ally in difficulties, and, if only they held him up to execration, the
bull they were goading would turn aside from the lancers who were
drawing his life-blood, and charge only on the red rag. How miserably
they misread the people of this country has been seen.
The real issue was between a corrupt and an incorrupt government. No
“making of demonstrations” could conceal this fact from an outraged
people. To use homely but expressive language, “the pious dodge would
not work,” especially in the hands of men like Grant and Blaine. The
Pope was not the author of the rings, small and great, throughout the
country; he had nothing to do with post-traderships; he had not stolen
a penny from the civil service; Kellogg and Chamberlain were ruling in
the South, and not he; Schenck was not his Minister to London, Babcock
his private secretary, Belknap his Secretary of War, Robeson his
Secretary of the Navy, Pierrepont and Williams his legal advisers,
Shepherd his trusted confidant, and Chandler his pet minister. The
time had gone by to fight with shadows when there were such glaring
realities before the people. The corruption was homespun,
unfortunately. It was of native growth. It had aggravated and
increased the financial depression, in which foreign countries had a
hand to some extent. It had fostered a lavish display and gilded
vulgarity which were not only unbecoming republicans but rational
beings of any class or kind. It had laid the road open to
constitutional dangers, and honest citizens had good reason to dread a
prolongation of the term of a man who had too military a way of
looking at civil affairs, and regarded lawful opposition somewhat in
the light of military insubordination. These things were before the
people, and they laughed at the idea of dragging the Pope in.
General Grant was thrown aside; Blaine was thrown aside. A man whose
record seems to be stainless was named in his place――Mr. Hayes, the
Governor of Ohio. A far abler man was set up as the Democratic
candidate――Mr. Tilden, the Governor of New York. The election was
probably the most stubbornly contested ever known, and the day after
showed Mr. Tilden with 184 electoral votes and his opponent with 166.
Three States remained doubtful――three Southern States where the negro
vote predominated, and two at least of which, by the confessions of
both Republicans and Democrats, had been vilely misgoverned since the
war. The country had to wait, as we still wait, for the returns from
those States. At the very utmost they could only give the Republican
candidate a majority of one in the Electoral College, while, whatever
way they went, the votes of a vast majority of the people were
undoubtedly given to the Democratic candidate. The fact was
undeniable: the voice of the American people was for a total change.
Then ensued a scene unexampled, perhaps, in history, certainly in the
history of this country. The administration came out in all its force.
State rights were invaded by the military in South Carolina――as in the
opening of the year they had been invaded in Louisiana for the purpose
of sustaining the Republican candidates, right or wrong――while a
nation looked sullenly on.
The country has undoubtedly been on the verge of danger; but we cannot
despair of the Republic while so magnificent an exhibition is given by
the people of calmness, forbearance, and good sense through days and
weeks fraught with every incentive to exasperation and violence. We
cannot foretell who will be the next President, but the will of the
people is manifest and unmistakable. Politicians high and low have
received a bitter lesson, which the nation has indeed dearly bought.
Let us continue to be jealous of those whom we elect, of our own
wills, to carry on the business of this great country, and we will
force honesty even from the dishonest.
We have not space to deal with national topics of lesser moment,
though of great interest and importance. With the centennial year came
our first International Exhibition. It brought the eyes of friendly
nations upon us, and, while the exhibition of the products of other
and older peoples was a lesson to ourselves, a still greater lesson to
them was the exhibition of our own industry and productiveness. The
advance in the art and industry of the United States attracted the
admiration of competent critics from all civilized nations. A more
significant sign even than this is the alarm in England at the rapid
growth of our iron trade, while our grain floods English markets. Ten
years ago forty-four per cent. of the grain sent to England came from
Russia, fourteen per cent. from the United States. Now forty four per
cent. is sent from this country, and twenty-one per cent. from Russia;
this, too, at a time when business generally at home was never
duller――a dulness that the Presidential crisis has confirmed. Yet even
at our present condition we are, as a people, more prosperous than
most of the European nations. The money that people generally
squandered, and that was allowed to be squandered in the national,
State, and municipal governments, has at least not been spent in the
forging of cannon and the mustering of dread armaments of war, in
which so keen a rivalry is exhibited by the European monarchs. Such
comfort, at least, as this consideration affords is fairly open to us.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF EUROPE.
And now we turn to Europe. It would take the eye of a prophet to read
the future, the pen of a Jeremias to paint the present, of the
continent to which God, through his church, gave the leadership of the
world. The European crisis that all men saw coming seems come at last.
Four years ago we closed our review by saying: “War looms on the
European horizon, gathers in silent thunder-clouds all around. A flash
is enough to kindle the combustion and make the thunder speak. Who
shall say when or whence it comes? Europe is arming, and we have good
authority for saying that ‘the next war will rage over half a
century’――Bismarck himself. For the church we foresee an increase of
bitter and severe trials.…”
Well, the thunder-clouds have gathered and are now impending. During
the greater part of the year the world has waited with bated breath to
see them burst and the bolts that smite nations fall. The hand of
Providence is in it. The sins of three centuries seem to be gathering
to a head at last. There is no nation in Europe that can call the
other friend. There is no such thing as the comity of nations. The big
battalions alone take right and wrong into their hands. Treaties most
solemnly and formally ratified within a quarter of a century are torn
to pieces as waste paper. Such alliances as are patched up between the
Powers are rather personal than national――the alliances of savage
chieftains against some rival, to be broken as occasion requires when
the allies may fly in turn at each other’s throats. France and Germany
are sworn foes; Russia and England hate each other; Austria trembles
between Germany and Russia; Turkey is doomed, but seems resolved to
sell its life dearly, and draw all Europe in to witness and operate at
the death. Italy seems ready to follow the beck of Germany, and Spain
is consumed with her own troubles. Add to this that each nation is
disorganized within itself. The war, as will be shown later on, has
proved a curse to Prussia, and, through Prussia, to all Germany. The
empire is far from consolidated; the Catholics have been alienated
from the government; the socialists, who are now in the ascendant,
have been denounced by Prince Bismarck; the Protestants have lost what
unity they ever possessed, and have shown an example of weak
subserviency to infamous laws that has won for them the contempt of
the world. In Russia the emperor himself dreads the future. The
long-pent up elements of discord are bursting through at last, and
even his immense power cannot restrain the nation from a war which, it
is generally believed, his mind and heart condemn. Austria has its
Hungary, and its persecution like to that of Germany; England its
Ireland and a people that, with all its wealth, it cannot find
employment for or feed. It has its India, also, with Russia for a
neighbor. France has its Imperialists, its Legitimists, its Socialists
of the fiercest kind; Italy its secret societies, its persecutions,
its people that groan under an incompetent government and scandalous
monarch. What a picture! And in the background millions of armed men,
millions of starving people, bankrupt treasuries, general
disaffection, a thousand conflicting passions of race, of religion, of
social and moral theories, and the pale ghosts of murdered kings
vainly warning the handful of monarchs who are riding over the old
ruts red with so many an awful disaster! Such is Europe in the year of
our Lord 1876. Why is Europe not united? why is it not at rest? why is
it ever on the verge of war? why is its surface being constantly
changed? why are its governments so diverse? why is it the stronghold
of the foes of all government? why is it bristling with armies and
weighed down by armaments? why, wherever the eye turns, is it faced by
cannon?
That the Reformation divided Europe into two hostile camps is a fact
acknowledged by all students of history. We do not say that previous
to the Reformation there were no wars among the Catholic European
nations. There were――bloody, long sustained sometimes, and bitter. But
they were wars of dynasties rather than of nations, for which the
feudal system, that in its essence and construction was a pagan
system, was chiefly accountable. The people hated not each other. They
were one in faith, one in religion, one in their worship, one in their
hopes of a hereafter and the means to attain it, one in their
recognition of one supreme head of the church in which all believed.
While they were just as much Germans, French, Italians, English,
Irish, as they are to-day, they all worshipped one God in one manner.
English saints were revered in Ireland, Irish saints in England,
German saints in France, French saints in Italy. While Charlemagne was
battling with pagan hordes and Moslem infidels, Irish missionaries
went forth and spread themselves along the borders of the Rhine,
diffusing the light of faith and knowledge in their path. They were
welcomed as angels, not looked upon as aliens and foes, as are the
missionaries of Protestant societies to-day in Catholic lands, who
only stir up strife wherever they set their foot. Thus there existed
something stronger, broader, more universal than nationalism, which
destroyed not nationality, but taught all men that they were brethren,
and that geographical lines were blotted out in the sight of God and
in the common home of faith. Then was exemplified the sacred words of
Scripture: “This is the victory which overcometh the world, your
faith.” It was this faith that out of barbarism drew and moulded the
mighty nations of Europe. It was this faith alone that saved Europe
from being overrun by the Moslem as it already had been by the pagan
North. Just at the moment when the Moslem power was about to receive
its last check and overthrow came the Protestant Reformation, which
was not only a religious revolt, but a disruption of Christendom. To
that we owe the presence of the Turk in Europe and all the fatal
consequences that have flowed from it, now at their ripest, when the
moribund carcase that the faithless kings and nations allowed to lie
there and rot threatens, in its final dissolution, their descendants
with ruin. To that movement also we owe the bitterly hostile lines
that have been set up between nations that once were brethren. To it
we owe the persecutions and the cruelties that have resulted on either
side from the day when a man’s religion assumed a political and
geographical character. To it we owe something worse than all
this――the substitution of doubt for faith, and the questioning of all
authority, both human and divine. To the impious setting up of the
monarch as the great high-priest of the nation we owe the absolutism
which has crushed peoples, been overthrown and crushed in turn by
them, and risen again only to repeat the old story of devastation.
Ever since that fatal outbreak Europe has been steadily drifting back
into the old paganism to which such civilization as letters give is
only a thin veneer; and paganism, at its highest, is only a step
removed from barbarism. What is called progress would have come
without Protestantism, and been estimated at its true value――as a
means to a higher life for all the world; not as an end, not as the
all in all in this life. Mere worshippers of progress make this world
their heaven and self their god. This is the growing feeling in
nations to-day, and the Reformation it was that, however unconsciously
at the beginning, formulated it into a religion.
It seems to us that the present state of Europe is the logical and
plain outcome of the great religious revolt in these last days. What
nation to-day has a religion? Has Russia? Has England? Has Germany?
Has France? They each have religions――fragments of religions or no
religion――as apart from one another as the poles. At the very least
this depriving men of a unity in their highest beliefs is fraught with
interminable discord. And never were the minds of men more disturbed
than they are to-day. Protestantism has almost run its course, and, by
its own confession, disbelief in Catholicity is resolving itself more
and more into disbelief in all things spiritual and necessary bowing
to brute force in the material and moral order. Men look around
blankly and ask, Where do we stand? And the answer is, Nowhere. Men
are born and live, they eat and sleep, they sin and die in their sin,
passing through life in a sort of dumb wonder that life should be.
Life is a hopeless mystery to those from whose eyes heaven has been
shut out. Then all those hard social problems become unanswerable.
Why, they cry out in despair, should kings have our blood and
sustenance? Why should we kill each other to make them great or small?
Why should they live and we die? Why should our lives be spent in
drill, portioned out by the corporal, and our means be dragged from us
to buy cannon? These thoughts are boiling and seething in the hearts
of the masses, and kings know it. They and those they favored have
destroyed faith and religious unity. They have in its place what is
called socialism, which means revolt against all things that be. The
name of priest was made hateful by the calumnies of false teachers
with the sanction of kings; and now the name of king is coupled with
that of priest in the mouths of the irreligious masses. The first
French Revolution was but the awful flash of a fire that smouldered
and still smoulders under the thrones of Europe. It has set kings up
and set them down like toys with which a child is pleased and then
breaks, and then takes others to make its sport and break again. The
history of Europe from the Reformation down is a continuous conflict
between despotism and revolution. The fullest liberty is the only
safeguard against it; but the fullest liberty may no longer be allowed
to the peoples, for the Christian spirit and the Christian guiding
hand have been withdrawn; deprived of which, liberty of the masses
means license and lawlessness, government either absolutism or a
strong tendency thereto.
SOCIALISM.
Let it not be thought that we are drawing a fancy picture.
“Socialistic journals,” said Prince Bismarck in a speech delivered
early in the year, “had recently done much harm, and had done so
without let or hindrance. The poor people who subscribed for
socialistic papers read but one journal, and were perverted by that
one. They had an indistinct idea that they were badly off, which was
no doubt true, and they therefore were ever ready to believe the
insane promises held out by the socialistic journals. The result was
that the German operative no longer worked as much and as well as did
the English and French, and that German manufactories could no more
compete in the great markets of the world. A nation that had been
industrious and steady to a proverb had, by the incessant agitation of
the socialistic press, been brought to this sad pass.”
Prince Bismarck cannot well complain. The only press he could not
tolerate was the Catholic. The publication of a letter of the Pope was
the signal for suppression of the paper, and fine and imprisonment of
the publisher. He used the socialist press to inflame the hatred of
the people against the Catholics, and now finds that in the unlawful
use of dangerous weapons he has only cut his own fingers. In a debate
in the Prussian Parliament Count Eulenburg, the Minister of the
Interior, was compelled by a Catholic deputy to admit that “the
government did tolerate the excesses of the socialist papers and
societies for awhile, although the existing legislation enabled them
to interfere.”
“I have always been _Intransigente_,” said Garibaldi last February.
“Brought up with republican principles, through having served the
Republic in America, I could not change my opinions, only I thought in
the past that it was necessary to suppress our republican sentiments,
because, in order to unite Italy, the monarchy was necessary. But not
for this have we renounced our republican principles. As republican
principles are the principles of honest people, there cannot be an
honest government which is not republican. However, we are obliged to
get on by compromises, which the force of circumstances demands. _I do
not tell you to-day to make a revolution. We must adapt ourselves to
the times._ Nevertheless, vindicate progress to the last gap. Keep
yourselves in the path of progress. Do not let yourselves be weakened
to-day; the country groans under depredations, the unjust acts of the
government. When we compromised with the monarchy, we might have
expected from it that the country would be well governed; but it is
not. The monarchy must also complete its course; but the Guizots and
the Polignacs of to-day do nothing but accelerate its fall.”
“In conducting the government of the world,” said Mr. Disraeli in his
speech at Aylesbury in August last, “there are not only sovereigns and
ministers, but secret societies, to be considered, which have agents
everywhere――reckless agents, who countenance assassination, and, if
necessary, can produce a massacre.” “I think,” he said, in speaking of
the negotiations for adjusting matters in the East and staving off a
little longer the fatal hour, “that in the spring of the present year
the negotiations might have resulted in peace on principles which
would have been approved by every good man; but unexpectedly
Servia――that is to say, secret societies of Europe, acting through
Servia――declared war on Turkey.”
On the eve of the German elections the _Provinzial Correspondenz_
warns Germany against the socialists in this solemn fashion: “As for
the aim of socialism, we can have no doubt whatever about it. For on
all occasions the members of the party make known this aim more or
less openly. It is the utter overthrow of all order established in the
state and in society, the destruction of all social culture, which has
found its expression in religion and morality, in the family and in
property, in art and science, in industry and commerce; and all this
for the erection of a chimerical workingmen’s state, wherein would
fall all the power of government and all the enjoyments of life to the
pretended proletarians, or men who possess nothing.”
The invincible opposition of the Catholic Church to secret societies
of every kind, the frequent warnings of the Holy Father and of the
Catholic episcopate, clergy, and press throughout the world, have
generally been laughed at as a clerical bugaboo, set up to frighten
women and children. Well, we have not quoted from a single Catholic so
far, and certainly the threats coming from so many different quarters,
and from men whose words are not idle, are sufficiently strong.
THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN EUROPE.
Leaving this, the general and gravest aspect of European affairs, we
proceed to touch on more specific topics of public interest which have
arisen during the year. Many must necessarily be omitted.
Not even the gravity of the Eastern complications has been able to
withdraw the eyes of the world from France. The story, repeated in
these columns year after year, of the country’s wonderful advance in
material prosperity is happily confirmed. We wish that the prospects
of a satisfactory government were on a par with this material advance.
There exists still a feeling of great unrest in France. The various
political parties are as far apart as they ever were, and it seems
impossible to bring them together so as to carry on the business of
the country in that healthy constitutional fashion where opposition is
a spur rather than a material hindrance to the government, where the
government has not to deal constantly with a strong body of
irreconcilables, and where cabinet crises need not be expected at any
moment on what to outsiders often look like trivial points――as, for
instance, the one of which we hear as we write: the concession by a
Catholic nation of military honors at their burial to men who have
lived and died unbelievers, and whose funerals, by their own expressed
desire or the will of their relatives and friends, are devoid of all
religious ceremony and a renunciation of the Catholic religion. Now,
it seems to us that such a question as that should not be permitted to
necessitate the resignation of a ministry and the consequent throwing
out of gear of the chief government machinery.
For difficulties like this those who arrogate to themselves the
exclusive title of republicans in France――the party that regards M.
Gambetta as its leader and Victor Hugo as its prophet――is chiefly
responsible. It has taken a distinctly anti-Catholic basis in what
undoubtedly is a Catholic country. The name for it is “anti-clerical,”
which is a distinction without a difference. It palliates the excesses
of the _Commune_, while it opposes freedom of education.
There seems, unfortunately, to have been too much truth in what Mgr.
Dupanloup said early in the year when speaking of the university
question: “To make us love the republic, the first thing done is to
identify it with a war against religion.” And the venerable prelate’s
words received strong confirmation from so decidedly un-Catholic a
writer as the Paris correspondent of the London _Times_, who wrote to
that journal while the Chamber was still fresh from the elections: “On
observing the attitude of the Chamber it is evident that the religious
controversy is the great motive of all its passions. In the last
Assembly, at least in its early days, every speaker courting applause
had only to attack the Empire. In the present, as yet, the most
frantic plaudits are reserved for whoever attacks not only the clergy,
but any creed whatever. This is a fresh discord about to be added to
so many old ones.”
If there is any truth in the report of Prince Bismarck’s views of the
French elections as given in the letter of a German diplomatist,
extracts from which appeared in a Rouen newspaper, the prince-chancellor
agrees with both of these views. The report in question at least
smacks of the man.
“The chancellor,” says the German diplomatist, “does not appear to be
affected in any particular way by the result of the elections. In a
conversation I had with him a few hours ago he remarked: ‘I doubt if
the French Radicals will get into power; but should they, I am sure
they will begin eating the priests before they tackle the Germans; the
task is so much easier, and I have no desire to balk their appetite in
that direction.’”
On December 31, 1875, the French National Assembly was dissolved,
though its actual dissolution only took place in March, 1876, at the
meeting of the new Chambers. The elections followed, and the voice of
the people was certainly for a republic. The question of education
immediately became a great subject of debate. In July, 1875, was
passed a law allowing mixed juries, composed half of examiners
appointed by the state and half of their own professors, to question
the candidates for degrees, and decide whether or not to grant the
degrees. Not a very monstrous concession, surely, yet on the strength
of it the Catholic University of Paris was founded and inaugurated on
January 10, 1876. This was too much for republicans of the Gambetta
and Victor Hugo stamp. Accordingly, to M. Waddington, “an Englishman
by birth and education, and moreover a stanch Protestant,” as the
Paris correspondent of the London _Times_ triumphantly announced to
that journal, was confided the Ministry of Education. It seems that M.
Waddington was actually born in France, his father being an Englishman
who was there naturalized, but the rest of the description is accurate
enough. Of course M. Waddington’s stanch Protestant conscience could
not allow of this concession to Catholics, whatever his English
education might have done. He moved immediately to repeal clauses 13
and 14 of the law of July, 1875, which embodied the concessions above
mentioned.
Now, what is this system of state monopoly of education in France
against which the Catholic conscience rebelled? It owes its origin to
the despotic genius of the first Napoleon, and we cannot do better
than describe it in the words of a critic who will, in the eyes of
non-Catholics at least, be above suspicion: “He [Napoleon I.] formed
one great university,” says the London _Times_, “which was only the
state acting as an autocratic teacher. The chief dignitary of that
university was the Minister of Public Instruction, and all the
officials, from the highest to the lowest, were servants of the
government. The state appointed all the professors in the Sorbonne,
the College de France, the law schools, the Polytechnic School, the
Military College, and the crowd of Lycées throughout the country.
Indeed, the state does so still.” It will be seen how open was such a
system to abuse, particularly when the “state” in France has changed
hands half a dozen times since Napoleon organized his system. “The
state alone could grant degrees in Medicine, Law, and even Theology.
The system was completed by the stipulation that no one could open
even the pettiest of infant schools or the greatest of colleges
without ministerial authority. Thus the state could despotically
decide what books should be studied by every scholar in France, by
whom and how each should be taught, what moral or political ideas
should be spread through every school or college, and what amount or
kind of knowledge should be exacted from every candidate for the
practice of medicine or the bar. _No more rigid system of intellectual
despotism was ever fashioned by the wit of man._”
After a prolonged, fierce, and bitter debate, M. Waddington carried
his motion through the Chamber of Deputies, but it was happily thrown
out in the Senate; and there the matter stands.
If French republicanism is made to assume a distinctly anti-Catholic
character on the part of those who look upon themselves as the only
true republicans in France, then France cannot hope for a good
government from it. It remains for the Catholics to show and prove
themselves the veritable republicans by devoting themselves absolutely
to the country and the government as they stand. They have the game in
their own hands. The French nation seems to be profoundly and
reasonably mistrustful of kings and emperors. Yet a republic in which
Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and the apologists and leaders of the _Commune_
are to be the chief actors would be worse than the Empire. France
would have had revolution ere this only for the strong, wise, and just
man who holds the reins of power with so firm a grasp, and swerves not
an inch either to the “Right” or to the “Left.” What a contrast
between Marshal MacMahon and our own soldier-President! We can only
continue to hope for the best from all parties. Time may teach them to
coalesce and deal fairly with all. Could they only do this, the
mightiest bulwark would be raised up on the continent of Europe
against the threatened encroachments of absolutism on the one hand and
the madness of socialism on the other, and in this France would attain
to a height of power and true greatness that no king or emperor ever
brought to her.
Germany goes on its way resolutely. The persecution of the Catholics,
which is now an old story, has not been abated a jot. To it is added,
as has already been indicated, an attempted persecution of the
socialists. But the socialists, besides being too strong, are hard to
catch. The recent elections for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies show
an immense gain for the party of National Liberals, who represent
every wing of socialism from its highest to its lowest aspects. The
Catholics remain much the same as before. The result is not favorable
to Prince Bismarck, who seems to be growing more querulous than ever.
An arrangement has been brought about by which the Prussian railways
have been transferred to state control, and an attempt was made to
extend it to all Germany, which has thus far proved unsuccessful.
Still the military hand everywhere, and here is a result of it on
which we have often dwelt, but which grows more sadly manifest every
year. The Berlin correspondent of the London _Times_, writing of the
accounts of Prussia for 1874 and the estimates for 1875, after
struggling manfully but hopelessly to make the figures wear a
favorable aspect, finally confesses: “These figures point a moral.
Comparatively easy as it may be to balance the Budget in 1876, the
present is the last year in which this can be done. Next year there
will be few, if any, surpluses to draw upon. On the most favorable
assumption the Prussian needs may be covered without having recourse
to fresh imposts; but how about the wants of the Empire in 1877?[145]
The Empire in the current year lives upon its usual income of custom,
excise, and a modicum of state contributions, patching up its deficit
by consuming the remnant of accumulated funds left. _A year hence
realities both in Prussia and in the Empire will have to be faced with
empty pockets._ If industry has revived by that time, the taxes will
be augmented; if not, the only alternative will lie between a loan and
the reduction of military expenditure. In any circumstances the
situation in which Germany is placed by the military preparations all
round will then be acutely felt.”
Such is the cost of military glory and power in these days. What doth
it profit the people? We have seen Prince Bismarck’s views on the
German workingmen, who, instead of becoming the strength and support
of the Empire, are becoming its terror. How could it be otherwise with
the means taken to educate them? No picture could be sadder than that
drawn by the chancellor of the present condition of the German working
classes. Industry cannot thrive on bayonets and cannon. Social order
cannot prevail where the minds of men have been debauched for a
purpose by the free dissemination of evil doctrines, and when they
have ever before their eyes the steady persecution of the best
citizens. He has outlawed the church of God. He cannot wonder at the
devil stepping in and claiming his prey.
A still greater shock was given to German feeling by the report of
Prof. Reuleaux, their chief commissioner at our Centennial Exhibition.
His conclusions, in brief, were: 1. That the main object of the German
manufacturers is to produce an article which shall be cheap and nasty.
2. That German manufacturers find it easy to succeed in this line,
considering that the men they employ are deficient in skill and taste.
3. That judging by the German display at the Exhibition, the German
nation seem to be steeped in utter servility, so great is the number
of Bismarck statues, Red Princes, and other heroes of the war, in
every conceivable material, from gilt bronze down to common soap.
“For the real cause of the decline [in prosperity] in Prussia,” says
the London _Times_, “we must look to the military system of Germany.
That system, as we have often pointed out, is the most costly in the
world. By sending to the drill-ground for years all her best and most
promising youth――by taking her most accomplished young men from the
university, from the learned professions, from the factory or the
laboratory, to fill the ranks of her army――she causes a greater
interruption of trade, and lays a heavier burden on the nation, than
that which the cost of the war has imposed on France.… In Germany all
other interests are sacrificed to the needs of the greatest army ever
supported by any state. The intellect of the nation is set to do
military work with such rigor that civil pursuits are sensibly
suffering. Trade is sacrificed in order that the country may be
covered with troops drilled to the precision of machines. Military
railways are made without regard to commercial necessities. So
crushing is the blood-tax that crowds of the most stalwart peasantry
and the most skilful artisans are crossing the Atlantic in spite of
the depression of trade in America; and so soon as prosperity shall
return to the United States the emigration from Germany may be
multiplied two or three fold. Such is the price at which Germany
bought the military dictatorship of Europe.”
Italy seems to be going from very bad to worse. The people groan under
their burdens, and the successive ministries seem utterly incapable of
coping with the difficulties by which they are beset on all sides. The
telegram announcing the opening of the Italian Parliament on Nov. 20
tells us that in his speech from the throne Victor Emanuel, referring
to the relations between church and state, said: “The extensive
liberties granted the church ought not to impair public liberties. The
government would therefore propose bills for rendering efficient the
reservation in the laws respecting the Papal See.”
Here is an instance of the “extensive liberties” of the church. A
report, dated March 14, informs us that “the fifty-sixth birthday of
king Victor Emanuel, and the thirty-second of his eldest son, has been
signalized in Rome by a ceremony of great interest. A new public
library, which has been added to the Collegió Romano, and which has
received the name of the king, was formally opened by the Minister of
Public Instruction.” (We wonder if in the portfolio of the present
Italian Minister of Public Instruction the good old commandment, “Thou
shalt not steal,” is written.) “He explained that on the very site of
the new building the Jesuits had striven for the triumph of principles
against which King Victor Emanuel’s career has been an unceasing
battle.” (This statement is crushingly true.) “The library is also the
monument of a victory in another respect, for it contains 650,000
volumes which belonged to the suppressed monasteries.”
What a victory! “The opening of such a building,” said the London
_Times_, with unconscious irony, “appropriately marked the birthday of
a king whose name will forever be connected with the greatest of all
changes in the political fortunes of the Papacy.” It notices with keen
regret in the same article that there is a lamentable tendency among
Italians “to forget how much they owe to this king.” “Her [Italy’s]
people cannot speak too gratefully of the king whose rare combination
of courage and political sagacity has helped to give them back their
self-respect as well as their nationality.”
Well, when Englishmen worship a Garibaldi and cherish a Mazzini, we
may expect their leading journal to speak in this strain of a Victor
Emanuel. The Mantegazza affair will be too fresh in the memory of our
readers to need our using it as one of many instances showing the kind
of man this model king is, and how likely the Italians are to remember
“how much they owe” him. One of the things they owe him is the
suppression of monasteries and convents. It must be rather bad when a
journal like the London _Saturday Review_ considers it as on the whole
rather a useless measure in its results. A strong effort is
undoubtedly being made by the Italian government to destroy the Papacy
and dam up the Catholic religion at every vent. Only do this, it says
to its subjects: Kill off these religious societies from the face of
the earth; and, as for yourselves, join what devil’s societies you
please――for this is liberal Italy.
In assuming charge of the religious properties, however, the Italian
government assumed also the liabilities attached, and it met with many
strange mishaps. Wonderful to read are the accounts of some of those
bills presented by worthy citizens to the government officials. The
Dominicans for instance, are certainly not famed as being great eaters
of flesh either in Italy or anywhere else. Yet here are the worthy
Dominicans of Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, whose property was seized,
charged by a modest butcher with a “little bill” of 20,000 fr. for
butcher’s meat! This is only one of many such that were presented.
The first report of the Commission of Vigilance charged with the
ecclesiastical property seized was presented early in the year. It
showed that, according to the schedule laid before Parliament in the
spring of 1873, there were then in Rome 126 monasteries occupied by
2,375 monks, and 90 convents occupied by 2,183 nuns――in all, 216
religious houses with 4,558 inmates, exclusive of hospitals and
pensions under monastic supervision or direction, the colleges and the
houses of the generals. Of these 216 houses 119 were seized and 44
others declared exempt from the operation of the law. The property
that thus passed into the hands of the Commission was disposed of as
property usually is――put up at auction for the most part; 250 lots
were put up at 13,042,629 fr., and knocked down at 16,142,697 fr. The
total value of the property thus seized is estimated at 61,161,300 fr.
To complete the pleasing picture it only remains to add that the
receipts of the Commission from July 22, 1873, when it began its
operations, up to the end of 1875, were 11,116,376 fr., while the
expenditure was 11,570,428 fr.
Meanwhile, the dispossessed monks were left at liberty to run about
the world and seek for a living wherever they could find it, while the
Commission of Vigilance manipulated their property. As for the nuns,
provision was made that all of them who within three months after the
publication of the law made express and individual requests to remain
in the houses they occupied should be permitted to do so until the
number in each house should be mercifully reduced by death to six,
when the government might concentrate them elsewhere. Signor Nicotera,
however, seems resolved to root them out altogether.
Such is Catholic Italy. The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD have seen in
a recent article[146] the tendency of the ecclesiastical policy of the
Italian government. In this alone is it resolute. The country at large
is as ill-governed as ever. The police are corrupt. In many districts
life is still at the mercy of brigands, some of whom, as was recently
shown, have their allies among those moving in the best circles of
society. Scandals thicken around throne and government. As for the new
government, that steadfast friend of young Italy, the London _Times_,
wrote thus as long ago as May 4: “The new Italian ministry came into
power just a month ago, and it has already had to declare the
impossibility of its own former programme, and to adopt both the
measures and the practice of the government it overthrew and
supplanted. It deals with public meetings, with the press, and with
the telegraphic office as conservatives, and even the Pope, had done
before; and, what is more, it finds that if it is to save Italian
finance from a downward career, it has no choice but to adopt the
Grist-tax, which was the one particular crime of its predecessors.…
The Left is disappointed and sullen. The populace of the country towns
is furious. For some years the owners, the occupiers, and the tillers
of land have found that ‘unification’ and representation are costly
privileges. The fact is now brought home to them; and when all classes
in an agricultural district are of one mind, they are apt to express
themselves roughly.”
Like all petty persecutors, Switzerland shows itself the most virulent
in its attack on the rights of conscience. Great Powers try to devise
some pretext at least for their persecutions. Switzerland is troubled
by no such scruples as this. The laws are strained to the utmost to
punish Catholics, and, when they will not precisely fit the case, they
are made to fit as speedily as possible. Indeed, law there has become
a farce. The correspondent of the _Journal des Débats_, which is noted
for its solid opposition to the Catholic Church, draws a lively
picture of the proceedings at the “election” of an “Old Catholic”
pastor; and as it is characteristic of a thousand things that are
constantly occurring in Switzerland, we give it at length. The letter
is dated Sept. 20: “The confessional contest continues at Geneva. I
won’t trouble you with the details of the skirmishes which occur every
day. That would be monotonous. As a _résumé_, here is what passes from
month to month: A Catholic commune has a church, a _curé_, a parish,
and one hundred electors. Fifteen or twenty of these declare
themselves liberal Catholics. They demand a _curé_ who shall be
elected by the parishioners, as the law requires. But the party chiefs
do not always find a liberal clergyman to order. Plenty present
themselves, it is true, but for the most part they are more liberal
than Catholic, and more libertine than liberal. The Superior Council
wishes for honest men only, who shall not be too ignorant, who are
good speakers, with a conscience, if possible, and capable of making a
good show. But this is a combination of qualities hard to find in
those who go out from the Roman fold. As soon as they have found one
whose recommendations are of the best, they write to the twenty
electors: ‘We have found your man; vote away to-morrow.’ They vote;
the eighty Roman Catholics go not to the ballot-box, therein obeying
the stupid order received from Rome, and the _curé_ is elected. From
that out the church and the parish are his. All he has to do is to
take possession. The keys are demanded from the mayor. The mayor
refuses to give them up. He is recalled; the gates are forced, and
liberal Catholicism is duly installed in the holy place, where nothing
is left but the four walls. So clean has been the picking that the
new-comers cannot even find a bell. Whereupon the eighty Roman
Catholics, with their wives, children, and friends, gather together in
a barn around their _curé_, now become a martyr, while the official
priest, installed in the church of the commune, preaches to a
congregation of two――the gendarme and the rural guard. He has not even
the benches to preach to, for they have all been taken away. In
addition, he is pestered by the zealots of the opposite party, who
insult him in the street, steal his vegetables, and eat his rabbits.
To console himself he marries, which at least brings him a female
parishioner.
“Behold what passes from month to month. But to be serious: It is in
this way that three-fourths of the revolutions begin. The liberal
electors are for the most part infidels; but they have children whom
they send to catechism. There were more than nine hundred of these
this year. Behold a future flock detached from Rome. Moreover, there
are foreigners who second the movement. A fairly large number of young
girls have already made their First Communion in the liberal churches.
Many marriages have taken place there.”
In Spain the Carlists were utterly defeated by overwhelming numbers
and faithlessness on the part of many of their chieftains early in the
year. Don Carlos escaped, and the insurrection was at an end. While
Spain was shifting from hand to hand, and presenting to the world a
hopeless picture of internal disorder, we supported the cause of a
resolute man who had certainly a strong and brave following, not all
confined to the North; whose views of government were far more liberal
than they were represented to be by his foes; who knew the meaning of
morality; who displayed great capacity in welding into a formidable
army a set of undisciplined hordes whose personal character was above
suspicion; who, as kings’ claims go, had a strong claim to the Spanish
crown, supported to this day by a formidable party in Spain; and who,
had he once grasped the power of the throne, would not have been a
likely man to relinquish it. What Spain wants to-day is a ruler, and
we believe Don Carlos would have ruled the country wisely and well. We
were always open, however, to just such a solution of the Spanish
difficulty as has actually taken place. In our review of the year
1872, while saying that we did “not expect to find Amadeo’s name at
the head of the Spanish government that day twelvemonth,” we added:
“a good regent, not Montpensier, might bring about the restoration of
Don. Alfonso; but where is such a regent?” Pavia did the work, and if
the young king can only be surrounded by good advisers he need dread
no domestic foe. He is undoubtedly the lawful king of the nation, and,
as such, all good men are bound to support him. But Spain is still so
uncertain that it is open to almost any surprise. Its debt is
enormous. When Queen Isabella was driven from the throne, the capital
of the debt was $1,250,000,000. To-day it is about $3,500,000,000
which represents in startling fashion what a country gains by
revolution and the clash of dynasties.
Space does not allow of entering more largely into the internal
affairs of Europe, or even of glancing at the disturbed condition of
affairs in the states of South America, which is only a reflex of
European life in its general and worst phases. With a brief mention of
a few of the memorable dead, we pass on to consider the question which
is uppermost in men’s minds to-day.
For the Catholic, during the past year, one name overshadows all――that
of Cardinal Antonelli, whose official life in the service of his
Holiness was a long and severe battle against overwhelming odds. The
wonder is, not that he failed in the end but that he stood so long.
He, together with his illustrious chief, was a true friend of liberty,
but not of that liberty which means disorder. This he was to the end
of his days, as is shown by his admiration for our own Republic and
his rejoicing at the victory of the Union. His life was spent in
storms; and in days when physical force takes all things into its
hands, his was the gigantic task to beat back the flood, as he
succeeded in doing for almost a quarter of a century. His name will be
memorable not only in Catholic annals but in European history, and his
example for steadfast courage, unwavering faith, and unswerving
devotion to the chair of Peter one of the most conspicuous in all
time. Another holy and venerable man, renowned in a different
way――Cardinal Patrizzi――followed him close. Another man who has graven
his name on the century, and who was, perhaps, the brightest
intellectual light that the New World has yet given to the faith――Dr.
Brownson――went out with the year. As his career and work have been
treated at length in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, we need say no more of him
here. His bright and promising daughter, Sarah (Mrs. Tenney), the
author of the _Life of Prince Gallitzin_ and other works, followed him
recently. The name of Francis Deák stands alone among the list of
secular statesmen. His life teaches the value of patience against
hope, and of persistent but lawful agitation for the rights and
liberties of peoples. He went to his grave amid the tears of a nation
and the sorrow of a world, a patriot of patriots and a Catholic of
Catholics.
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Russia, Austria, and England have been almost completely wrapped up in
the Eastern difficulty, which we do not pretend to be able to solve,
and which we doubt if any man could solve, however read in the secrets
of European cabinets. Never was a question more shifting in its
character, more unexpected in its surprises, more delicate to touch,
more difficult to adjust. Time was when short work might have been
made of it. Here are the facts: A nation steeped in corruption,
foreign in every sense to Europe, which has steadfastly refused to
enter European life and thought and action, occupying one of the
fairest regions only to pollute the very dust where heroes trod, and
which the ashes of saints once consecrated. Christian principalities
and peoples are subject and made to pay tribute to this power, which
has only strength enough to be cruel, and energy enough to sin. It is
needless to point out what would be the action of Europe were Europe
only one in faith. Its very faith would have revolted against such a
people in such a place, and beyond doubt the Turks would have had the
alternative of becoming subject to Christian rule or of leaving
Christian shores.
But these thoughts enter not into the calculations of governments
which are themselves no longer Christian. They approach the subject
like robbers before whom is spread out a rich booty, and the question
is, Who shall have the biggest share? Russia is resolved to have it;
Austria trembles for her frontier; England sees all that she fought
for in the Crimea slipping from her grasp, and is left without courage
to fight and without a friend to help her.
It would take a volume to follow out all the intricacies of this
affair, and at the end we should only be left at the very
starting-point. If we may hazard an opinion, we believe that there
will be no war, at least this winter. As for the alarm at the
anticipated occupation of Constantinople by Russia――while, if the
Russian Empire be not dissolved before the close of the present
century, by one of the most terrific social and political convulsions
that has ever yet come to pass, that occupation seems to lie very much
in the order of possibilities――we doubt much whether it will occur so
soon as people think. England is not the only rival of Russia. The
alliance of the emperors is nothing more than an alliance _de
convenance_ which would snap at any moment. Russia herself has
recently given notable example of what value she sets on troublesome
treaties, when she has the power to throw them aside. It would seem to
us difficult for Russia to occupy Constantinople without first
mastering and garrisoning Turkey; and Turkey is an empire of many
millions, whom fanaticism can still rouse to something like heroic, as
well as to the most cruel and repulsive, deeds. These millions, even
if they would, could not well be transported to Asia at a moment’s
notice. But even granting all this, granting Russia the governing
power――and it will have that or nothing――in what now is Turkey, how
would its more immediate neighbors, Austria and Germany, regard so
enormous an accession of power to an empire that already grasps the
East and West in its hands, that is brave, enterprising, aggressive,
daily growing in intelligence,[147] as a nation one in religion, and
subject to the will of one man, whose presumptive heir is the bitter
foe of Germany? The religion of Russia is opposed to that of all
Europe, with the exception of Greece. Russia is greedy, strong, poor,
and cruel. So cold a nation, that has not yet quite thrown off the
shell of barbarism, drifting down into one of the fairest European
provinces, would take a century, at least, to thaw into civilization.
Indeed, the possibilities that would arise from such a movement are
beyond foreshadowing. Yet people who talk so glibly of Russia seizing
Constantinople never seem to regard them. We may be very sure,
however, that they are regarded by powers who, in such an event, would
be neighbors and necessary rivals of Russia; and that they, while they
are in a position, as to-day Germany is, to forbid trespass, will be
very careful how far they allow a people to advance who, given an
inch, take a country. Germany, it is believed by many, wants Austria.
With Austria as part of Germany, Germany might well defy Russia, and
the ambition of founding a consolidated empire extending from the
borders of France to the borders of Russia, from the North Sea to the
confines of Italy, seems to us worthy of the mind of Prince Bismarck.
And it might have been, were he safer at home; but it needs something
more powerful than blood and iron to frame and consolidate such an
empire. It needs peace, unity of sentiment, unity of interests, unity
of faith, the assurance of liberty, none of which Germany possesses
to-day. Indeed, the chancellor himself has disavowed such designs,
fearing that the welding of Austria into Germany would give the
Catholics the preponderance in the empire which they now lack. Certain
it is that some agreement has been made between the emperors which has
imparted an ominous neutrality to Germany, and under which troubled
and enfeebled Austria is in the eyes of all observers restive. But
under all these combinations of the great European Powers there frowns
the spectre of socialism, with allies wherever men are aggrieved, and
which will not down for all the artillery of empires. From it an
outburst may be expected at any moment, in the quarter most
unexpected, and in situations the most critical. Its power cannot be
weighed, measured, or calculated upon. It works in the dark, yet
universally. It is as strong in the Southern States of America as in
Europe. Its excesses shock all men for a time, but it feeds on
discontent; and discontent to-day possesses the world. It can only be
met and conquered by the Christian conscience, but it has long been
the effort of kings to destroy that conscience, to deprive it of
light, and render it a passive agent in the hands of force. Thus are
empires for ever digging their own graves.
And what is the outlook? Bleak indeed to the eye of the world, but
bright to the eye of faith. Throughout the pontificate of our Holy
Father, Pope Pius IX., the church has been treading the weary way of
the Cross. The world is only to be won to Christ by suffering and
sacrifice. Christ himself no longer suffers in the flesh, but in his
mystical spouse, the church. “When I shall be lifted up,” he said,
“then will I draw all men to me.” It is the same with his spouse. She
has had her hour of earthly triumph; she has had her agony; she has
felt the kiss of many a Judas on her cheek; Sadducee and Pharisee
alike hate her; she has been betrayed by her own into the hands of her
enemies; she has been led before the rulers of this world, and they
have pronounced, each in his way, sentence upon her, and the sentence
is death. She has been delivered up to the hands of the rabble,
mocked, derided, bruised, crowned with thorns, forced to bear her own
cross. She has mounted to the very height of Calvary. Her garments
have been stripped from her, and, naked, she stands before the world.
The consummation is at hand. Despoiled of all things, and lifted up
between earth and heaven, a spectacle to God, to angels, and to men,
she draws all eyes to her, while the executioners, under the very
shadow of the Cross, gamble for her garments. Free from all the
trappings of this world, deserted, abandoned of men, it is then that
the divinity within her shines forth with naught to dim its
brightness. When Christ yielded up his spirit into the hands of his
Heavenly Father, darkness covered the earth, the veil of the Temple
was rent, the dead walked the streets of Jerusalem, and an earthquake
shook the world. Nature was all confusion, and from that very hour
began the victory of the Cross. Is not a like scene before us to-day?
The darkest hour is on us; the future is God’s.
[145] This letter was written on January 19, 1876,
consequently previous to the complications which have since
arisen in Eastern Europe, and which, if war break out, would
of necessity considerably add to “the wants of the Empire in
1877.”
[146] “How Rome stands To-day,” CATHOLIC WORLD, November,
1876.
[147] The Report of the Russian Education Department for
1875 showed, excluding Finland, the Caucasus, and Central
Asia, 22,768 elementary schools, with 754,431 males and
185,056 females, and 1 school to 3,924 inhabitants. In the
German provinces, there is 1 school to 2,044 persons, 1
scholar to 15 males and 24 females. In the Gymnasia, where
the pupils have the option of learning French or German,
11,382 prefer German and 8,508 French, the preponderance for
German being almost entirely furnished by the pupils who
entered during the two years preceding. This latter fact we
take to be a sign of the times.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE MARTYRS OF THE CITY OF ROME. By the Rev.
Henry Formby. London: Burns & Oates. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1877.
We can do no more now than call the attention of our readers to this
exceedingly beautiful little work, advance sheets of which lie before
us. It is full of admirable illustrations of scenes in the lives of
the early martyrs, and nothing could be better adapted as a Christmas
present for Catholic children.
THE NORMAL HIGHER ARITHMETIC. Designed for advanced classes in
common schools, normal schools, high schools, academies, etc. By
Edward Brooks, A.M. Published by Sower, Potts & Co., Philadelphia.
This excellent text book contains more than the average number of
practical examples. This fact, considered in connection with the
intelligent and exhaustive treatment of commercial arithmetic,
commends the book to teachers in need of a manual for drill purposes.
Besides, most of the material is new, and the author brings to his
task a greater command of language than seems to have been possessed
by the older authors, thus ensuring clearness and variety of
statement. The treatment of exchange shows the peculiar merits of the
volume to advantage.
A large portion of the first half of the volume is devoted to a
scientific treatment of arithmetic. In many respects this is waste
labor. No use can be made of it in the class-room. Who, for example,
stops to consider the properties of the number eleven? Less science
and more practice would mend the first two hundred and fifty pages.
This done, and the answers carefully corrected, the book will rank
first of its class.
EXCERPTA EX RITUALI ROMANO, PRO ADMINISTRATIONE SACRAMENTORUM, AD
COMMODIOREM USUM MLSSIONARIORUM. Baltimori: apud Kelly, Piet et
Socios, 1876.
This new edition of the ritual is an improvement upon previous ones in
the beauty and clearness of the print. In other respects no changes
have been made, except in the paging.
We notice a misprint, “Suspice” for “Suscipe,” on p. 159. There may be
others, but hardly can be any of importance.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 143.――FEBRUARY, 1877.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
FREDERIC OZANAM.[148]
Ozanam’s name and writings were made known to the portion of the
English-reading world interested in the Oxford movement by the
brilliant pages of the _British Critic_ more than thirty years ago,
while he was still in the bloom of his youthful fame and success as a
professor of the Sorbonne. The preface to his biography says that he
is not widely known in England, and the same is probably true of
America, speaking in reference to non-Catholics. Among Catholic
scholars here, and we fancy in England also, his name and works are
well known and in high repute. They deserve, nevertheless, to be
better known and more highly honored. There is scarcely a purer or
more brilliant career to be found recorded in the annals of Catholic
literature in this century than his. He was the founder of the Society
of St. Vincent de Paul――a sufficient title to honor and gratitude. He
was a model of moral loveliness and Christian virtue, a type of the
true Catholic gentleman, adorning a high sphere in society, and at the
same time heartily devoted to the welfare of the humblest, the
poorest, and even the most degraded and vicious classes. He was a
thoroughly learned man in his own department, a captivating writer, a
master of the minds and hearts of the studious youth of France, a
knightly champion of the faith without fear and without reproach, an
author of classical works of peculiar and enduring value. The charm of
his private, personal character, as a child, a friend, a husband and
father, a member of the social circle, equals the lustre of his public
career. Spotless and fascinating from the beginning to the end of his
life, the bright and winning grace of the figure which he presents in
the history of his life receives dignity and pathos from the suffering
which overshadowed and eclipsed his light before its meridian was
attained. He was born in 1813; his professorship at the Sorbonne
filled the space between his twenty-seventh and thirty-ninth years of
life――that is, from 1839 to 1852――and he died the next year at the age
of forty, after seven years of repeated attacks of illness and a
continued decline. We will pass in rapid review the incidents of this
brief but fruitful career, and endeavor to place before our readers a
reduced sketch of the character and work of Frederic Ozanam, as
faithfully and artistically portrayed by his accomplished biographer.
The family records of the Ozanams trace their origin to Jeremiah
Hozannam, a Jew, who was prætor in Julius Cæsar’s thirty-eighth
legion, and received the township of Boulignieux, near Lyons, as his
share in the military partition of the conquered Gallic territory. His
lineal descendant, Samuel Hozannam, was converted by St. Didier in the
seventh century. The name was altered to Ozanam by the grandfather of
the subject of the present notice. Dr. Ozanam, Frederic’s father, was
a distinguished man, and both of Frederic’s parents were persons of
remarkable virtue and piety. He was born in Milan, but educated at
Lyons, every possible care being taken of his intellectual, moral, and
religious culture. In childhood and youth he was delicate, precocious,
exemplary in morals and religion, extremely diligent and successful in
his studies, and every way admirable and lovable in character. At one
time during his boyhood he was tormented by temptations against faith,
which were so rife, and to a multitude of the studious youth of France
so dangerous, at that epoch. To him they were not dangerous, but
salutary; for they had no other effect except to stimulate him to a
study of the rational evidences of the Catholic religion, and to leave
in his heart a vivid and tender sympathy for the victims of doubt and
error. After a very thorough course of classical study under an
eminent teacher――the Abbé Noirot――which he completed at seventeen
years of age, Frederic Ozanam was placed in a lawyer’s office at
Lyons, where he remained one year, employing all his leisure time in
linguistic and literary studies. Before completing his nineteenth year
he was sent to study at the great Law-School of Paris, where he
remained six years, after which, at the age of twenty-five, he was
admitted to the bar and to the degree of Doctor in Letters, taking the
next year his degree of Doctor of Laws. Ozanam had studied well his
jurisprudence, and was perfectly competent to practise his profession,
or even to hold a chair as professor in a law-school. This was not,
however, his vocation, and he had little taste or inclination for such
a life. His legal career was, therefore, very brief and only an
episode in his life. In respect to his true vocation he had many
doubts and anxieties. He was extremely averse to the thought of
marriage, and, being so fervently religious, he naturally felt certain
predispositions toward the sacerdotal or monastic state. He visited
the _Grande Chartreuse_, corresponded with his friend Lacordaire, and
held many consultations with his director. The final result was that
he chose the profession of literature, and married, with the full and
hearty approbation of his friend and counsellor, the Abbé Noirot. His
chief end in choosing his profession was the advancement of the cause
of religion and the church; and the generous aspirations, directed by
the most elevated and enlightened views, which developed into so
glorious and successful, albeit in time so brief a fulfilment, already
preoccupied his mind and heart from the time that he was seventeen
years old.
In point of fact, he had really found his vocation at that time, and,
notwithstanding his apparent divergence to the legal profession and
his various waverings of purpose, he actually began to prosecute it
steadily by his studies and by such active efforts as his age and
condition permitted, from that early but prematurely ripe period of
his life. The programme of his studies and literary labors is laid
down in a letter to a friend, written when he was seventeen years old.
Without neglecting his professional studies, he was able, thanks to
his wonderful mental gifts, his retentive memory, and his habits of
intense, continuous application, as well as to the definiteness and
unity of the scope and plan which he followed, to acquire that solid
and accurate erudition which furnished the material fused and moulded
into such beautiful forms by the fire of his eloquence and the
constructive art of his imagination.
The state of things among men of science and letters, and the youth
studying at the great schools, when Frederic Ozanam went to Paris,
was, in a religious aspect, most dreary. His father had feared to send
him there on account of the infidelity and immorality with which the
whole atmosphere was poisoned, but had at last resolved to trust to
the firmness of his principles and the purity of his character. His
trust was fully justified. During his student-life Ozanam began, in
concert with a few other young men like-minded with himself, that
counter-revolution or crusade for the restoration of the old religion
of France, among the young students and also among the working-men of
Paris, which we devoutly trust will end in the fulfilment of De
Maistre’s prophecy that within this present century France will be
once again completely Christianized.
There is nothing more melancholy in all history, after the apostasy of
Juda from the standard of her Lion, than the lapse of France from her
fidelity to the cross and to the vows of that national baptism in the
deepest, purest waters of Catholicity, from which she derived her
life, her strength, and her unparalleled glory in Christendom. It is
like the fall of Solomon, so beautiful, so wise, so royal in
magnanimity and splendor, so favored of God, so renowned as the
builder of the Temple and the palaces of Sion, degrading those later
years which ought to have been crowned with a venerable majesty by
turning his heart to strange women and to the abominations of the
heathen. It is a grief almost without consolation, and accompanied by
surprise and indignation, that a people like that of France, and
especially its intelligent and educated portion, living amid the
monumental glories of their Catholic history, could be insensible to
their own honor, mock at all which makes their nation venerable,
destroy the noble work of their ancestors, and, like the Israelites
defiling themselves with the base heathen of Chanaan, turn away to the
worship of the fetich of the Revolution. How much more deeply must the
bosoms of those Frenchmen who are not degenerate be stirred by such
emotions! There were always among the sons of Israel of old elect
souls, the true children of the promise, such as Joseph, Gideon,
Samuel, David, Isaias, Daniel, Judas Machabeus, who burned with zeal
and holy enthusiasm for the cause of the God of their fathers; and
they never ceased to rise up when they were most needed until the
final apostasy of the nation. The people of France have never
apostatized from Christ as a body, although a great multitude of
apostates have deserted the faith and loyalty of their ancestors, and
the revolution which they stirred up under the traitorous banner of
Voltaire, “the wickedest, the meanest, and the most unpatriotic
Frenchman of the last century,”[149] has swayed to a great extent the
politics and education of France for a hundred years. Paris has gone
far beyond France in this road of apostasy, but even there impiety has
never gained a complete and lasting conquest. On the contrary,
martyrdom, heroic charity, and intellectual valor in the sacred cause
have made it their most illustrious palestra, and, we trust, have
expiated the guilt of that peerless city, and averted the doom which
would seem to await it if the divine justice should exact the due meed
of retribution.
Among the _élite_ of the youth of France, the class most immediately
and universally exposed to the deadly influence of impious literature
and education and withdrawn from the control of the clergy, gifted and
pure souls have arisen, filled with the inspiration of genius and
religion, like Daniel and his companions in the captivity, who have
escaped the violence of fire and stopped the mouths of lions. First
among these is Chateaubriand, who in his old age honored Frederic
Ozanam with his special friendship and was loved reverently by him in
return. Notwithstanding a short period of defection from the faith,
and considerable faults in his character and writings, Chateaubriand
deserves to be called the father of the new generation of Catholic
youth in France. There is no similar autobiography of more exquisite
charm than the history of that childhood and youth in which this great
man shows us how he was trained and formed to that peculiar type of
genius which so captivated, and to a great extent re-formed in a
Catholic mould, the intellectual and imaginative youth of France.
Lamartine deserves a considerable meed of recognition, also, for
services of the same general nature, though he was far less true and
constant to his first loyalty. Victor Hugo promised in the beginning
to devote a genius of a much higher order than either of these two
eminent men possessed to the true welfare of his country and mankind,
but unhappily was seduced by the fell spirit of the Revolution. Even
he shows a reaction from the unmitigated, fanatical hatred of the
Catholic past of France and Christendom which animates the worst
section of the anti-Catholic sect. The moderates or liberals, the men
of compromise between the revolutionary section and some kind of vague
natural religion or philosophy under a spiritual or semi-Christian
semblance, who have had the predominance at Paris in government,
education, and the general leadership of the public affairs of France,
since the time of the First Empire, have also belonged to a half-way
party, in which the effect of resurging Catholicity is visible. They
have been allied with the outside row of Catholics, who were either
only nominally such, or, if really, inconsistent and weak in their
allegiance to the church. Their position presented, therefore, a much
weaker and more easily assailable front to Catholic aggression than
one more extreme and openly revolutionary would have done.
Nevertheless, the young world of Paris students were as effectually,
and more quietly and irresistibly, alienated from real faith in the
religion of their baptism, and every principle or duty of practical
Christian morals and piety, by their utterly secular and free-thinking
education in the public schools, so long as no counter-influence was
brought to bear upon them, as if the Catholic religion had been
proscribed by penal laws. It was possible, however, to bring this
influence to bear upon them. The liberty granted to indifferentism,
infidelity, and atheism might be made use of to the advantage of
Catholicity. In the schools where free thought and free expression
were a law, the possessors might be invaded and overthrown by
intellectual and moral weapons, if there were found aggressors able to
wield them and bold enough to enter the arena. On such a
battle-ground, where the field is in the domain of history and
philosophy, where reason is umpire, and where facts and arguments,
eloquence and logic, appeals to the intellect and the heart, the
lessons of the past and the examples of those men to whom the verdict
of time――the most impartial of judges――has decreed an apotheosis, are
the arsenal of the combatants, the Catholic cause must win, if its
champions are worthy of their cause.
When Frederic Ozanam came to Paris the other side had the field to
themselves, like the challengers of Ashby-de-la-Zouche on the morning
of the tournament, before the young Ivanhoe rode into the lists. The
venerable Sorbonne, that ancient shrine of sacred learning, had become
a theatre, where shallow, rationalistic philosophers like Jouffroy
declaimed against revelation and the Catholic Church. Ozanam soon
found a small number of resolute, high-spirited young men like
himself, who had been well trained at home in their religion and were
determined to adhere to it faithfully. Under his leadership they began
to send in objections to the statements and arguments of their infidel
professors, which necessarily commanded some attention and respect and
had influence with their fellow-students. Jouffroy himself, at the
hour of death abjured infidelity, received the Sacraments devoutly,
and declared that one half-page of the catechism was worth more than
all the philosophical systems. It was at this time that Ozanam founded
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The Abbé Lacordaire, the Abbé
Gerbet, and other eminent priests of Paris, and even the archbishop,
interested themselves in the band of young Catholic students, and
under their guidance the career of their leader, Frederic Ozanam,
became, during his whole student-life, a truly noble and successful
apostleship. Thus the way was prepared for him to carry on the same
work in a much more efficacious manner as a professor at the Sorbonne.
In the year 1839 Ozanam, being then twenty-six years of age, a
professorship of philosophy at Orleans and one of commercial law at
Lyons were offered him, and the latter appointment accepted. He
resigned it, however, after one year, in order to accept the position
of assistant-professor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne. At this
time an additional professorship of foreign literature at Lyons was
offered to him, which would have secured to him, together with the
law-professorship, an income of $3,000 a year. He was just about to be
married to a young lady of Lyons. Nevertheless, he chose the position
of assistant to the profesor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne,
although it was a precarious one, and brought him an income of less
than $500, in order that he might be better able to carry out the one
noble purpose to which he had devoted his life. Together with his
professorship at the Sorbonne he held also, for a few years, another
at the _Collége Stanislas_, which he was obliged to relinquish when,
in 1844, on the vacancy of the chair of foreign literature at the
Sorbonne, he received the appointment to fill it from the government.
For all these early and brilliant successes he was in great measure
indebted to the warm friendship and patronage of M. Cousin and M.
Villemain, a fact most honorable to these distinguished men, who, as
is well known, were leaders of the rationalist school, yet
nevertheless, like the eminent Protestant, M. Guizot, really carried
out in respect to Catholics their professions of liberality. M. Ozanam
continued to fulfil his duties at the Sorbonne during twelve years,
with some considerable interruptions caused by illness. His published
works are chiefly composed of the substance of the lectures which he
delivered.
The great idea which was before the mind of Ozanam from the period of
his early youth was, the justification of the Catholic religion by the
philosophy of universal history. Eventually, he was led to concentrate
his attention principally upon the period embraced between the fifth
and fourteenth centuries, with especial reference to the German empire
and to the mediæval philosophy reflected in the poems of Dante, whose
strong attachment to the German party in Italy is well known, though
perhaps not so generally well understood. Frederic Schlegel has said:
“It is pre-eminently from the study of history that all endeavors
after a higher mental culture derive their fixed centre and support,
viz., their common reference to man, his destinies and energies.
History, if it does not stop at the mere enumeration of names, dates,
and external facts; if it seizes on and sets forth the spirit of great
times, of great men, and great events, is in itself a true philosophy,
intelligible to all, and certain, and in its manifold applications the
most instructive. Then history, if not in itself the most brilliant,
is yet the most indispensable link in that beautiful chain which
encompasses man’s higher intellectual culture; and history it is which
binds the others more closely together. It is the great merit of our
age to have renovated the study of history, and to have cultivated it
with extraordinary zeal. Within the last two or three decades alone so
much has been achieved and produced in this department, that
historical knowledge has been perhaps as much extended in that short
space of time as formerly in many centuries.”[150] The scope and
solution of universal history are found in the history of Christianity
viewed in connection with the Judaic and patriarchal epochs of
revealed religion which preceded the advent of the Messias. The most
important portion of Christian history is that which relates to
Western Christendom, the European family of nations which grew up
under the immediate spiritual and temporal authority of the popes.
This was the true _civiltà cattolica_, the millenial kingdom of Christ
on earth, whose rise, progress, and gradual decadence occupied the
space between the fifth and sixteenth centuries, whose remnants are
all that has any moral grandeur or value in the modern age, whose
restoration and triumph under a new form are the only future hope of
humanity.
The foundations of heresy and infidelity are laid in the falsification
and perversion of history, and in the general ignorance of historical
facts which opens the way for sophists to spin their webs of lies
around the deluded minds of the multitude. To find some other source
of the greatness, virtue, happiness, evolution in the line of its
destiny, already actually exhibited in its history by the human race,
especially its elect portion, and still possible in futurity, besides
the revealed religion and Catholic church of God, is the problem of
the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-theistic sophists. Germany is
their principal territory, the Gath and Ascalon of the Philistines who
defy the armies of the Living God with their weapons of erudition and
reasoning that are like a weaver’s beam. From the days of the old
secular and ecclesiastical princes of Germany who revolted against the
supremacy of Rome, down to Luther, his associates and successors, even
to our modern German sophists, apostates and persecutors; the pretence
of an autochthonous culture has been set up for Germany with a degree
of pride, arrogance, and insolence which has no parallel, and is
frequently so offensive and boastful as to be ridiculous not only in
the eyes of the rest of the world but in those of all sensible and
catholic-minded Germans. Christianity is considered by men of this
school as the cause of a decline from the autocthonous civilization.
War with the Christianity of the Latin races, and a return to
unalloyed Teutonism, are regarded as the conditions of a magnificent
future development, political, scientific, and literary, which shall
create a German empire in every respect supreme mistress of the modern
world.
Ozanam’s chief object was to combat this claim by showing, not that
Germany has nothing to be proud of and no greatness to aspire after,
but that she is indebted for her past and present glory, and must be
indebted for any fulfilment of a glorious destiny in time to come, to
Christianity and Roman unity, without which the Germans would have
remained always, and will again become, barbarians. We must refer the
reader to Miss O’Meara’s interesting pages for a fuller account of the
way in which Ozanam prepared himself for his task, and afterwards
fulfilled it by his lectures on German history.
Schlegel had given him a brilliant example of the way in which history
can be brought up to that high standard of scientific, ethical, and
literary excellence which is set forth in the quotation we have made
above from his lectures. The value and practical utility of the ideas
there presented and illustrated so nobly by the literary career of
Ozanam cannot be too much insisted upon. History is emphatically the
modern field most necessary and advantageous for Catholic polemics.
The history of particular epochs, of special classes and orders in
society, of individual men of mark, of institutions, of branches of
science, art, or learning――in a word, of every kind of topic which can
be made distinct and interesting by being localized, limited in
respect to time, or otherwise so brought within clear and defined
boundaries that it becomes vivid and real to the intellect and
imagination――is that which we have specially within our intention.
Moreover, the charms of style are essentially requisite. Happily, we
have begun to supply the dearth of such books in the English language,
partly by such as are originally written in English, partly by
translations. John Henry Newman has given us a certain quantity of
historical writing worthy of comparison with “Livy’s pictured page,”
and justly meriting for him the title, so felicitously invented by an
Italian critic, of “the Claude Lorraine of English literature.” The
accomplished authoress of _Christian Schools and Scholars_ is another
skilful miner in the gold-fields of Catholic history; and Mrs. Hope,
also, has shown in her volumes on the conversion of the Teutons and
Anglo-Saxons how specially adapted to labor successfully in this
department are cultivated women. Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_ is
an unrivalled masterpiece, as all know; and if we were to catalogue
all the various pieces of historical composition on similar topics to
be found in recent European literature, enough of them would be found
to make a small library. All books of this kind in the English
language would, however, make but a small collection, merely enough
for a nucleus of a library of Catholic historical literature. The
educated and reading classes in England and the United States have
been, within a very recent period, shockingly ignorant of the history
of all except a few nations during a few epochs, in regard to which
they have received a certain amount of information from popular works,
mixed up with a great amount of error and misrepresentation. There has
doubtless been an improvement slowly taking place for the last thirty
years, and becoming continually more rapid as it advances. Yet, rating
this improvement at the highest value it can possibly be imagined to
have, the amount of knowledge, especially in regard to the real,
genuine history of Christendom, which is current among the readers of
only English books, or even accessible to them, is lamentably small.
Even the most of those who are supposed to know something of foreign
literature may, without injustice, be taxed with the same lack of
information. We consider, therefore, that the example of Ozanam is one
which has a special fitness in it to allure and stimulate those whose
vocation it is to give instruction, by lectures or writings, to a
zealous imitation. There are Australian and Californian mines waiting
for those who will work them, in which those who have not the ability
to dig out great masses of the golden ore may find nuggets and
gold-dust in abundance to increase the common treasure in general
circulation. Historical works of original and thorough research are
wanted. Where translations from German, French, and Italian works
suffice, let them suffice, and original authors take up new topics.
Would that, even by the easy method of translation from foreign
languages, our English historical literature might be enriched, and
that the taste for solid reading were sufficiently diffused to enable
enterprising publishers to employ the hundreds of persons able and
willing to undertake this work! Besides these more extensive
historical works, there is a great need for others of lesser
magnitude, for which the materials already exist in abundance. All
that is necessary to make these rich materials available is, that they
be worked up by those who possess the art of conveying instruction and
imparting delight to inquisitive minds by the skilful use of their
vernacular idiom in a way suited to the capacity and taste of their
listeners or readers. Teachers in colleges and schools who are able to
lecture to their pupils will, in our opinion, stimulate their minds to
thought and study much more easily and efficaciously by lectures on
topics of this kind than by adhering exclusively to the mere class
routine. And we venture to suggest also to those who give lectures to
literary associations or general audiences, that they would do well to
exchange their usually trite and abstract topics of vague and general
declamation for specific and individual subjects taken from the
historical domain. We may say the same to those who undertake to write
books, or articles for the periodicals. And here it occurs to our
memory to refer to certain historical and biographical articles which
have appeared in some of our magazines as specimens and illustrations.
The _Civiltà Cattolica_ has published a long series of brief but
remarkably accurate and graphic historical sketches of the lives and
reigns of the Sovereign Pontiffs, under the title of _I Destini di
Roma_. _The Month_ has repeatedly given short articles of the same
kind, either singly or serially, which are perfect models of the
popular historical style. Our children and young people, and
indeed all people whatever who can be induced to hear or read
anything instructive, with the exception of a small class of
severely-disciplined minds, must be charmed in order to be taught.
Truth must be made visible; in concrete, distinct, and brilliant
pictures, images, representations of actual realities, living
examples; as a splendid form in symmetrical figures. This is the
reason why works of imaginative genius are so keenly relished by the
multitude, and especially those fictitious narratives called novels
and romances, whose particular form is most easily apprehended by the
common imagination. Fiction, in so far as it is constructed according
to the rules of true art, is but a shadow of real life. The reality is
far more interesting. Compendiums and textbooks must indeed be dry,
and they are necessary, as grammars and dictionaries are both
extremely dry and extremely necessary. But, besides these dry
skeletons of history, we need other books in which the epic and lyric
harmony and dramatic life of man’s variegated action on the earth are
reproduced――works which bear the same relation to dry annals that the
_Æneid_ or the _Cid_ sustain to Latin and French grammar. They should
be composed with such a charm of style that an intelligent boy or girl
would eagerly take them under a tree of a fine summer-day, and beguile
delightfully a long afternoon in their perusal, if they are for
juvenile readers; and if they are of a more ambitious aim, that they
allure their readers to burn the midnight oil over their pages. Nor
would we exclude historical romances from the category of useful and
instructive literature, if they are constructed in conformity to the
truth of history and inculcate wholesome moral lessons.
It is an error to consider literature as merely a means of instruction
for a secular purpose or of transitory pleasure, and to confine the
effort at cultivating the spiritual faculties in view of the soul’s
everlasting destiny, to the use of means directly religious. This is
one form of the erroneous doctrine that the temporal order ought to be
separated from the spiritual order, and therefore education be
secularized. If there are any who think that the clergy have no
interest in any but their own technical, professional studies, and
that catechisms, didactic sermons, ascetic books, and biographies of
saints written in that formal method which is so inexpressibly
unnatural and tedious, with virtues tied up in separate bundles and
commonplace dissertations overloading the narrative, are the only and
sufficient means of salvation, we might say to them: Look at the
Bible, and study the method which the divine Wisdom adopted. It is a
book of history, poetry, eloquence; with little of professedly
abstract, didactic instruction. It is an inspired literature, and the
sermons of our Lord even are thrown into a popular and concrete form
which addresses the imagination more directly than the understanding.
The Bible, as well as nature, reason, and experience, teaches us the
practical lesson that for the young and for the multitude
object-teaching is the proper and only successful method. The divine
philosophy, as well as the human, must be taught by example, and
history is philosophy teaching by examples. In the history of
Christendom, both public and private, the sacred history of the Old
and New Testament is continued. The church is the spouse of Christ.
The Evangelists paint the picture of the bridegroom, and Catholic
historians of the bride. To win admiration and love for her, it is
enough to represent her as she is.
Frederic Ozanam was inspired with this idea, which was infused into
his soul by the Holy Spirit who consecrated him to his high vocation.
He devoted himself to his literary and historical labors as a
professor at the Sorbonne, not for the sake of science, fame, or any
earthly advantage or emolument, but as an apostle of the Catholic
religion; that he might win the studious youth of Paris to love
Catholic truth and return to the church of their ancestors. For fifty
years no Catholic lecturer, speaking as a Catholic, had been heard in
that ancient, desecrated temple of the Christian philosophy of the
glorious days gone by of France. The voice of Ozanam was heard,
without the slightest flattening of its Catholic tone, with no timid
reticence of his Catholic principles, and it captivated that crowd of
turbulent, unbelieving youth by its magic eloquence. His biographer
tells us:
“No man in his position was ever so much beloved in Paris;
it was almost an adoration. After hanging upon his lips at
the Sorbonne, bursting out every now and then, as if in
spite of themselves, into sudden gusts of applause, and then
hushing one another for fear they should lose one of the
master’s words, his young audience would follow him out of
the lecture-hall, shouting and cheering, putting questions,
and elbowing their way up for a word of recognition, while a
band of favored ones trooped on with him to his home across
the gardens. They never suspected what an additional fatigue
this affectionate demonstration was to the professor,
already exhausted by the preceding hour and a half’s
exertion, with its laborious proximate preparation. No
matter how tired he was, they were never dismissed; he
welcomed their noisy company, with its eager talk, its
comments and questions, as if it were the most refreshing
rest. There was, indeed, only one reward that Ozanam coveted
more; this was when some young soul, who had come to the
lecture in doubt or unbelief, suddenly moved by the orator’s
exposition of the faith, as it was embodied or shadowed
forth in his subject, opened his eyes to the truth, and,
like the blind man in the Gospel, cried out, ‘giving
thanks.’
“One day, on coming home from the Sorbonne, the following
note was handed to him: ‘It is impossible that any one could
speak with so much fervor and heart without believing what
he affirms. If it be any satisfaction――I will even say
happiness――to you to know it, enjoy it to the full, and
learn that before hearing you I did not believe. What a
great number of sermons failed to do for me you have done in
an hour: you have made me a Christian!… Accept this
expression of my joy and gratitude.’ _You have made me a
Christian!_ Oh! let those who believe and love like Ozanam
tell us what he felt, what joy inundated his soul when this
cry went forth to him.”[151]
Ozanam’s authority over the students was never more strikingly
manifested than on the occasion of the excitement caused by the public
announcement which the celebrated historian Lenormant made of his
conversion to Christianity. He had been an infidel, then a waverer
between scepticism and faith, for years before he declared himself on
the Catholic side. The leaders of the infidel party stirred up the
students who attended his course of historical lectures to violent
demonstrations of hostility. Ozanam espoused his cause with the most
chivalrous courage, and took his place by the side of M. Lenormant in
the lecture-hall. When the storm of yells, hisses, hootings, and
blasphemous outcries burst forth in a deafening tumult, he sprang to
his feet beside the lecturer with an attitude and a glance of
indignant defiance which evoked at once from the fickle mob of youths
a counter-storm of violent applause. A scornful gesture hushed them
into a sudden silence, broken only by the thunder of Ozanam’s
invectives and the eloquence of his appeals to their honor and the
principles of liberty which they professed to respect, but had so
grossly violated. He mastered them completely, and M. Lenormant then
proceeded to deliver his lecture without interruption. The next day,
however, through the influence of those consistent advocates of
toleration, Michelet and Quinet, the course was closed by an order of
the government.
The active labors of Ozanam were by no means restricted to his
department of duty as a professor. He was a zealous leader in Catholic
associations, a frequent contributor to the journals, an untiring
workman in the cause of practical charity and all undertakings for the
improvement of the class of artisans and laborers. It is impossible to
make any accurate estimate of the actual results of his efforts in the
cause of religion and humanity. In the words of his biographer: “The
work that he accomplished in his sphere will never be known in this
world. God only knows the harvest that others have reaped from his
prodigal self-devotion, his knowledge, and that eloquence which so
fully illustrated the ideal standard of human speech described by
Fénelon as ‘the strong and persuasive utterance of a soul nobly
inspired.’ For Ozanam was not merely a teacher in the Sorbonne――he was
a teacher of the world; and his influence shone out to the world
through the minds and lives of numbers of his contemporaries who did
not know that they were reflecting his light.”
What is awaiting France we know not. The world, but especially all
Catholics throughout the whole extent of the church’s domain in the
world, have watched with intensest interest the events which have
occurred in France since the reign of Pius IX. began under such
unwonted and marvellous auspices, and has continued so much beyond the
period of human expectation. They have never ceased to pray for
France, to sympathize with the heroic efforts of genuine French
patriots, the true children of Charlemagne and St. Louis, and to watch
anxiously for the time when the prognostic of the learned and eloquent
Dr. Marshall shall be fulfilled: “_When France falls upon her knees,
let the enemies of France begin to tremble._” The blood of three
martyred archbishops of Paris, the blood of Olivaint and his noble
fellow-victims, the blood of Pimodan and those generous youth who fell
at Castelfidardo, the chivalry of Lamoricière and La Charrette, the
vows of the pilgrims of Lourdes and Paray-le-Monial, the valiant
struggles of the champions of the faith, the prayers and sacrifices of
that crowd of the noblest daughters of France which fills her
renovated cloisters, cannot surely remain for ever powerless to lift
the dark cloud which overhangs the kingdom of the _fleurs-de-lis_.
There has been enough of the blood of the just poured out in France
within the last century to redeem not only France but Christendom. If
Christendom is to be regenerated, France must first come forth renewed
out of her second baptism in blood and fire. The cry of anguish,
though not of despair, which she sends up to heaven by the mouth of
her eloquent spokesman, the bishop of the city of Joan of Arc, “_Où
allons nous?_” must be answered: “We go to victory over traitors
within and enemies without, and our triumph shall be that of the
Catholic Church.”
Frederic Ozanam had once said to the young men of a literary circle:
“Let us be ready to prove that we too have our battle-fields, and
that, if need be, we can die on them.” In point of fact, he did really
sacrifice his own life in the fulfilment of his task. Such a delicate
physical constitution could not naturally long survive the intense,
continuous strain to which it was subjected by a spirit which
exercised a relentless despotism over the body. In a letter to his
brother Charles he tells him, by way of encouraging him to follow his
example, that in 1837, when he was preparing his examination for the
higher degrees, he had, during five months, worked regularly ten
hours, and during the last month fifteen, daily, without counting the
time spent in classes. With much more _naïveté_ than good sense, he
observes that “one has to be _prudent_, so as not to injure one’s
health by the pressure; but little by little the constitution grows
used to it. We become accustomed to a severe active life, and it
benefits the temper as much as the intellect.” Notwithstanding the
remonstrances of friends, he continued almost the same extent of
application to study, until his health gave way entirely; and even
during the journeys he was obliged to take for relaxation he rather
varied the kind of labor in which his restless mind engaged than
exchanged it for rest and recreation. His first severe illness
attacked him only four years after he began lecturing at the Sorbonne.
This was followed at intervals by other attacks, and a general failure
of health which obliged him to intermit his courses and take several
journeys in France, Italy, England, and Spain, during which he
gathered the materials of some of the most delightful of his minor
works. It is a curious and characteristic incident of his visit to
England, worth recording, that he was turned out of Westminster Abbey
by the pompous beadle, whom all tourists must well remember, for
kneeling down to pray at the tomb of Edward the Confessor. His last
lecture at the Sorbonne was given some time during the spring of 1852.
It was a dying effort. He had persisted in dragging himself to the
lecture-hall while a remnant of strength remained, in spite of the
entreaties of friends and medical advisers. At length he had been
forced to take to his bed, exhausted with weakness and consumed by
fever. His cruel and unreasonable pupils clamored at the deprivation
of the intellectual banquet to which they had been accustomed, and,
with the inconsiderate spirit of youth, accused him of neglecting his
duty through self-indulgence. Ozanam heard of this, and, in spite of
all remonstrances, he rose from his bed, was dressed and taken in a
carriage to the Sorbonne. Pale and haggard, unable to walk without
support, but with an eye blazing with unwonted fire, and a voice clear
and shrill as a silver clarion, he sang his death-song amid
enthusiastic applause.
As the peroration of his last speech and of his life he exclaimed:
“Gentlemen, our age is accused of being an age of egotism; we
professors, it is said, are tainted with the general epidemic; and yet
it is here that we use up our health; it is here that we wear
ourselves out. I do not complain of it; our life belongs to you; we
owe it to you to our last breath, and you shall have it. For my part,
if I die it will be in your service.” With ardent but foreboding
congratulations and applauses, which all felt to be farewells, the
students of the Sorbonne heard and saw the last of Ozanam. The finale
of his career had been reached; his coursers touched the goal, and the
wreath and palm were decreed by acclamation to the hero who bore them
away to die. The next morning it was feared that he might not survive
ten days. He lived, however, about sixteen months longer, wandering in
company with his wife and little daughter, from Eaux-Bonnes to
Biarritz, from Biarritz to the Pyrenees, to Spain, and at last to
Italy, then to Marseilles, where he closed his earthly life on the
Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, 1853, surrounded by his relatives
and friends, and by his brothers of the Society of St. Vincent de
Paul. His published works fill eleven volumes of considerable size,
and for a just appreciation of their character and value we refer the
reader to the twenty-fifth chapter of Miss O’Meara’s biography.
We have endeavored to excite rather than to allay the curiosity of our
readers, by merely designating the salient points of a life which is
crowded with a great variety of traits and incidents such as make up a
subject worthy to be handled by a skilful artist in the painting of
character. We have not by any means exhausted the material furnished
by the intelligent and graceful narrator of Ozanam’s life, or even
touched upon those personal and private details of his domestic
history which lend so poetic a charm to the story of his public
career. Those in whom we have awakened an interest for one who
presents the living ideal of a perfect Catholic layman in an exalted
sphere of action, will defraud themselves grievously if they fail to
make themselves more fully acquainted with it by the perusal of his
biography. The author, although she now appears for the first time
under her own proper name, is already known by her _Life of Bishop
Grant_, published under the _nom de plume_ of Grace Ramsay, and is a
daughter of Dr. O’Meara, the author of _Napoleon in Exile; or, a Voice
from St. Helena_. Her contributions to the pages of this magazine have
been numerous and always considered as among the best of our literary
articles. In the work we are reviewing she has done justice to the
high estimate we had previously formed of her merit as a writer, and
to her subject, the one most suited to call forth her power which she
has thus far attempted. Besides a full knowledge of her subject; that
ardent glow of admiration for the hero of her story which is so
requisite, and is one of the special charms of portraits of noble men
drawn by a feminine hand; and graphic power regulated by delicate and
correct taste in delineation and description, the author has shown
remarkable tact and good sense in respect to all those questions which
have caused division and discussion between different Catholic parties
in France. Without suppressing any part of the history of M. Ozanam
and his period, or attempting to throw a veil over any of his opinions
which involved him in the domestic controversies then existing, and
not yet settled, respecting the relations of the Catholic cause and
national politics, she has judiciously avoided taking the part of an
advocate, and preserved the quiet, impartial attitude of a historian.
We have occasionally noticed some evidences of haste, and neglect to
put the last finishing touches upon the construction of sentences or
the details of the narrative. We are also at a loss to understand the
author’s motive for using certain French words, such as _angoisse_ and
_découragement_, rather than the corresponding Englishman terms. For
the incorrect title on the back of the cover, _Life and Works of F.
Ozanam_, we suppose the publisher is accountable; for the author has
entitled her own work very properly on the title-page, _Frederic
Ozanam, Professor at the Sorbonne: His Life and Works_――a phrase whose
meaning is essentially changed by the inversion of its parts, and made
to convey the impression that the complete works of Ozanam are
contained in one small volume, together with his life. Apart from this
blemish, which can be easily corrected, the mechanical execution of
the work is neat and tasteful. The _Life of Ozanam_ is another gem
added to our small cabinet of treasures by the skill and industry of a
gifted, cultivated woman. We trust the success of Miss O’Meara’s first
appearance under her own name will encourage her to new efforts, and
stimulate other women similarly gifted to follow her example by
laboring in a department of literature for which they are specially
competent. The example of Frederic Ozanam, mirrored in her clear,
impartial pages, presents its own native, intrinsic beauty and
splendor as a model for pure, disinterested, high-souled Catholic
young men who aspire towards an ideal of true intellectual and moral
greatness which is elevated and at the same time attainable in the
laical state and a secular profession. It is to be hoped that the
publication of this _Life_ will make the Catholic students of England
and the United States generally acquainted both with Ozanam’s
beautiful character and with his thoroughly erudite, yet classically
elegant and attractive, works on the history and literature of the
middle ages.
[148] _Frederic Ozanam, Professor at the Sorbonne: His Life
and Works._ By Kathleen O’Meara. Edinburgh: Edmonston &
Douglas. 1876.
[149] Lady Georgiana Fullerton.
[150] _Lectures on Modern History._ Bohn’s Ed. pp. 1-3.
[151] P. 200.
AMID IRISH SCENES.
II
“I do love these ancient ruins:
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some rev’rend history;
And, questionless, here in this open court,
Which now lies naked to the injuries
Of stormy weather, some lie interred who
Loved the church so well and gave so largely to ’t
They thought it should have canopied their bones
Till doomsday.”
“There is a joy in every spot
Made known in days of old
New to the feet, although each tale
A hundred times be told.”
Who has not heard of the Rock of Cashel――Cashel of the Kings? “The
first object,” exclaimed Richard Lalor Sheil, “that in childhood I
learned to admire was that noble ruin, an emblem as well as a memorial
of Ireland, which ascends before us, at once a temple and a fortress,
the seat of religion and nationality; where councils were held, where
princes assembled; the scene of courts and of synods; and on which it
is impossible to look without feeling the heart at once elevated and
touched by the noblest as well as the most solemn recollections.” From
whatever side the traveller approaches the ancient metropolis and
residence of the kings of Munster, the first object to meet his eye is
the Rock, which lifts itself above the surrounding country, as proud
to wear its monumental crown. From the earliest times this hill seems
to have been dedicated to religion. Its Round Tower, which is still
entire, would lead us to associate it with the pagan rites of the
ancient Irish; and the tradition which designates the Rock as the
place where the kings of Munster were proclaimed confirms this view.
It is certainly associated with the early dawn of Christianity in
Ireland; for St. Patrick, St. Declan, St. Ailbe, St. Kiran, and other
holy men held a synod in Cashel.
St. Patrick’s visit was in 448; he baptized Prince Ængus and held
solemn feast in Cashel of the Kings “till all the land was clothed
with Christ.” Here on the Rock he gave the shamrock its immortal fame:
“From the grass
The little three-leaved herb, stooping, I plucked,
And preached the Trinity.”
Without entering into the controversy concerning the origin of the
Round Towers, we will take Cormac’s Chapel to be the most ancient
Christian ruin on the Rock.
This stone-roofed church was built, as is generally supposed, by
Cormac McCullenan, the famous king-bishop, who began to reign in the
year 902. But Petrie is of opinion that we owe this chapel to Cormac
MacCarthy, King of Munster, and that it is the Teampul Chormaic of
whose solemn consecration by the archbishops and bishops of Munster,
in presence of the priests, princes, and people, the Annals of
Innisfallen make mention in 1134.
However this may be, all agree that the chapel is one of the most
curious and interesting specimens of early Christian architecture in
Ireland. Like all the stone-roofed chapels of the primitive Irish
Church, it is divided into nave and chancel, with a tall, square tower
at their northern and southern juncture. Within the southern tower,
which on the outside is ornamented with six projecting bands, there is
a stone staircase leading to apartments above the chapel said to have
been occupied by King Cormac. These rooms receive the light through
windows which are circular on the outside, but square within, and were
heated by hot air, conveyed into them through flues in the wall――the
first instance known to us of the use of a method of warming houses
generally thought to be of very recent invention. The doorways leading
into the chapel are in its northern and southern walls, and are richly
adorned with columns, capitals, mouldings, and sculptured figures. On
the lintel of the northern entrance there is a group in basso-relievo
representing a Centaur in the act of shooting a lion which is about to
devour some smaller animal that is crouching at its feet. This is
supposed to represent the contest between paganism and Christianity
for the possession of Ireland during the repeated invasions of the
Danes.
The cathedral stands between the Round Tower and Cormac’s Chapel,
embracing them in such way that they all seem to be but parts of one
magnificent ruin. This church, which consists of a choir, nave, and
transepts, with a square tower in the centre, was built by Donald
O’Brien, King of Limerick, in the year 1169. Its greatest length from
east to west is two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth of the
transepts is a hundred and seventy feet. It is both a fortress and a
church――true symbol of the perfect union of the national and the
religious spirit in Ireland. The walls, which are of great thickness,
are hollow, so as to afford a safe passage from one part of the
building to another in case of danger. At the western end, instead of
the great doorway usually found in churches, there is a massive square
guard-tower of great height, resembling the fortified castles which
are common throughout the kingdom.
This formerly contained a vaulted apartment having no exterior
windows, and but one small entrance. Over this vault was the great
room of state, which could be reached only by stairs within the walls,
barely wide enough to admit one person. The roof was surmounted by
battlements and a parapet. The monuments whose ruins crown the Rock of
Cashel were all built before the Saxon had set foot in Ireland, and it
is impossible to look upon them without admiration for the men who
called them into existence. They certainly had little to learn, in
architecture at least, from the rude Norman barons who, taking
advantage of the internal feuds which distracted the people, overran
and subjugated the country.
It was in the year 1101 that Murtogh O’Brien, King of Munster,
convened a great assembly of the clergy and people of Ireland at
Cashel, “and made such an offering as king never made before
him――namely, Cashel of the Kings, which he bestowed on the devout,
without the intervention of a laic or an ecclesiastic, for the use of
the religious of Ireland in general.” We have a letter of St. Anselm
to Murtogh O’Brien, in which he praises him for his excellent
administration of the kingdom. His successor, Cormac MacCarthy, by
whom the chapel was built, was the intimate friend of St. Malachi.
Driven from his throne by Turlough O’Conor, King of Connaught, he
refused to take up arms to regain it, but withdrew from strife and
placed himself under the direction of this great saint. In his society
he led a penitential life, taking no nourishment but bread and water,
and wholly absorbed in heavenly contemplation. After some years he was
replaced upon the throne, and, in gratitude, built two churches at
Lismore, where he had been the companion of St. Malachi, and one at
Cashel of the Kings.
The most famous of the bishops of Cashel was Cormac McCullenan, who
was at the same time King of Munster, and who has been considered as
the founder of the chapel on the Rock which still bears his name. In
his reign, which began in 902, the throne of Cashel had become almost
in every respect the equal of that of Tara. No longer content with his
own provincial resources, he put forth a claim to tribute from the
whole southern half of Ireland. This involved him in war with the
people of Leinster, who, supported by the supreme monarch, met Cormac
in battle and routed his army. The king himself was slain, and his
body was conveyed to Cashel for interment.
In the northern wall of the chapel there is a recess, once filled by a
sarcophagus which is now in the cathedral. Upon the slab which covered
this tomb the name of Cormac, King and Bishop of Munster, was
inscribed in Irish characters. Within the tomb itself, when opened
some years ago, there was found a bronze crosier with gilt enamel, of
great beauty and exquisite finish, which from its form and style of
workmanship there is good reason for believing to be as old as the
chapel itself; and this has led Petrie and other Irish antiquarians to
maintain that King Cormac MacCarthy was also a bishop, though the
tradition is that the tomb is not his, but that of the great Cormac
McCullenan.
After Murtogh O’Brien’s gift of Cashel to the church in the year 1101,
its bishops gained in importance and power. In the latter half of the
twelfth century the see was filled by Donald O’Heney, who was of the
royal family of the Dalcassians. The Four Masters declare that he was
the fountain of religion in the western part of Europe, that he was
second to no Irishman of his day in wisdom and piety, and that in the
Roman Law he was the most learned doctor in the whole kingdom. He took
part in a council held in 1097, in which Waterford was erected into a
bishopric, and died in the following year.
In 1152 Pope Eugene III. sent Cardinal Paparo as legate to Ireland
with authority to confer the pallium upon four of the Irish prelates.
One of these was Donat O’Lonargan, Archbishop of Cashel, during the
lifetime of whose immediate successor Henry II. invaded Ireland. He
landed at Waterford on the 18th of October, 1171, with five hundred
knights and four thousand men-at-arms, and appeared rather as a
protector than as an enemy of the Irish people. From Waterford he
marched with his army to Lismore, and thence to Cashel. Early in the
following year, by his order, a synod was held in Cashel for the
purpose of regulating ecclesiastical matters in Ireland. The chief
pretext, as is known, for the Norman invasion was the correction of
abuses in the Irish Church, and it was ostensibly with a view to
effect this that the council was called. Its decrees have been
preserved by Giraldus Cambrensis, the eulogist of Henry and the enemy
of the Irish, and, far from confirming the prevailing notion
concerning the existence of grave disorders, they furnish the
strongest argument in favor of the purity of the Irish Church at that
time; and even had there been serious abuses, the murderer of St.
Thomas of Canterbury was, one would think, hardly a fit instrument for
doing away with them.
Giraldus himself, the avowed partisan of the English and the author of
innumerable falsehoods relating to Irish history, was forced to admit
that the clergy were faithful in the discharge of their spiritual
duties, pre-eminent in chastity, and remarkable for their exceeding
abstinence from food.
“The clergy,” he says, “of this country are very commendable for
religion, and, among the divers virtues which distinguish them, excel
and are pre-eminent in the prerogative of chastity. They attend also
diligently to their psalms and hours; to reading and prayer; and,
remaining within the precincts of the churches, do not absent
themselves from the divine offices to the celebration of which they
have been appointed. They likewise pay great attention to abstinence
and sparingness of food; so that the greatest part of them fast almost
every day until dusk, and until they have completed all the canonical
offices of the day.”
As an off-set to this confession, drawn from him unwillingly, he
accuses the Irish clergy of drinking at night more than is becoming
(_plusquam deceret_), but does not go the length of saying that they
drank to inebriation, which, indeed, would be altogether incompatible
with the virtues which he is forced to admit they possessed. Felix,
Bishop of Ossory, who was present when Giraldus made this statement,
resented as false his allusion to the indulgence of the Irish clergy
in wine. But, even taking the account of Giraldus in its full extent,
we must admit that the Irish priests, at the time of the Norman
invasion, had nothing to learn from the example of the ecclesiastics
who had followed the conquerors from England; and we are inclined to
hold with Lanigan that there was in that day no church in Christendom
in which there were fewer abuses.
It was to Maurice, Archbishop of Cashel, who died in 1191, that
Giraldus made the objection that Ireland had never had any martyrs.
“It is true,” replied the archbishop; “for, though the Irish are
looked upon as barbarous and uncultivated, yet have they always paid
reverence and honor to priests; nor have they ever raised their hands
against the saints of God. But now there is come amongst us a people
who know how and are accustomed to make martyrs. Henceforth Ireland,
like other nations, shall have her martyrs.”
Giraldus has himself recorded this retort as a sharp saying. His heart
would have failed him could he have looked into the future and beheld
the whole people weltering in their martyr-blood; the sword always
uplifted ready to strike, the land made desolate, the populous cities
empty, the solemn cathedrals in ruins, the monasteries sacked and
burned, until Ireland, that made no martyrs for Christ, became, for
him, the great martyr-nation of all time. Cashel itself was to have
its martyrs, chosen some of them from among its archbishops. Maurice
Fitzgibbon, of the noble family of the earls of Desmond, filled this
see when Elizabeth ascended the throne. His birth was not more eminent
than his virtue. Every effort was made by the queen to induce him to
prefer honors to conscience. But in vain. He spurned the royal favor
which could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his faith, was
arrested for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and thrown into
prison in Cork, where, after years of suffering and cruel treatment,
he died on the 6th of May, 1578. His successor was Archbishop
O’Hurley, who, through his mother, Honora O’Brien, was descended of
the house of Thomond. A wretched informer was set to watch him, but,
through the timely warning of a friend, he escaped just as he was on
the point of being delivered into the hands of the officers of the
government, and found an asylum in the castle of Slane. His place of
refuge was soon discovered, and Lord Slane was ordered under the
heaviest penalties to bring the archbishop with the least possible
delay to the Castle of Dublin. On his trial he was put to torture, in
the vain hope that his excruciating sufferings might bring him to
renounce his faith. In the midst of his torments his only sister was
sent into his prison to add her prayers to the cruelties of his
tortures. He implored her to fall upon her knees and ask pardon for so
great a crime. As a last resort he was offered pardon with the promise
of high honors if he would yield. The heroic martyr replied that when
he had health to enjoy the world, such things had not power to move
him; and now that he was weak and broken, it would be folly to deny
his God for pleasures which he could not enjoy. Sentence was then
passed upon him, and on the 6th of May, 1583, in the sixty-fifth year
of his age, he was dragged to the place of public execution in
Stephen’s Green, and there hanged. His head was then cut off, and his
body quartered and placed upon the four gates of the city.
The first Protestant Archbishop of Cashel was the notorious Miler
Magragh, who apostatized during the reign of Elizabeth, and whom
Camden calls “a man of uncertain faith and credit, and a depraved
life.” During the fifty-two years of his occupancy of this see he
squandered its revenues, alienated its lands, and, lest the memory of
his misdeeds should perish, took care to erect in the cathedral a
monument to himself to recall to succeeding generations the lavish
manner in which he spent the ill-gotten goods of apostasy and
servility. The epitaph, which he wrote himself, records among other
things that for fifty years he worshipped England’s sceptre and
pleased her princes. When Donald O’Brien’s grand cathedral passed into
the hands of Protestant bishops, it began to be neglected. In 1647
Lord Inchiquin, one of Cromwell’s generals, laid siege to it, and,
after a severe bombardment, took it by storm. Twenty priests who had
taken refuge in the castle retired into the vault, and the soldiers,
not being able to break in the door, brought turf and made a fire, by
which they were either roasted or suffocated. The western tower, which
was directly exposed to the battery of Inchiquin, was greatly damaged,
and after the capture the roof of the cathedral was blown off with
cannon. When the troubled times of the Commonwealth had passed away,
the choir was again fitted up and used for religious worship, until in
1749 the Protestant Archbishop Price abandoned this hallowed sanctuary
altogether, leaving it to the mercy of time and the elements. The
groined arch underneath the belfry was broken down, and the bells were
carried off to Fethard and Clonmel. The interior of the church was
filled with the fragments of the fallen roof, beneath which were
buried tombstones, capitals, corbels, and pillars; and the noble Rock
where for ages the heroes and saints of Ireland had dwelled and
prayed, abandoned of men, was given up to the owl and the bat. In
1848, while the people were dying from hunger, the great tower, that
had been battered by Cromwell’s cannon, opened, and the southern half
fell to the ground with a terrific crash; but so excellent was the
mortar which had been used in the building that it remained firm while
the stones were shattered. The walls of the cathedral still stand firm
and unshaken as the Rock on which they are built. There is no nobler
ruin in Great Britain. The abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, and Holyrood
are contemptible when compared with the Rock of Cashel. Even in its
fallen state it has the lofty bearing of a king.
“They dreamed not of a perishable life
Who thus could build.”
When Cromwell beheld it he exclaimed: “Ireland is a country worth
fighting for.”
A fairer country, in truth, could not easily be found than that which
unfolds itself beneath the eye of the traveller who ascends the
pentagon tower of the ancient castle of the kings of Munster. To the
west the Golden Vale expands in tracts of emerald and gold; to the
east rich pastures and well-cultivated uplands gradually rise towards
the distant hills of Kilkenny; and on the north and the south the
glorious prospect is bounded by the Slieve Bloom and Galty Mountains.
In the distance, under the hill of Knockgrenagh, is the ruin which
sheltered Sarsfield the night before he fell upon and destroyed the
siege-train of William of Orange, which was on its way from Cashel to
Limerick. In the vale under the Rock lies the noble ruin of Hore
Abbey, originally founded by Benedictine monks, but transferred in
1272, by Archbishop McCarvill, to the Cistercians. He also united with
it the hospital for lepers built by David le Latimer in 1230, the
ruins of which may still be seen standing in a field on the road to
Cahir. In 1561 Queen Elizabeth, having expelled the monks, gave the
abbey with its appurtenances to Henry Radcliffe, and to-day only the
roofless walls remain. While the Penal Code was in vigor no Catholic
was allowed to dwell within the limits of the town of Cashel. At
present, in a population of six thousand, there are but a hundred and
eighty Protestants. Nevertheless, the venerable ruins of the Rock are
still in the hands of the dignitaries of the Church of England. It is
certainly a short-sighted and unwise policy which thus commits the
ancient sanctuaries of Ireland, so dear to the hearts of her people,
to the custody of those who look upon them as relics of a
superstitious faith, and prize them only as trophies of conquest. The
Irish people cling to memories and are governed more than others by
their affections; and so long as the English government persists in
maintaining a state of affairs which constantly places before their
eyes the wrongs and outrages of which they have been the victims, so
long will they be restless and dissatisfied.
To continue to allow an ecclesiastical establishment, which has never
been and can never be anything else than a political contrivance for
the humiliation and oppression of the Irish people, to retain
possession of these shrines of religion, is a wanton insult to the
double love they bear to their country and their faith. It was this
twofold love, flowing in one channel, that upheld them in all the dark
centuries of woe; and now that brighter days have come, England cannot
fail to recognize the increasing strength of Irish patriotism and
Irish faith.
Let the Rock of Cashel, with its holy ruins, its sacred tombs of kings
and bishops, be given back to the people to whom it belongs. It is
valueless except for its associations, and these associations are
without value to the persons in whose hands it is allowed to remain.
Let the glory of other days come back to these sacred walls. Millions
of Catholics in the United States would consider it an honor and a
privilege to be permitted to rebuild this sanctuary of God. Again on
the holy mount let the lamp of Christ’s real presence burn as glowed
the light that for a thousand years burned before St. Bridget’s
shrine. Let the swelling notes of the deep-toned organ lift again the
soul to God, while mitred bishops and surpliced priests, with all the
believing throng, sing forth the song of thanks and praise. In the
resurrection of a people, in the new rising of a faith, let this
temple, given back to God and to Ireland, stand as a commemoration.
Seven miles north of Cashel, and three miles south of Thurles, on the
banks of the river Suir, lie the ruins of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A
convent was built on this spot at a very early period of the Christian
history of Ireland. The fame of the sanctity of the monks attracted
members to the community, and also pilgrims from a distance. In 1169,
two years before the Norman invasion, Donald O’Brien, King of
Limerick, accompanied by a brilliant retinue, visited the place, and
was led by his devotion to found and endow the abbey. The charter of
foundation, one of the witnesses to which was Maurice, Archbishop of
Cashel, of whom we have already made mention, opens with these words:
“Donald, by the grace of God, King of Limerick, to all kings, dukes,
earls, barons, knights, and Christians of whatsoever degree,
throughout Ireland, perpetual greeting in Christ.” This charter was
afterwards confirmed by the English kings John, Henry III., Edward
III., and Richard II. The abbey received its name from the possession
of a portion of the true cross which was given in 1110, by Pope Pascal
II., to Donough O’Brien, King of all Ireland and grandson of Brian
Boru. Princes and bishops were eager to enrich this monastery, and the
fame of the miracles wrought by the sacred relic drew to it crowds of
worshippers. With increasing wealth, the buildings grew in splendor
and extent. The church is built in the form of a cross, with nave,
chancel, and transept. At the intersection of the cross there is a
lofty square tower, and in the transepts two beautifully-groined
chapels. In the monastery there were eight dormitories for the monks,
besides numerous chambers for the entertainment of visitors attracted
by devotion; for the laws of hospitality were never forgotten. The
abbot, who was mitred, was a peer of Parliament and secular lord of
the county of “The Cross of Tipperary.” When Henry VIII. suppressed
the great abbeys of Ireland, he granted Holy Cross, with its
temporalities and also the spiritual jurisdiction, to James, Earl of
Ormond and Ossory, whom he regarded with special favor. Elizabeth
confirmed this grant to Thomas, Earl of Ormond, who, though educated
in the Anglican schism, became a Catholic several years before his
death, and left his estates to Earl Walter, a stanch defender of the
faith.
The monks who had been expelled from the abbey still lingered in its
neighborhood, in the hope that they might somehow be permitted to
return and end their days in the sacred cloisters in which they had
given to God the best part of life. At times they met by night within
the hallowed enclosure to offer up the divine Sacrifice; and when Mary
ascended the throne, they once more took possession, but were again
expelled by Elizabeth, and finally dispersed. The cells, dormitories,
and guest-chambers, so long consecrated to meditation and all holy
exercise, were converted into stables for the housing of cattle. The
church, which contained the tombs of many noble families, escaped
desecration, but not the ravages of time and neglect. From the year
1580 to the close of the century no priest dared appear in public
throughout the province of Munster, and even the most careful
disguises were not sufficient to hide them from the fury of their
enemies; but in 1600 Hugh O’Neil turned his army towards the south of
Ireland, and, proceeding by slow marches, finally encamped “at the
gate of the monastery of Holy Cross.”
“They were not long there,” say the Four Masters, “when the holy Rood
was brought to them, and the Irish gave large presents, alms, and
offerings to its conservators and monks in honor of Almighty God; and
they protected and respected the monastery, with its buildings, the
lands appropriated for its use, and its inhabitants in general.”
The monks remained in possession of the abbey for several years, and
for the first time since its suppression in 1536 an abbot of Holy
Cross was chosen. The succession was kept up till the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and expired in the first dark years of the Penal
Code with Thomas Cogan, the last of the abbots of Holy Cross, who died
on the 10th of August, 1700, and was buried in the choir of the old
church, in the tomb where the bones of his predecessors are awaiting
the day of resurrection.
O gray walls, sacred ruins of Holy Cross! ye have a spirit’s feeling,
and work upon the soul till it forgets all glad and pleasant scenes to
blend with the gloom and desolation that have come to abide with you.
The gentle river still flows by, but where is the great strong
life-current of faith and love that here was fed from God’s eternal
fount? Cold are the burning lips of love that wore the pavement
smooth; cold the great warm hearts that beat with highest impulse of
divine charity. No more from their chalices mysterious monks drink
deep love of God and men; no more at early morn is heard their matin
song; no more to heaven ascends their evening hymn. Gone is the dim
religious light that shone through mystic windows. The tapers are
quenched, the belfries mute. No more floats on the breeze
“The heavenliest of all sounds
That hill or vale prolongs or multiplies.”
The dead only are here, and around them the silence they so loved and
broken walls, which, if they mourn not, make others grieve.
“Once ye were holy: ye are holy still;
Your spirit let me freely drink and live.”
As a monastic ruin the Abbey of Holy Cross is, in the estimation of
the people, second to no other in Ireland; and it owes this celebrity
less to the beauty of its architecture than to the possession of the
holy Rood.
The marble shrine in which this famous relic was preserved may still
be seen in the southern transept of the church. The relic itself, at
the time of the suppression of the abbey, passed into the hands of the
Earl of Ormond, in whose family it remained for nearly a century, when
Earl Walter gave it for safe-keeping to Dr. Fennell, who left it to
James, second Duke of Ormond. It was finally deposited, in the early
part of the present century, in a shrine in the chapel of the Ursuline
Nuns at Blackrock, near Cork, where it is to remain “until such time
as the church of the Holy Cross, with the monastery of Cistercian
monks attached thereto, shall be rebuilt.”
Though Holy Cross is a ruin and in the hands of Protestants, the
Cistercian Order still survives in Ireland in the monastery of Mount
Melleray. It was, a few months ago, our privilege to pass a brief time
in this sanctuary of religion, where the most unworldly life is made
to subserve the highest social ends.
Mount Melleray is but a few hours’ ride from Cork. The excursion is
made by railway to Youghal, an ancient town, once famous in Irish
history, lying near the mouth of the Blackwater. At the entrance to
its splendid and picturesque harbor, now almost entirely abandoned,
there stands a ruined tower, which was formerly part of a convent of
nuns who at night kept torches blazing in this lighthouse to enable
vessels to enter port with safety. Near the town the house which Sir
Walter Raleigh owned, and in which he lived for several years, is
still pointed out to the traveller. In his garden here he planted in
1586 the first potatoes grown in Ireland.
A boat leaves Youghal twice a day and ascends the Blackwater as far as
Cappoquin. The trip is made in about two hours. The scenery is
unsurpassed even in Ireland. There is nothing finer on the Rhine. The
river winds through fertile valleys with rich meadows and fields of
waving corn, until a sudden turn brings us into the presence of barren
mountains, which, in their desolation, seem to mock the smiling
prospect below. From almost every jutting rock ruined castles or
churches look down upon us. In these mountains above Cappoquin, and
overlooking the Blackwater, lies the Trappist monastery of Mount
Melleray.
Forty-five years ago a few poor monks, driven from their peaceful
home, settled here in the midst of a dreary wilderness. They had
obtained from the Protestant landlord of the place six hundred acres
of mountain peat-land on a lease of ninety-nine years. No one but an
Irish landlord would have thought of demanding rental for what had
always been a desert, and, so far as he was concerned, might for ever
remain a desert. The monks, however, paid him his price and set to
work to make the desert bloom. On their land there was not a tree or
blade of grass, and before they could begin to plough or dig they had
to go over the ground and pick up the stones with which it was
covered. But for them a life of solitude was to be a life of labor,
and they were not discouraged. They knew that half the soil of Europe
had been reclaimed and brought under cultivation by monks, whose lives
were none the less consecrated to prayer and study. Half a century has
not yet passed, and the barren waste is covered with rich fields of
corn and green meadows. With their own hands the monks have built a
large monastery and church, whose tall spire is seen from the whole
surrounding country. In their gardens the finest vegetables grow, and
in their dairy the best butter is made. A few years ago they opened a
college, in which they give an excellent classical education to youths
whose parents may not be able to pay the higher pensions of other
institutions. The buildings are large and well provided with whatever
is necessary to the health and comfort of the students; and the food,
though plain, is of the best quality. A part of the monastery is
fitted up for the accommodation of guests; and, as the hospitality of
the monks is well known, they are rarely without visitors, drawn
thither sometimes by curiosity, but oftener by the desire of spending
a few days in solitude in communion with God. In the guests’ book we
found the names of persons from almost every part of Europe and
America. We have visited the monasteries of the Trappists in other
countries, but nowhere else have we received the impressions made upon
us at Mount Melleray. It was Edmund Burke who said that to his mind
the Catholic Church of Ireland bore a closer resemblance than any
other to the church of the apostles; and we could not help reflecting
that these monks were more like the Fathers of the Desert than any men
whom we had ever seen. How terrible is this place! How this life of
honest religion lays bare the shams and pretexts with which weak and
soft worldlings would hide the atheism of their faith! If God is all
in all, and the soul more than the body, a Trappist is greater than a
king. To these men the future world is more real than the present. The
veil of time and space has fallen from their eyes; the immeasurable
heavens break open, and God’s kingdom is revealed. Divine power of the
love of Christ, which makes the desert beautiful, and solitude a
perpetual feast! What heavenly privilege to forget the world and to be
with God only; to turn from men, not in loathing or hate or
bitterness, but with a heart as sweet as a child’s, and to follow
Christ into the mount where the celestial glory encircles him! With
St. Peter we exclaim: It is good to be here! A single day, O Lord!
spent in thy tabernacles is more precious than a thousand years.
In this life in death is found a life the world dreams not of, as
“Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe”;
as in the presence of the dying we see only the blackness and the
gloom, when the soul already hears God’s angels sing, and beholds the
light that never fades.
The highest joy is of the soul, and the more it lifts itself from
flesh and earth the greater is its delight. In these solemn walls,
with their silent monks clad in white, it seemed to us that we were
upon the threshold of another world, far away from the ebb and flow of
men’s affairs. We felt no more the feverish throb of the great world’s
pulse, nor heard the noisy hum of commerce or the nations’ angry
battle-cry. The blatant shout of Progress no longer deafened us. We
were in the mood to ask ourselves: Is it not, after all has been said,
progress towards death that men speak of? Do not all the lines along
which they advance converge until they meet in the grave? But we crave
life, not death. Is there no hope? Must we join the rabble, the common
herd, that stands in wonderment in the world’s great toy-shop, eagerly
peering at stones and metals and skins of beasts, gazing at blank
walls and rattling machinery, and shouting: Ha! this is progress? Is
there no room for the soul, no hope of life? Is mechanism all in all,
and is all progress mechanical? Here, at least, were men who believed
in the soul; who, despising all the counsels of fear and cowardice,
had turned from the world and set their faces towards the life that is
and is to be. They never speak except in prayer and psalmody. They
rise in the night and spend hours in the thought of God and the soul.
Silently they go forth to their work, and in silence return to pray.
Their bed is a board, their food bread and coarse vegetables. And so
from day to day and from year to year in their hearts they make the
ascent to God.
It is easy for us to deride the life which we have not the courage or
the strength to lead. These, at least, are men with brave hearts and
great thoughts. They are not the creatures of circumstance, the slaves
of routine, the self satisfied and unconscious victims of the
universal tyrant. They are not held by bonds of flesh and blood. No
mean ambition moves them. A king’s crown is but a bauble, like the toy
of a child; and whatever ceases to be has no kindred with the soul
that was not born to die. They wage battle for the possession of the
infinite, and in the divine struggle take on the heroic mood that
makes all things possible. And we who stood for a moment on this
heavenly battle-ground, a looker-on, unfit to take part in such
celestial warfare, would fain have lingered on the hallowed spot,
knowing full well that the world to which we turned again has no
happiness even to promise like that which is found in this holy
mountain where God is seen and loved.
A STORY OF THE FAR WEST.
Gold City they had called it in its palmy days, though even then it
was a city in name only. It was known as Gomorrah now; and its few
inhabitants gloried in the title, for Edverson had struck a vein of
gold there in the first flush of the mining fever, and a crowd of
fortune-hunters flocked to the place, only to discover, when it was
too late, that the first “lucky find” was the last. Then the tide of
population ebbed away, leaving behind it the refuse――those who were
too poor, too discouraged, too sunk in idleness or sin, to try for
anything better. The houses were no more than shanties, which the
women made no attempt to keep tidy; children lived and died there who
never heard God’s holy name except in curses; to most of them even the
day of the week was unknown.
Three men ruled the place, one by fear, one by kindness, one because
he was tavern-keeper. They were familiarly known as the Lawyer, the
Doctor, and the Parson. One day, worthy to be marked with red ink
joyfully in the sad annals of Gomorrah, the Lawyer――most evil soul
there, and most dreaded――announced his intention of going to England,
and, when the next day dawned, he had departed with no more warning
and with no word of farewell. Men, women, and children drew a long
breath of relief, yet spoke of him for weeks afterwards in whispers
and guarded words, as if they feared at any moment to see his hated
presence among them once again, and feel his heel of iron on their
necks.
One afternoon, early in November, his two associates sat together in
the door-way of the tavern, the only decent dwelling within sight. He
who was known as the Parson was a short, stout man, who boasted a
collegiate and theological education of some sort, no one knew what,
and a pastoral charge of five years, no one knew where. But it was a
fact undisputed, either by himself or others, that he was now the very
minister of Satan. Both he and the Lawyer knew how to sin as deeply as
any one, but kept a kind of control over themselves. The man who was
their boon companion, and yet hated them both with an impotent hatred,
had no such power.
He was far superior to them in most respects. Gentle born, with
wealthy surroundings, he had received a superior education, and gave
promise of superior excellence in his profession, but had never been
taught to curb a single passion. From one level to another he fell,
till in Gomorrah he hid himself from all who had known him or his in
his brighter days. Yet no man there was so liked and did so much to
help as he. The love of his profession clung to him through
everything, and it was impossible for him to see disease and accident
without trying to alleviate the trouble. Boys and girls playing and
quarrelling in the streets would stop the maddest sport, the bitterest
fight, to help the Doctor home as he came reeling from the tavern, or
to cover his face from the hot sun as he lay like a log by the
roadside; would do it with a grateful remembrance of the time when “he
nursed me in the fever” or “he splintered my broken leg”; and often he
was saved from a midnight carousal by a call to some forlorn bedside,
where he waited on filthy wretches with as quick skill and attention
as once he had served the finest ladies in his great city home. No one
knew how he hated the place in which he lived, and above all the man
with whom he sat that autumn afternoon; but he had lost all hope of
better things.
Through their gloomy silence and the clouds of tobacco-smoke the
Parson and the Doctor beheld a sight which had not been seen in
Gomorrah for many a day――the white cover of an emigrant wagon.
“Tom Townsend, from High Bend,” exclaimed Syles, “the Lawyer’s old
chum there. Who’s he got with him?”
The Doctor made no reply, but stepped forward to meet the strangers.
Behind the driver sat a young man with a good, kindly face, but
lacking in practicality and force. On his arm he supported a woman,
whose broad forehead, square chin, and firm mouth bespoke strong
character, if one was able to think of that in noticing the serene
holiness of the eyes and expression. Her face was pale as death.
“You’re wanted here, Doctor,” called the driver. “Here’s a case of
chills and fever that’s not a common one, and I’ve seen ’em by
hundreds.”
“Are you the Doctor?” the young man asked with a look of relief, as if
he had heard of him before; and together they carried into the tavern
and laid upon the settle the powerless form of the woman.
“Not this place!” the man exclaimed, lifting his head when he had laid
his precious burden down. “Where is Mr. Dalzell’s house?”
“Mr. Dalzell?” the Doctor repeated. “I do not know what you mean.”
“Why, surely――yes, we must be right. He came from here, he said.”
“Who? What?” his hearers asked, with a grim suspicion in their hearts.
“Where are you from, sir?”
“I am Reuben Armstrong, from Suffolk, England. A Mr. Dalzell sold me
his house and claim in Gold City. Where are they?”
The Doctor’s eyes fell, and Syles slunk into the shadow of the door.
It was long before they could make him understand the truth; and when
at last he comprehended it, Syles stole out of his presence with a
sense of shame such as he had never felt before, leaving the Doctor to
give the almost heart-broken fellow the only reason for courage that
he knew how to give him――to bear up bravely for his wife’s sake.
It was but too easy to grasp the sad story. Armstrong had been a
well-to-do gardener, with a pleasant little house and a snug sum of
money in the bank; but, as the Doctor inferred even then, he had
married a woman much his superior in character and station, whose
friends looked down upon him, and thought he could never do anything
worthy of her. When the Lawyer told his plausible story and showed his
well-planned map――when he described his possessions, to be sold at a
very low figure, because, as the evil owner dared to affirm, he must
be with his aged parents in Nottinghamshire during their declining
years――Reuben was only too ready to drop into the net.
They told his wife――his “poor Esther”――nothing that night. Indeed, she
was too ill to notice that they moved her from the tavern to the cabin
next door, which was their home. In that tavern Reuben declared she
should not stay one hour.
That night the first snows fell, shutting off Gomorrah for the winter
from any intercourse with the outer world, and for weeks the Doctor
strove against all odds to save Esther Armstrong’s life. But for her
Reuben would soon have sunk to the level of his neighbors――not in sin,
but in inertia. He seemed to have no courage left to begin life over
again; he was sure that Esther must die, and then there would be no
use of his living. He spent his time in watching beside her, doing
everything about the house for her that was possible; refusing all
help save the physician’s, and only accepting that because he could
not avoid it.
When the Doctor came in to see Esther on the morning after her
arrival, Reuben had made the room as comfortable as he could with the
furniture which they had brought from home, and Esther was lying in
her bed, everything white about her, and she herself looking more pure
and white than even the falling snow without.
“Am I very ill?” she asked calmly; and before the grave eyes bent upon
him the Doctor could return no answer but the truth.
“You are a very sick woman, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said, “but I hope we
may see you pull through bravely yet.”
“Will you ask the priest to come to me?” she said.
The Doctor started to his feet and made a rapid stride across the
room. It brought him face to face with a crucifix, a picture, and a
rosary.
“Madam,” he said reverently――she seemed to him like a saint as she lay
there――“do you know what sort of a place you are in? We have no such
beings as priests here.”
“Oh!” she replied serenely, “you must mistake. Mr. Lazell certainly
told us that there was one. We would never have come else.”
The Doctor bit his lip to keep back the oath which rose. “Mr. Lazell,
as you call him, lied, madam.”
She asked no questions, but her searching eyes drew the truth from
him. Sooner or later she must know all. Before that holy calm a
tempting desire came over him to try how deep her religious feeling
really was.
“Madam,” he said, “you call this place Gold City, but we know it as
Gomorrah. There is no priest within miles of us. God isn’t here at
all.”
She pressed her hands hard against her heart. He felt that she shrank
from him inwardly.
“Is there any woman who will come to me?” she asked.
“There is not one who is fit to touch you,” he replied――“not one. We
do not know what goodness is. You have been deceived into coming here.
Now, if you love your husband, live for him; for nothing else can keep
him from being like the rest of us.”
“You are mistaken,” she said gravely. “You do not know my husband.
But, Doctor, if I must die, will you promise me to send in time for a
priest?”
The Doctor bit back an oath. If “Mr. Lazell” had been there at that
moment, not even Esther’s presence could have saved him from the
hatred of nine wretched years kindled that day into relentless fury.
The Doctor had known enough of Catholics at home――God help him! but
his had been Catholic baptism in his babyhood――to fear the effect on
her of what he had to say. Had it been of any use, he would have lied
to her; but the next neighbor entering would have revealed all.
“There is no priest near us,” he replied, “and it is impossible to get
one in the winter.”
She put her hand quickly to her heart again. “God’s will be done,” she
said slowly; “God’s will be done” over and over and over again. They
could not stop her. Reuben begged her to hear him, to rest, to grow
calm, but it was of no avail. All day long, and far into the night,
she tossed in fever, delirious always, but her holy self even in her
delirium. Now she sang snatches of hymns; and now an exquisite strain
of some old chant, which the Doctor had heard in great cathedrals,
rose upon Gomorrah’s tainted air; but oftenest she called for a
priest, or said: “God’s will be done.” Late that night the fever
abated a little, and she opened her eyes calmly; but it was only to
hear the clamor upon the night air of stamping feet, ringing sounds
like tankards dashed on table or floor, the twang and clash of noisy
instruments, scraps of vile song, brawls and oaths and blows.
“What is it?” she cried. “Where are we? Oh! I know”; and then sank
into delirium again.
So for a week it lasted; then the fever died away, leaving her like a
shadow. She made no complaint, never asked again for a priest, never
spoke again of death; yet the Doctor knew, as well as if he had seen
it, that hers was a broken heart. But another life was bound up with
her life, and for its sake, as well as for Reuben’s, she tried and
prayed to live. It was plain that her affection for her husband was
intense; no matter what his weakness and imprudence had made her
suffer, no one ever knew her fail in her honor and her love, and he
seldom saw her otherwise than outwardly cheerful for his dear sake.
What she endured perhaps only the Doctor truly fathomed, and his
sounding-line was far too short. Reuben was too engrossed in her to
care much personally for what passed about them; but the Doctor judged
by what the place had been and was to him, even in his degraded life.
Fallen as he was, he loathed it from the very bottom of his heart;
still, with every gentlemanly instinct that was left in him, he shrank
from the outcasts whom he lived with daily, though knowing himself to
be fallen yet lower than they. By his own suffering, from which he did
not try to escape; by his own horror of the pit whose vileness
sickened him while still he chose to sink even deeper in it, he knew
something of what it must be to Esther’s pure heart to live in
Gomorrah. Something――that was all.
He and Reuben strove to keep sight and sound of evil from her; yet all
their care could not banish at times strange visitors from her
bedside――haggard women, flaunting women, all of them with evil
tongues; no care could keep the children always from door or window,
and often she saw, by frosty dawn or at high noon or in the early
twilight, wild, wolfish eyes staring at her, gaunt fingers pointing,
and heard children’s voices speak of her in terms wherewith oaths and
low epithets were mixed――not through malice, but because they knew no
other way.
No one knew what hours she lay awake by day and night in one agony of
intercession; and she herself, praying often and hoping against hope
for the sacraments to prepare her soul for death, never knew here into
what union with her Lord that passion of prayer for souls was bringing
her, as hour by hour the awful days wore on.
The Doctor saw her face, as it grew more sharp and thin, grow more
holy, till he often felt unworthy to look upon it, and wondered how
Reuben Armstrong had ever won a treasure of which it seemed to him no
mortal man was worthy.
A poor, weak soul was Reuben’s, truly, in man’s sight. But God and the
angels must have loved it with a special love. God knew how earnestly
that sorrowful heart implored that the light of its eyes might be
taken from it, if so Esther might escape from suffering and enter into
peace; and when night shut him in with her alone, the angels heard how
he strove to drown the riot next door by prayers and litanies beside
her, till often he slept exhausted on the hard floor by her bed.
But the children most of all weighed heavily upon Esther’s soul. Even
when she could not see them she heard their voices; even when she
could not hear them, she fancied how their lives were spent, though
even her keen fancy did not reach the whole of the painful truth; and
as the birthday of the Holy Child drew nearer, she felt more keenly
their ignorance of all sacred things, shuddered to think of her own
child being born in such an atmosphere, then came to love those little
ones as if they were her very own, and to plead for them with a
mother’s insatiable pleading.
Eight days before Christmas they laid her baby in her arms and saw her
smile a happy mother’s smile. Eight days they lived in trembling hope.
On Christmas morning the Doctor saw the dreaded, unmistakable sign of
fever. She had wakened very bright, Reuben said, and very early, with
words of Christmas joy, as if she had forgotten where they were, and
fancied it was home. Then some sound from the tavern had brought back
the truth; there had come the quick pain at her heart, and then
delirium. All day long she talked――there was no possibility of
silencing her. She, so tender of others, now with no control over
herself, laid her whole heart bare; and they, who thought they had
known and prized her well, knew as if for the first time what a saint
of God had been among them――prayers for her husband and for her baby,
but not for them alone: prayers for every soul in that place of death;
people named by name of whom they would have supposed she had never
heard, but for whom she pleaded as if for her own flesh and blood;
eager, loving, most frequent supplication for the little children;
prayers for the very man who had lured them from their happy home;
intensest pleading for pity and pardon for his and all these souls.
“Didst thou not die for them, Jesus, my Jesus――for them as well as for
me? Save them with me, save them with me――with me, my Jesus! By thy
Sacred Heart that broke for us, save us, have mercy on us!” And then,
over and over, as if with some peculiar, long-sustained intention or
compact, “Remember, O most pious Virgin Mary! Remember, remember!”
And there was one frequent supplication in which no name was
mentioned, as if it were borne so constantly from her heart to the
Sacred Heart that she had ceased to need to speak the name: “Gain
thyself _that_ soul, my Jesus. By thy Cross, thy Heart, thy Mother,
gain thyself _that_ soul.”
They heard only one petition for herself, but that so anguished, so
desperate, that the strong man broke into sobs to hear it: one hungry
cry for God’s holy sacraments, for God’s anointed priest, to come to
her before her death, yet never uttered without a more intense prayer
still――“My God, my God, _thy_ will be done, _thy_ will be done”; and
even that was entirely merged at last in her prayers for those who had
made her life one long agony at its close.
Suddenly she sat straight up in her bed, her eyes blazing as if with
an unearthly, reflected light, her cheeks brilliant with more than the
fever flush.
“Hark, hark, hark!” she said, with a ring of ecstatic joy through
every word. “Do you not hear the sacring-bell? Kneel, all of you. The
priest comes――comes with my Lord at last.”
Her eyes were fixed upon the door that no hand opened, yet she seemed
to watch some one enter, and to see some one draw nearer, nearer to
her, and she folded her hands reverently, and bent her head as if in
adoration. They understood: she believed a priest was there; and they,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, of what she evidently was sure she
saw and heard――they who watched her fell down upon their knees and hid
their faces as in some divine presence. The next words that broke the
stillness were the words of a dying penitent alone with a priest of
God: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my father.”
Steadily, as if for weeks she had prepared her soul for this in faith
and penance, Esther Armstrong made her dying confession, with a
contrition sore as if she were the lowest sinner in Gomorrah’s depths
of sin, and then craved absolution humbly and in tears. When there was
silence, and they dared to look at her, she was lying back among her
pillows, whispering, “Forgiven, forgiven!”
They moved to give her nourishment, and the movement roused her,
though not to recognition. She started up once more, lifting her hand.
“Hark, hark!” she said again. “Do you not hear him? He is saying Mass,
and they sing sweetly as angels.”
All round the world, that Christmas day, one song of praise was
rising, one pure offering was offered up to Him who was born and given
for us on that day. Grand cathedrals were ablaze with lights and rich
with bloom; far down the choir the altar tapers shone like stars
through clouds of incense waving upward to the fretted roof, and the
full tide of chant swelled high to join the chant of angels; in lowly
chapel as in great cathedral the priest of God and the people of God
adored the Holy Babe upon his Mother’s breast. In Gomorrah, in a
decaying chapel, while oath and brawl sounded without, one soul heard
seraphic music which no other ear could hear; one soul beheld a Priest
whom no other eye could see――joined in his offering of the tremendous
Sacrifice. For an hour, upheld by superhuman strength, she knelt
upright, rapt in an ecstasy of spiritual communion that grew too deep
for prayer. When the clock struck twelve, she said slowly, “_Ite missa
est; Deo gratias_”; then, with a long-drawn, rapturous sigh, lay down
again, but not as if she knew or remembered husband or child or
friend.
The Doctor left her then, but at the close of the day he was summoned
hastily, to see now without mistake that the battle of her life was
almost ended.
“Stay with her, Doctor,” Reuben pleaded. “It’s a sore struggle. Try
something more.”
“I can’t stay, man,” he answered. “There is no more to do. I’d give my
right hand to save her; but I can’t see her suffer and be unable to
help her. She’s the only white soul here, and now she is going.”
He turned to the bedside, and stood silently looking at the face with
the dread shadow on it. Suddenly opening her eyes, her gaze fell first
on him, and, startled out of her usual composure, she gave an
irrepressible shudder. He understood what it meant. She had treated
him always with perfect courtesy and confidence as her physician and
true friend; he knew――for there had not been wanting those to tell him
of it――that she had silenced with dignified rebuke the evil tales that
more than one had tried to tell her of him, not because they disliked
him, but because they loved to talk. But he knew also, what they did
not, that in her pure heart she shrank from him, that his very
presence was loathsome to her; and there had been times when, in her
bodily weakness, she had been unable to control her aversion to his
slightest touch. He had borne it quietly, humbling as it was, but it
was doubly bitter to bear at the very last.
“I will bid you good-night, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said, trying hard to
steady his voice. “You will not want me any more this evening, I
think.”
“Good-by, Doctor,” she said, and he saw that she knew all.
“You will not want me,” he repeated mechanically.
“I want you――_there_,” she answered with a great effort. “Promise me
that you will be there.”
He did not speak.
“Promise,” she repeated, and the tone brought back the memory of her
prayers that morning. “I am dying――dying; and yet I cannot die. Night
and day I prayed it: ‘Gain thyself _that_ soul, my Jesus. By thy
Cross, thy Mother, thy broken Heart, gain thyself that soul.’ I prayed
and prayed it; I am worn out with the praying, and yet I cannot die.
Promise me to be there.”
The sweat stood on his forehead in great drops. “You do not know what
you ask,” he cried. “There are sins enough upon me without adding that
of a broken vow to you, and here. There is no saving a soul like
mine.”
She did not answer him. She lifted up her eyes, away from him, away
from earth, to God.
“Sacred Heart of my Jesus,” she prayed in agony, “win this soul, and
let me die.”
For weeks he had kept himself sober and decent for her sake; now he
had thought to rush out from her presence, to drown his grief in viler
sin than ever; and, lo! she was still holding him, was binding eternal
chains upon him, to draw him away from corruption unto God. As a
physician he knew that it was a case where a mighty will alone was
keeping life in a body nearly dead; it would have been an awful sight
to see, even had he had no interest in it. She was living only to win
him unto immortal life. Angels and devils may well have stood still
before that struggle, where one dauntless soul at the point of death
held Satan’s power at bay.
“I promise,” he said at last, as if the words were wrung from him.
“But pray for me always.”
“The Mother of God prays for you,” she said with strange emphasis.
“Call upon Jesus and Mary night and day. You will not need me.”
And then he saw that she needed him no longer, thought of him no
longer, and he went away.
Reuben Armstrong shut and locked the door behind him. There was no
more that science or skill could do. Now, for one brief hour, Esther
was his alone. The eyes which the Doctor had seen grow dim to him lit
up with untired affection as Reuben drew near the bed; a look of rest
came over her, and she signed to him to lay her baby on her arm.
“My baby, my little Christmas baby,” she murmured tenderly. “Did the
priest baptize her this morning, Reuben? Oh! how could you overlook
it, dear? Then you must do it. Now――now!”
There was an excited ring in her voice, and Reuben hastened to do at
once what he had felt from the first must soon be done; for the baby’s
life evidently hung upon a thread. A few drops of water, a few divine
words, and Esther’s eyes shone exultingly upon her child.
“She will never be anything but God’s child,” she said. “Oh! I am glad
she cannot live. It is the other children, that are not his, that you
must care for, Reuben.”
“No, no!” he cried. “No, Esther, I cannot live without you.”
“Listen, Reuben,” she said. Lying there with her child upon her arm,
she looked like a vision of the Holy Mother herself, and when she
spoke her voice had a tone in it which seemed divinely sweet. “Listen,
Reuben. This place is God’s. He wants it. You must live and not
die――_for him_.”
“O Esther!” he sobbed, “not without you――not without you.”
“Yes, Reuben, without me――all alone. My darling, my darling, save
these little children’s souls for God.”
One greater than she spoke, on that holy night, through Esther’s lips,
and touched and won her husband’s wounded heart.
“I will, Esther,” he sobbed. “I will try hard”; and even then, upon
that solemn parting, as if to stamp the promise with an awful seal,
the tavern clamor broke shrill and vile upon the Christmas air.
How long it was that she spoke no word――wrapped for the last time in
her passion of intercession――Reuben did not notice; he only knelt on
beside her, living upon every breath she drew. But, at the turn of the
night, she looked full at him, clasped both his hands in hers, spoke
so that the voice and the words rang in his heart through all his
after-life――spoke not to him, but for him, and her words were those of
the _Memorare_. Then, like one who has laid down for ever in most safe
and tender keeping a heavy burden borne long and painfully, she
crossed her hands upon her heart, but not now as if in pain; a look of
glad surprise came upon her face.
“Hark!” she said. “He is coming _again_. My Lord and my God!”
When the Doctor entered Reuben’s cabin next morning, he found it in
perfect order――the baby asleep in its cradle beside the hearth; Esther
lying in a sort of funeral state, all done for her that could be done;
and beside her knelt Reuben, whom the Doctor scarcely recognized at
first for the change upon him. In that night he had become an old man,
and his friend believed that but for the baby’s sake he would have
died; yet, two days later, the baby died, and still Reuben lived.
* * * * *
“A poor fool!” people called him. He had lost all interest in temporal
matters, seemed hardly to know the use of money, and barely supported
himself by the odd bits of work which he did for the idle women from
house to house. Soon, however, they discovered that he had one talent,
and that was for managing children. A woman one day suggested to him
that he should “bide at home, and mind some babies for ’em, to keep
’em out of harm’s way; and he might teach the five-year-olds their
letters, too――being fit for naught else,” she added in a tone as clear
as that she used for the other words; but Reuben did not mind.
The proposal met with general favor; the women promised to supply him
with meals from their own poor tables, “better than he’d get hisself,
anyhow,” they said; and that was all he needed to keep him through the
winter.
It seemed at first sight a very forlorn life. Where others less
careless and simple could have lived in comfort, he lived in cold and
hunger; one by one everything which he had brought from his distant
home disappeared――given away to people in distress, or yielded without
question to exorbitant and unfounded demands. Yet that bare,
poverty-stricken room grew to be the one fair place in Gomorrah.
There, for long hours of the winter days, might be seen a cluster of
children gathered about a man who seemed in some respects as much a
child as any of them, and who taught them to be tidy and affectionate
and good. A few learned their letters, but many learned their prayers,
and the babies often said for their first word the name of Jesus, and
all came to gaze lovingly upon the crucifix, and touch with pitying
reverence the wounded hands and feet. Often the parents heard from
childish lips the story of the Infant Saviour. No home now with a
child in it where Sunday was not known. Men and women, large boys and
girls, swore and fought in the streets still, but it soon became a
rare sight to see a little child so forget itself; it would make
Master Reuben sorry, and he said that it made the Heart of Jesus
bleed. No one stopped him at such work; he was too poor a fool for
them to mind him.
But he had another work with which they meddled much. The promise
which the Doctor had made by Esther’s death-bed was not forgotten by
him who made it, but it was broken again and again. His own lower
nature which had ruled him all his life would have been enough, and
more than enough, for such a man to struggle against; but, besides
that, the fiends in human shape who peopled Gomorrah seemed leagued
with invisible evil ones to work his utter ruin. They scoffed at his
feeble efforts to do right; they lured him or they maddened him――it
was all one to them――into the old haunts of temptation; and the very
efforts which he made to escape, the very memory of Esther’s words and
holy looks, the very thought of purity and self-control, seemed to
make the evil deadlier and grosser, when, after sore struggle, he gave
way.
And he did struggle, he did pray, poor soul! There were hours when he
lay upon the earth in some cold hut or in the open air, fighting, it
seemed to him, with no less than Satan’s self. But he had been a slave
to self too long and too deliberately to be able to gain freedom
easily. Scenes of the past rose before him; he knew himself in his
true degradation. Sins about which a kind of lurid fascination can be
thrown in books or real life for a time he saw more and more plainly
in their actual shape and color, and it drove him mad with disgust and
shame. Few were daring enough that winter to trust their sick folk to
his skill. For days together he would join in riot and carousal, till
_delirium tremens_ followed, and then strong men fled in fear before
him.
But when that time came, and houses were locked tight and no one else
dared face him as he went raging about the town, falling on the uneven
streets, bruising and wounding himself, there was one who did go out
to meet him. A tottering, feeble creature went meekly forth, stood in
his path, took blows and curses without resistance, and presently――no
one knew by what magic spell――led him to his own poor cabin and locked
himself in with him alone.
That was the reason why Master Reuben never did what his tender and
lonely heart yearned to do――to make a home for the orphan children of
Gomorrah. No one but himself must be allowed to see what passed in his
cabin while the Doctor was there; no one else must be exposed to the
dangers he had to meet. But the room where they had watched the
mysterious joy of Esther’s Christmas feast saw far other sights and
echoed to far other sounds than angel music as the winter wore away.
There were mornings when no children came to Reuben’s house, when some
woman more pitiful, some man more brave than the others, crept near
and laid food on the threshold, then fled away to tell in trembling of
the cries they had heard as of some wild beast mad with fury, or some
lost soul shrieking in the torment of despair. Sometimes, too, they
told of blows or noises like a heavy fall; and often, when Reuben came
among them again, he bore marks that proved the stories true, but they
never learned the cause from him.
And he――as the winter passed, the only truly happy faces that Gomorrah
saw were Reuben Armstrong’s and little children’s. By and by they
heard him sing sweet carols and hymns and chants; he taught the
children to sing with him, and used to lead them down the streets, and
into the snowy fields, and to visit Esther’s grave, to the sound of
holy song. People stopped in many an evil deed or word to listen; then
left the word unsaid, the deed undone. It came to be a fashion in
Gomorrah to stroll to Reuben’s cabin of a Sunday to see how joyfully
the children kept the day. Nay, it was even known that once a whole
party at the tavern had left their drinking-cups, to stand for an hour
at the next door, listening to the music. Truly, good and evil were in
strange contrast that winter in the almost forgotten place which had
no intercourse with the outer world. There was a world, unseen, in
which it was remembered night and day.
At length they asked Reuben why he looked so happy, and he answered:
“It is almost spring. Then the priest will come.” And when they
laughed and asked him how he knew, he answered simply: “God will send
him.”
When the snow began to melt and the streams ran gayly down the
hillside, and grass was green, one week, remembered for years after in
that region, the whole place rang with the story of a carousal which
even Gomorrah wondered at; the whole place waited to see whether the
Doctor or Reuben would ever come forth alive from their self-imposed
prison. When Reuben opened his door again, and gathered his children
round him, there was a look of peculiar expectation on his face. He
greeted each child with special gladness, and told one of the mothers
that he was quite sure the priest was coming very soon, “for we need
him a good deal now,” he said.
That afternoon there came into Gomorrah a man wearing the religious
habit, and asked at the tavern if a Mrs. Armstrong was living in that
place.
Syles stared at him blankly. “What do you know of her?” he said.
“I met some one,” the priest answered, “while on my way to the States,
who begged me, if I ever came this way, to find such a woman and give
her a message from him. Is she here?”
“Dead,” said Syles briefly.
“She had a husband. Where is he?”
“Next door with a madman. We leave him alone such times.”
“No, no, Parson,” said a lounger near by. “Where’ve ye been that ye
haven’t heard? Doctor’s out of his fit to-day, and Reuben’s got his
school again. I’ll take ye there, stranger. It’s a sight we’re proud
of in Gomorrah.”
Out of the tavern into the filthy street, followed by a dozen or more
wretches, the priest went sadly with a load upon his heart. The
horrors he had seen already were enough to sicken him; he wondered
what new evils he would meet with now of which Gomorrah was proud.
“They’re used to spectators,” said his guide. “We watch ’em as we
like. Door or window――’tan’t no difference to them; we an’t particular
here.”
It was a bare, small room, with a table and some benches, an empty
fireplace, beside it a powerfully-built man trembling and crying by
himself, like one unnerved by some long illness; on one wall was a
print of the Blessed Babe and the Holy Mother, and below this was a
crucifix. Facing these was a band of twenty little children in soiled
and ragged garments, but with clean hands and faces, too absorbed by
what was being said to them to heed what passed without. All eyes were
fixed on a small man with a great fresh cut across his forehead and a
bruised and very simple face.
“Yes, children,” he was saying, “it was the blessed child Jesus who
was born on Christmas night. He loves us all very much indeed, and of
course we all want to love him. Some time he is going to send his
priest here to baptize you; then what will you all be?”
“God’s little children.” The answer rose sweetly and with a kind of
merriment from every lip, and Reuben’s face shone.
“Surely, surely,” he said. “Now we will sing, because we love him and
want to thank him. Yes, I know the song you want――‘The Three Poor
Shepherds.’”
“We were but three poor shepherds,
All keeping our flocks by night,
When Monseigneur the blessed angel
Came suddenly into sight――
“Came suddenly through the darkness,
While a glory round him fell;
I wot not if it were Michael
Or the Angel Gabriel.
“But his voice was like a trumpet,
So full, and glad, and true;
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘my children:
There is good news for you――’
“‘Good news for men and maidens,
A great, glad gift for them;
For the faire Sire Christ, the blessed,
Is born in Bethlehem.’
“Then a _Gloria in Excelsis_
They sang with glad accord;
Peace and good-will to all mankind
From the Sire Christ the Lord.
“And unto a lowly stable
Silently went we three,
And there the kine, each in its stall,
Was on a bended knee.
“And there was Messire St. Joseph;
And Mary the mother lay,
With the Holy Child in swaddling bands,
All on a cushion of hay.
“Each dumb beast looked in our faces,
But never unbent the knee;
Our sweet Ladye she raised her eyes
And smiled full tenderly.
“‘Ah! faire Sire Christ,’ all humbly
We cried with urgent plea,
‘Anneal us now of thy great mercie,
For that we are so glad of thee.’
“‘For that we are glad and joyful
That good days are begun,
That the great God for a blessing
Hath sent us his faire Childe Son.’
“Then Our Ladye the Holy Mary
Took some wood in her hand,
And crossed the pieces, and gave them,
That we all might understand.
“And we kissed the token humbly,
And bowed before the Childe;
For we knew, like Monseigneurs the angels,
That God had been reconciled.
“So joyfully and with gladness
All softly we went our way,
And with many an old _Te Deum_
We tell the tale to-day.”
Then once more, like a chorus which even the children just beginning
to talk seemed to know in part:
“For that we are glad and joyful
That good days are begun,
That the great God for a blessing
Hath sent us his faire Childe Son.”
The door opened slowly and a voice which all ears could hear said
reverently, “_Pax vobiscum_.” The good days were begun.
Strange how calmly they all received him! Reuben never asked him how
he came there; he had looked for him and prayed for him a long while,
and he was there at last. God, of course, had sent him. One by one he
brought the children to speak with him, and to have him pronounce on
their fitness to be made God’s children; and the tears stood in the
priest’s eyes as he listened to their simple, fearless answers, that
witnessed to what Reuben’s work of faith had been. When they were gone
away to their homes, which were far less homes to them than Reuben’s
cabin was, Reuben came to the priest as simply as any one of them had
come, and asked to be allowed to make confession.
“You’ll stay here and be good, Doctor,” he said soothingly. “I shall
only be in the other room, and I’ve locked the door hard.”
The Doctor made a sort of moaning assent.
“He’s just had a very sad time,” explained Reuben, “and he needs you
very much, father. By and by please let him speak to you.”
How wonderful to listen, in that place of revenge and murder, to
Reuben’s quiet, brief confession――no complaints, no bitterness, no
anger, except that for one day he had felt hatred toward some one,
against whom, however, he brought no accusation, and for this sin he
felt especial contrition.
“I met lately,” the priest said slowly, when the confession was
finished, and marking with care the effect his words would have, “a
man known sometimes as Lazell.”
Reuben gave a start as of joyful surprise, and would have spoken, but
the priest continued:
“I saw him die a felon’s death upon the gallows.”
“No, no!” cried Reuben in distress――one might have supposed he had
been told of a brother’s shameful death. “Oh! no, father.”
“It was a just punishment,” the priest replied.
“No, no!” cried Reuben. “You do not know this place. They do not have
helps here like other people, or like me. Oh! but God saved his poor
soul at the last?”
“He spoke to me,” said the priest, “of a woman named Esther Armstrong,
to whom he had done a great injury. Was not that true?”
“He did not understand,” said Reuben with sorrowful compassion――“I am
sure he did not understand what harm he did, because, you know, he
_couldn’t_ have hurt _her_. And he did not see good women here; they
have such hard times here, poor things.”
“He said he could not forget her――that something always reminded him
of her. He begged me to find her out and ask her to forgive him.”
“She died,” said Reuben softly. “She forgave him. She prayed for him a
great deal, I think.”
“God answered her, then,” the priest said. “I trust that he repented
truly.”
A great light of joy woke upon Reuben’s face. “Then he will save the
rest,” he exclaimed triumphantly.
“But you,” the priest asked――“do you forgive him?”
“I?” repeated Reuben with a puzzled look. “O father! it was very wrong
of me; I was angry with him at first. But it was my fault, really,
though Esther never blamed me; I was a poor fool, father, or I never
should have brought her here.”
And so Reuben Armstrong took to himself his lifelong title humbly――so
poor a fool, indeed, that he had forgotten that he had anything to
forgive his fellow-men.
The next day Reuben saw his whole flock of little ones gathered into
the Good Shepherd’s fold; and then the Holy Sacrifice was offered up,
and Reuben’s soul was strengthened by the Divine Food.
The Doctor had sullenly refused to be present. Reuben found him, on
his return, lying face downwards on the cabin floor, the picture of
despair.
“There is no hope,” he said when Reuben knelt by him, and begged him
to have recourse to confession. “I want drink――nothing but drink. I
must have it. I cannot save myself.”
“That’s true enough,” said Reuben. “You can’t, and I can’t, but God
can. You keep saying that I don’t know everything about you, and that
nobody does, and that God will never forgive you. But he has sent his
priest at last, and you need not be afraid to say anything to him. You
must not hide anything, and he has the power to hear it and tell you
what God says.”
Like one driven to a last resort, the Doctor turned to the waiting
priest, and Reuben in the next room gave thanks and prayed, while, in
the place where a saint had made her last confession, this man, who
was indeed of “the scum of sinners,” made his first.
Truly, the Sacrament of Penance is a divine and awful thing. God grant
that they who vilify and reject and misrepresent it know not what they
do! The burden of souls which a missionary priest in the far West has
to bear in the confessional is a tremendous one; this priest had been
in prison-hulks of Australia, and through all the mining regions of
California and Arizona, yet had never met a case so desperate as that
before him now, where hope seemed so hopeless, the power for better
things so nearly overcome. But the poor penitent, as one by one
without reserve he revealed the sins so long kept secret, as well as
those that were known of men and noised abroad, felt keen relief
through all the degradation, tasted somewhat of the sweetness hid in
this sacrament of blessed bitterness, won from it that strength which
is a better thing to have than joy or consolation, met there and knew
there Him “at whose feet Mary Magdalene came to kneel in the house of
Simon the leper.”
“I am going away, Reuben,” the Doctor said that night, abruptly and
sadly. “Yes,” seeing the other’s look of surprise, “there is hope for
me, perhaps, but not here.”
“Away?” Reuben repeated. “Away from me? I thought I’d have you always,
Doctor.”
“To be the hurt and the trouble I have been to you?” said the Doctor,
deeply touched. “No, no, Reuben, I cannot keep my promise here. I must
leave the past entirely, and the old associates, and go where I can
repent――if I ever can. There is no such thing as an easy repentance
for me.” And Reuben felt in his tender heart, once more to be
bereaved, that the words were true.
When the priest left Gomorrah the next day, promising that it should
not be forgotten, one went with him for whom no other hope remained
but the total surrender of will and liberty, the total crucifixion of
the flesh. Reuben heard from him once, in the course of his journey,
then all tidings ceased; but he was too simple and too busy to wonder
at it, too full of faith to doubt the final triumph. His character was
not like Esther’s; the burden of souls could never be to him what it
had been to her; God led him by a different path from that she trod in
pain.
But in a lonely monastery, high up among frowning rocks and perpetual
snows, a man who had come to it from far across the seas lived, for a
few sad years, a life of deepest penance. Never by day or night did
the battle with evil cease, yet over him there seemed to be by day and
night a special heavenly care. That lonely cell was haunted constantly
by visions of the past, by temptations that were maddening, by
thoughts and words of evil import, which an increasing approach to
holiness made flesh and heart shrink to recall. No sign of the cross,
no prayer, no penance, could banish them. Pursued, haunted, tempted to
the very end, yet to the very end he called on Jesus, Mary, and to the
very end the answer came.
None but those whose lives were one of close union with the Sacred
Heart of Jesus dared minister at that death-bed, learning there, in
fear and trembling, new lessons of the hideousness of sin, and of the
power which an evil life can give to Satan in the hour of death. But
again and again they heard the poor lips whisper, “I deserve it, I
deserve it; I thank God”; they saw the weak hands cling to the
crucifix, the glaring eyes gaze in their anguish upon the Word made
flesh; and he who endured to hear the last confession brought to him
afterward, with awed and pitying reverence, the Body of the Lord. It
was no saint, no life-long, scarred, victorious warrior of the Cross,
whom they laid to rest at last, his hard fight done; yet over that
body――which, even in their snow-clad region, they had to hurry to its
burial――they dared to give God thanks in humble faith for another
sinner ransomed.
Humbly and faithfully, in far-away Gomorrah, Reuben Armstrong lived to
a good old age his poor fool’s life; and men and women came to look
with gentle reverence upon the feeble form which went in and out among
them on errands of daily mercy, never tiring. By and by the neighbors
learned to know the place by a better name than the evil one which it
grew to hate rather than glory in. “It cannot be so very bad,” they
said, “when there are such good children in it.” And as from time to
time a priest came there, he always found one more soul desirous for
confession, or one more child or grown person ready for holy baptism,
and Reuben never again knelt alone to receive holy Communion.
When the Doctor went away, Reuben opened his heart and home to the
vagrant orphans, and there, some years after, he welcomed gladly the
miserable Parson, more pitiably needy than any of them. “Master
Reuben’s baby” they called him, and Reuben often told exultingly how
good and obedient he was. No one envied him his charge――unless it was
the angels, who share in such blessed work.
A railroad runs through the town now, and it is becoming a place of
some importance――poor enough and bad enough, alas! but stamped
outwardly and openly with the sign of the Cross. For over Esther’s
grave loving hands have reared a little chapel――a constant token that
the offering of her broken heart has been accepted, that her dying
prayer has been _remembered_.
And there, troubled by no doubts and haunted by no fears, weak in body
and weaker still in intellect, but very strong in his immortal soul,
Reuben waits patiently and happily till his work is done.
THREE LECTURES ON EVOLUTION.
We live in a time when scientific men seem to acquire celebrity almost
in proportion as they succeed in perverting the conclusions of natural
science so as to make them contradict revealed truth. At this we are
not surprised; for the management of the interests of science has
lately fallen, to a great extent, into the hands of an anti-Christian
sect, which is either unable to understand or unwilling to recognize
the testimony that nature bears to the existence, power, and wisdom of
its Creator, and to the veracity of his word. To this sect Professor
Huxley belongs. They call him “a great scientist” and “a great
philosopher”; and people invite him to lecture; and a certain press
hastens to publish his thoughts, that the world may learn how
religious dogmas can be swept away by “scientific” discoveries, and
especially by “scientific” reasonings. Unfortunately for Prof. Huxley,
his lectures on the _Evidences of Evolution_, which are the last
effort of his mind, are as deficient in logic as most of his other
productions. In other words, the conclusions of the lecturer are not
legitimate, and the premises themselves are not always exempt from
objectionable features. We hardly need tell our readers that neither
any Christian dogma has been swept away by these lectures nor any
evolution established, except in so far as the lectures themselves may
be considered as an evolution of sophistry.
In the first of his three lectures Prof. Huxley begins with a false
statement of facts:
“It has taken long indeed, and accumulations of often
fruitless labor, to enable men to look steadily at the
glaring phantasmagoria of nature, to notice her fluctuations
and what is regular among her apparent irregularities; and
it is only comparatively lately, within the last few
centuries, that there has emerged the conception of a
pervading order and definite force of things, which we term
the course of nature. But out of this contemplation of
nature, and out of man’s thought concerning her, there has
in these later times arisen that conception of the constancy
of nature to which I have referred, and that at length has
become the guiding conception of modern thought. It has
ceased to be almost conceivable to any person who has paid
attention to modern thought that chance should have any
place in the universe, or that events should follow anything
but the natural order of cause and effect.”
The truth is that “modern thought” has had no part whatever in the
discovery of the constancy of nature. This discovery is as old as
mankind. All ancient philosophers, even before Aristotle, knew the
constancy of the natural laws, and this knowledge has never died away,
that modern thinkers should claim the honor of reviving it. The same
is to be said of “the conception of a pervading order and definite
force of things,” as we find that old Greek and Latin books are full
of this conception, which is likewise common to all our mediæval
writers, and, indeed, to all reasonable men. That “chance” could have
no place in the universe was so well known to the ancients that Cicero
emphatically declared any man to be silly who would suspect the
possibility of the contrary.[152] Hence no person ever needed “to pay
attention to modern thought” to conceive that chance could have no
place in the government of the world. Finally, that events cannot but
follow “the natural order of cause and effect” is the oldest of
scientific truths, and the first principle of scientific reasoning. A
lecturer who pretends that we owe these truths to “modern thought”
shows no respect for his audience. On the other hand, if “modern
thought” is so poor and barren that it envies the scientific claims of
past generations, and stakes its reputation on fiction and plagiarism,
what can we say of the wisdom of the modern thinker who affords a
ground for arguing that “modern thought” stands convicted of
dishonesty as much as of incapacity?
The professor a little later says:
“Though we are quite clear about the constancy of nature at
the present time and in the present order of things, it by
no means follows necessarily that we are justified in
expanding this generalization into the past, and in denying
absolutely that there may have been a time when evidence did
not follow a first order, when the relations of cause and
effect were not fixed and definite, and when external
agencies did not intervene in the general course of nature.
Cautious men will admit that such a change in the order of
nature may have been possible, just as every candid thinker
will admit that there may be a world in which two and two do
not make four, and in which two straight lines do not
enclose a space.”
This sentence shows that we are dealing rather with an empiricist than
with a natural philosopher. Why should not the constancy of nature at
the present time justify our conviction that nature has been no less
constant in the past? Surely, if we proceed only empirically, the
facts of the present will teach us nothing certain as to the facts of
a remote and unknown past. But it is remarkable that this purely
empirical method would leave us equally uncertain as to the facts of
the future, though modern scientists assure us that “the future must
be similar to the past.” The truth is that no valid induction can be
made from mere facts without the aid of a rational principle as the
ground of our generalization. If such a principle is certain, our
inference is certain; and if the principle is only plausible, our
inference will be plausible in the same degree. Now, have we not a
certain principle from which the constancy of nature can be
demonstrated with no reference to particular time? We have such a
principle. We infer the constancy of nature from the constancy of the
agencies by which the physical order is ruled. All elementary
substances are permanent; their matter and their active power are
never impaired; the law of their activity is as fixed and definite as
their permanent constitution; and therefore they do not, and they
cannot, act at present in a different manner from that in which they
have acted from the beginning, or from that in which they will act as
long as they last. This is the principle by which we are fully
justified in extending the constancy of nature to all antiquity and to
all futurity, and in averring that such a constancy is not an
accidental result of circumstances, but a necessary consequence of the
principle of causality.
But Mr. Huxley seems not to understand this principle. He imagines a
time when the relations of cause and effect may not have been fixed
and definite, and even conceives the possibility of a world in which
two and two do not make four. This is modern thought indeed; for we do
not believe that any indication can be found of a similar thought
having ever been entertained in past ages. But we would ask: If in a
certain world two and two did not make four, how could Mr. Huxley know
that they make four in this world? And if the relations of cause and
effect had at any given time remained vague and indefinite, how could
he account for the fact that they are now definite and fixed? For the
relation of cause and effect consists in this: that the impression
produced by the cause is the exact equivalent of the exertion made in
its production; and he who imagines a time when such a relation was
not fixed and definite must assume that an effect can be greater than
the exertion in which it originates, or that the exertion can be
greater than the impression it produces. But if so, on what ground can
the professor affirm that the relation of cause and effect has now
become fixed and definite? We see the effect, but we cannot see the
exertion; we see the fall of a body, but we cannot see the action of
gravity. How, then, can Mr. Huxley ascertain that the action of
gravity is neither greater nor less than the momentum impressed on the
body? Thus the relation of cause and effect, in his theory, cannot be
known; and mechanical science becomes impossible. In the same manner,
if, in another world, two and two do not make four, mathematics are an
imposition.
The lecturer says also that there may have been a time “when external
agencies did not intervene in the general course of nature”; but we
believe that this must be a _lapsus linguæ_; for, as he does not admit
that external agencies do now intervene in the general course of
nature, to say that the case may have been exactly the same in all
remote times is not to adduce a reason of the supposed disturbance of
the relations of cause and effect, of which he is speaking, nor would
it serve to limit, as he wishes, our “generalization.” The context,
therefore, shows that what the lecturer intended to say was that there
may have been a time when external agencies _did_ intervene in the
general course of nature. In fact, however, he said the contrary.
Perhaps the professor, considering that he was speaking to an American
audience with whose religious opinions he was little acquainted,
thought it wise to give such a turn to his phrases as to avoid all
profession of belief or disbelief in the existence of a Creator. But,
however this may be, the idea that God’s intervention in the course of
nature would disturb the relation of cause and effect is quite
preposterous; for if God intervenes, his action carries with itself
its proportionate effect, while the actions of other causes maintain
their natural relations to their ordinary effects. When a man raises a
stone from the ground, does he disturb the relation of cause and
effect? or does he abolish gravitation? Certainly not. Gravity
continues to urge down the body, while it is raised; but the effect
corresponds to the combined actions of the two distinct causes. Now,
the same must be said of God’s intervention with natural causes. The
effect will always correspond to the combined causalities; and
therefore the relation of the effect to its adequate cause remains
undisturbed.
To assume, as the lecturer does, that at the present time God has
ceased to intervene in the course of nature, is to assume something
for which there is not the least warrant. God’s intervention in the
course of nature is continuous; for without it nature can neither act
nor exist for a single moment, as every one knows who is not
absolutely ignorant of philosophy. But this is not all. God, seeing
that men try to blind themselves to the fact of his intervention in
the ordinary course of nature, gives us in his mercy not unfrequent
proofs of his intervention by works so far above nature that no effort
of scientific infidels can evade their testimony. These works are
_miracles_. “Modern thought” denies miracles, as irreconcilable with
the “constancy of nature”; but the history of the church is full of
well-authenticated miracles, and there are to-day living in different
countries thousands of unexceptionable witnesses who can testify that
miracles are, even now, an almost daily occurrence among the Christian
people. We, too, admit “the constancy of nature,” but we are not so
dull as to interpret this constancy as modern thought strives to
interpret it. It is the _laws_ of nature that are constant, not the
_course_ of nature; the former alone are connected with the essence of
things and are immutable; the latter depends on accidental conditions,
and can be interfered with not only by God, but even by man, as daily
experience shows. Hence the intervention of external agencies does not
impair the constancy of nature, and the argument of modern thinkers
against the possibility of miracles falls to the ground.
Mr. Huxley, after stating that the question with which he has to deal
is essentially historical, affirms that “there are only three
views――three hypotheses――respecting the past history of nature.” The
first hypothesis is that
“The order of nature which now obtains has always obtained;
in other words, that the present course of nature, the
present order of things, has existed from all eternity. The
second hypothesis is that the present state of things, the
present order of nature, has had only a limited duration,
and that at some period in the past the state of things
which we now know――substantially, though not, of course, in
all its details, the state of things which we now
know――arose and came into existence without any precedent
similar condition from which it could have proceeded. The
third hypothesis also assumes that the present order of
nature has had but a limited duration, but it supposes that
the present order of things proceeded by a natural process
from an antecedent order, and that from another antecedent
order, and so on; and that on this hypothesis the attempt to
fix any limit at which we could assign the commencement of
this series of changes is given up.”
Of these three hypotheses, the first is discarded by the lecturer as
untenable, because “circumstantial evidence absolutely negatives the
conception of the eternity of the present condition of things.” In
this we agree with him, not only on account of geological evidence,
but also, and principally, because the world is mutable, and therefore
contingent; which proves that it must have had a beginning. It is
remarkable that he denies the eternity of the present condition of
things, but does not deny the eternity of matter. Modern thought could
not admit of such a denial; because, if matter is not eternal, the
admission of a Creator becomes unavoidable.
The second hypothesis the professor calls the “Miltonic” hypothesis,
and he proceeds to explain why he calls it so:
“I doubt not that it may have excited some surprise in your
minds that I should have spoken of this as Milton’s
hypothesis rather than I should choose the terms which are
much more familiar to you, such as ‘the doctrine of
creation,’ or ‘the Biblical doctrine’ or ‘the doctrine of
Moses,’ all of which terms, as applied to the hypothesis to
which I have just referred, are certainly much more familiar
to you than the title of the Miltonic hypothesis. But I have
had what I cannot but think are very weighty reasons for
taking the course which I have pursued. For example, I have
discarded the title of the hypothesis of creation, because
my present business is not with the question as to how
nature has originated, as to the causes which have led to
her origination, but as to the manner and order of her
origination. Our present inquiry is not why the objects
which constitute nature came into existence, but when they
came into existence, and in what order. This is a strictly
historical question, as that about the date at which the
Angles and Jutes invaded England. But the other question
about creation is a philosophical question, and one which
cannot be solved or approached or touched by the historical
method.”
Then he gives his reasons why he avoids the title of Biblical
hypothesis:
“In the first place, it is not my business to say what the
Hebrew text contains, and what it does not; and, in the
second place, were I to say that this was the Biblical
hypothesis, I should be met by the authority of many eminent
scholars, to say nothing of men of science, who, in recent
times, have absolutely denied that this doctrine is to be
found in Genesis at all. If we are to listen to them, we
must believe that what seem so clearly defined as days of
creation――as if very great pains had been taken that there
should be no mistake――that these are not days at all, but
periods that we may make just as long as convenience
requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent
with that phraseology to believe that plants and animals may
have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions
of years, out of similar rudiments. A person who is not a
Hebrew scholar can only stand by and admire the marvelous
flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse
interpretations.” (At these last words the audience is said
to have laughed and applauded.) “In the third place, I have
carefully abstained from speaking of this as a Mosaic
doctrine, because we are now assured upon the authority of
the highest critics, and even of dignitaries of the church,
that there is no evidence whatever that Moses ever wrote
this chapter or knew anything about it. I don’t say――I give
no opinion――it would be an impertinence upon my part to
volunteer an opinion on such a subject; but that being the
state of opinion among the scholars and the clergy, it is
well for us, the laity, who stand outside, to avoid
entangling ourselves in such a vexed question.”
Then the lecturer makes a short refutation of Milton’s hypothesis, and
concludes his first lecture by promising to give in the following
lectures the evidences in favor of the hypothesis of evolution.
It seems to us that the whole of the preceding reasoning is nothing
but plausible talk, and that the explanations of the lecturer lack
sincerity. First, he pretends that the “doctrine of creation” is a
philosophical question, which cannot be solved by the historical
method. Why can it not? Creation is no less a historical than a
philosophical fact. The book in which we read it is a historical book,
more than three thousand years old, whose high authority has been
recognized by the wisest men of all past generations, and whose
truthfulness has been confirmed by monuments of antiquity and by the
study of profane histories. If, then, Prof. Huxley was truly anxious
to follow the historical method, why did he not compare the details
given in Genesis about the manner and order of the origination of
nature with the manner and order suggested by geological discoveries?
On the other hand, if the question was to be treated by the historical
method, was it wise to appeal to a poet as the best interpreter of
history?
As to the philosophical treatment of the doctrine of creation, we are
glad to see that the professor has had the good sense of abstaining
from it. This forbearance on his part was imperative for many reasons,
and especially because, as appears from some expressions of his, he
was quite incompetent to judge of the doctrine on its philosophical
side. He says that it is not his present business to investigate “the
causes which have led to the origination of nature,” nor to inquire
“why the objects which constitute nature came into existence”; as if
there were any other _why_ besides the will of the Creator, or any
other _causes_ besides his omnipotence. But Mr. Huxley seems afraid of
a Creator; hence he does not speak of a God, but of “causes” and
“external agencies”; nor does he mention creation, but only
“origination.” Vain efforts! For, if nature has had an origination, it
either originated in something or in nothing: if in nothing, then such
an origination is a real creation; if in something, then such an
origination was only a modification of something pre-existing
contingently (for nothing but the contingent is modifiable), whose
existence must again be traced to creation. Had the lecturer honestly
followed the historical method, he would have boldly started with
those profound words of Genesis: “In the beginning God created heaven
and earth,” and he would have found a solution, no less philosophical
than historical, of his question.
These remarks go far to show that the professor’s reasons for ignoring
the Biblical history (which he, of course, calls the “Biblical
_hypothesis_”) are mere pretexts. Surely it was not his business to
explain the Hebrew text; but this is no excuse. The only point which
had a real importance in connection with the question at issue was
whether the so-called _days_ of creation were natural days of
twenty-four hours or periods of a much greater length. Now, this point
could have been investigated with the Latin or the English text as
well as with the Hebrew. Moreover, since “many eminent scholars,” and
even “men of science,” as he states, have absolutely denied that the
doctrine of the six natural days is found in Genesis at all, was it
not plain that the geological epochs, wholly unknown to Milton, could
not be considered as contradicting the Biblical record, but might
rather coincide with that narrative, and help us to clear up some
obscure phrases which we read in it? Prof. Huxley pretends that, if we
listen to these eminent scholars and men of science, “we must believe
that what seem so clearly defined as days of creation are not days at
all, but periods that we may make just as long as convenience
requires.” This is, indeed, the conclusion we draw from a full
discussion of the subject; but we should like to know on what ground
the professor assumes that the Genesis speaks _so clearly_ of natural
days. It is the contrary that is _clearly_ implied in the language of
the sacred writer; for it is evident that the three days which
preceded the creation of the sun could not be natural days of
twenty-four hours; and since their length has not been determined by
the sacred writer, we are free “to make them just as long as
convenience requires.” This reason, which may be strengthened by other
expressions in the context, and by many other passages of the Bible
where the word _day_ is used indefinitely for long periods of time,
led many old interpreters, St. Augustine among others, to deny what
Prof. Huxley so confidently asserts about the _clearness_ of the
Scriptural testimony in favor of natural days. The professor evidently
speaks of a subject which he has never studied, with the mischievous
purpose of creating a conflict between science and faith.
What shall we say of his amusing hint at the “marvellous flexibility”
of the Biblical language? Though greeted with _applause and laughter_
(by an audience that knew nothing about the Hebrew language), such a
hint was a blunder. It is not the flexibility of the language that has
ever been appealed to as the ground of different interpretations; it
is the extreme conciseness of the narration, and the omission of
numerous details, which might have proved interesting to the man of
science, but which had nothing to do with the object pursued by the
sacred writer. For the aim of the writer was to instruct men, not on
science, but on the unity of God and his universal dominion. On the
other hand, all languages have numbers of terms which can receive
different interpretations; and the very word _day_, which the lecturer
takes to mean _so clearly_ twenty-four hours, is used even by us in
the sense of an indefinite length of time. We say, for instance, that
_to-day_ anti-Christianity is rampant, just as well as that _to-day_
it has rained; and we hope that Professor Huxley will not on this
account find fault with the English language, or sneer at its
“marvellous flexibility.”
Finally, the professor says that he spoke of the Miltonic theory
rather than of the “Mosaic doctrine,” because “we are now assured upon
the authority of the highest critics, and even of dignitaries of the
church, that there is no evidence whatever that Moses ever wrote this
chapter or knew anything about it.” This allegation is not creditable
to the judgment of the lecturer.
The Genesis is the undoubted work of Moses, as all ancient and modern
scholars, both Jew and Christian, testify. If, however, Professor
Huxley, upon the authority of his perverse or ignorant critics and of
the rationalistic dignitaries of a false church, believes the
contrary, it does not follow that the historical method obliged him to
substitute the Miltonic theory for the Biblical history under pain of
“entangling himself in a vexed question.” If there was a vexed
question, he could discard it with a word. Nothing prevented him from
speaking of “_what is styled_ the Mosaic doctrine.” The truth is that
the professor labored all along to demolish the Mosaic doctrine under
the name of Miltonic hypothesis, thinking, no doubt, that by this
artifice he might just say enough to satisfy his friends the
free-thinkers, without shocking too violently the public mind. The
artifice, however, proved unsuccessful; and if the professor has seen
the criticism passed on his lectures by the American press, he must
now have acquired the conviction that the Miltonic hypothesis did not
deserve the honor of a scientific refutation.
In his second lecture Mr. Huxley begins to deal with the evidences of
evolution. He points out that such evidences are of three kinds――viz.,
_indifferent_, _favorable_, and _demonstrative_. The first two kinds
he is prepared to examine at once, whilst the third he keeps in
reserve for his last lecture. One might ask what an “indifferent
evidence” is likely to mean. For, if any fact has no greater tendency
to prove than to disprove a theory, such a fact does not constitute
“evidence” on either side. This, of course, is true; but, in the
language of the professor, “indifferent evidence” designates those
facts which are brought against his theory, and which he believes to
admit of a satisfactory explanation without abandoning the theory.
Thus he relates how
“Cuvier endeavored to ascertain by a very just and proper
method what foundation there was for the belief in a gradual
and progressive change of animals, by comparing the
skeletons of all accessible parts of these animals (old
Egyptian remains)――such as crocodiles, birds, dogs, cats,
and the like――with those which are now found in Egypt; and
he came to the conclusion――a conclusion which has been
verified by all subsequent research――that no appreciable
change has taken place in the animals which inhabited Egypt,
and he drew thence the conclusion, _and a hasty one_, that
the evidence of such fact was altogether against the
doctrine of evolution.”
Again, the professor states that the animal remains deposited in the
beds of stone lining the Niagara “belong to exactly the same forms as
now inhabit the still waters of Lake Erie”; and these remains,
according to his calculation, are more than thirty thousand years old.
Again:
“When we examine the rocks of the cretaceous epoch itself,
we find the remains of some animals which the closest
scrutiny cannot show to be in any respect different from
those which live at the present time.” “More than that: At
the very bottom of the Silurian series, in what is by some
authorities termed the Cambrian formation, where all signs
appear to be dying out, even there, among the few and scanty
animal remains which exist, we find species of molluscous
animals which are so closely allied to existing forms that
at one time they were grouped under the same generic name.…
Facts of this kind are undoubtedly fatal to any form of
evolution which necessitates the supposition that there is
an intrinsic necessity on the part of animal forms which
once come into existence to undergo modifications; and they
are still more distinctly opposed to any view which should
lead to the belief that the modification in different types
of animal or vegetable life goes on equally and evenly. The
facts, as I have placed them before you, would obviously
contradict directly any such form of the hypothesis of
evolution as laid down in these two postulates.”
Here, then, we have facts which “contradict directly” any form of
_necessary_ evolution. Now let us see how the professor strives to
turn them into _indifferent evidences_ of _spontaneous_ evolution. He
says:
“Now, the service that has been rendered by Mr. Darwin to
the doctrine of evolution in general is this: that he has
shown that there are two great factors in the process of
evolution, and one of them is the tendency to vary, the
existence of which may be proved by observation in all
living forms; the other is the influence of surrounding
conditions upon what I may call the parent form and the
variations which are thus evolved from it. The cause of that
production of variations is a matter not at all properly
understood at present. Whether it depends upon some
intricate machinery――if I may use the phrase――of the animal
form itself, or whether it arises through the influence of
conditions upon that form, is not certain, and the question
may for the present be left open. But the important point is
the tendency to the production of variations. Then whether
those variations shall survive and supplant the parent, or
whether the parent form shall survive and supplant the
variations, is a matter which depends entirely on
surrounding conditions.”
From this theory the lecturer concludes that the facts above mentioned
as contradicting the doctrine of evolution are “no objection at all,”
but belong to that class of evidence which he has called indifferent.
“That is to say,” as he explains, “they may be no direct support to
the doctrine of evolution but they are perfectly capable of being
interpreted in consistency with it.” This is to tell us that Darwin,
in order to evade the testimony of numerous facts which contradict
evolution, had to resort to a very bold but gratuitous assumption. In
fact, on what ground can he pretend that all living forms have a
tendency to vary from one species to another, and that such a tendency
may be proved by observation, when we have so many facts which prove
that such a tendency has not shown itself for thousands and tens of
thousands of years? As yet, no case of evolution from one species to
another has been ascertained; and it surely requires a peculiar
evolution of logic to affirm, in the presence of such a known fact,
that the tendency to vary may be proved by observation. That there may
be varieties within the range of one and the same species is a
well-known truth; this is what observation has abundantly proved. But
Mr. Darwin pretends that the tendency to vary is not confined within
the range of the species, but extends from one species to another, so
as to produce not only individual and accidental modifications, but
also essential changes and differentiations; and this is what
observation has hitherto been unable to prove. Thus the professor’s
appeal to the Darwinian hypothesis is quite illogical, as it is
nothing but a begging of the question.
It is singular that Professor Huxley himself, after telling us that
the tendency to vary is proved by observation, immediately refutes his
own assertion by showing that the whole theory of evolution rests on
no actual observation, but on the mere hope of some possible
observations which the future may keep in reserve for its triumph.
Here is what he says:
“The great group of _lizards_, which abound so much at the
present day, extends through the whole series of formations
as far back as what is called the Permian epoch, which is
represented by the strata lying just above the coal. These
Permian lizards differ astonishingly little――in some
respects――from the lizards which exist at the present day.
Comparing the amount of difference between these Permian
lizards and the lizards of the present day with the
prodigious lapse of time between the Permian epoch and the
present age, it maybe said that there has been no
appreciable change. But the moment you carry the researches
further back in time you find no trace whatever of lizards,
nor any true reptile whatever, in the whole mass of
formations beneath the Permian. Now, it is perfectly clear
that if our existing palæontological collections, our
existing specimens from stratified rock, exhaust the whole
series of events which have ever taken place upon the
surface of the globe, such a fact as this directly
contravenes the whole theory of evolution, because that
postulates that the existence of every form must have been
preceded by that of some form comparatively little different
from it.”
So far, then, as existing specimens of palæontology are concerned,
everything “directly contravenes the whole theory of evolution”; that
is to say that observation, far from proving the theory, tends to
disprove it. The lecturer, however, not dismayed by this crushing
evidence, appeals to “the whole series of events” which must have
preceded the epoch of the oldest existing specimens; and he invites us
to take into consideration “that important fact so well insisted upon
by Lyell and Darwin――the imperfection of the geological record.” No
doubt the geological record is imperfect; but this imperfection cannot
be made the ground of an argument in favor of evolution. To make it
such would be like interpreting the silence of a witness for positive
information. Prof. Huxley saw this, and, anticipating the objection
which was sure to rise in the minds of his hearers, made an effort to
evade it by saying: “Those who have not attended to these matters are
apt to say to themselves, ‘It is all very well; but when you get into
difficulty with your theory of evolution, you appeal to the
incompleteness and the imperfection of the geological record’; and I
want to make it perfectly clear to you that that imperfection is a
vast fact which must be taken into account with all our speculations,
or we shall constantly be going wrong.” The reader will notice how
bluntly the lecturer ignores the drift of the objection. The objection
is: “When you appeal to the remotest epochs, about which geology gives
us so very scanty information, you appeal to _the unknown_; and this
is a very singular method of answering that series of _known_ facts
which directly contravene the theory of evolution.” The answer of the
professor is: “You have not attended to these matters. Do you think
that the geological record is perfect? I tell you that it is most
imperfect and incomplete, and I am going to show that such is the
case.” This answer confirms the objection, and shows that the theory
of evolution is illogical.
The professor then mentions “the tracks of some gigantic animal which
walked on its hind legs,” and remarks that, although untold thousands
of such tracks are found upon our shores, yet “up to this present time
not a bone, not a fragment, of any one of the great creatures which
certainly made these impressions has been found.” And he concludes: “I
know of no more striking evidence than this fact affords from which it
may be concluded, in the absence of organic remains, that such animals
did exist.” Of course they did exist; but their existence is no
argument against those innumerable facts which bear positive witness
against the theory of evolution. And yet the lecturer ventures to say:
“I believe that having the right understanding of the doctrine of
evolution on the one hand, and having a just estimation of the
importance of the imperfection of the geological record on the other,
would remove all difficulty from the kind of evidence to which I have
thus adverted; and this appreciation allows us to believe that all
such cases are examples of what I may here call, and have hitherto
designated, negative or indifferent evidence――that is to say, they in
no way directly advance the theory of evolution, but they are no
obstacle in the way of our belief in the doctrine.” That a long series
of positive facts establishing the fixity of species during a great
many thousand years are no obstacle in the way of our belief in an
opposite theory, owing to the mistiness of all older geological
records, which allows us to dream of facts contrary to the course of
things, ascertained by constant observation, is an idea which “modern
thought” may consider brilliant, but which common sense absolutely
rejects.
In the remaining part of this second lecture Mr. Huxley deals with the
evidence of intermediate forms: “If the doctrine of evolution be true,
it follows that animals and plants, however diverse they may be, must
have all been connected together by gradational forms, so that from
the highest animals, whatever they may be, down to the lowest speck of
gelatinous matter in which life can be manifested, there must be a
sure and progressive body of evidence――a series of gradations by which
you could pass from one end of the series to the other.” Let us
remark, by the way, that the phrase “the highest animals, _whatever
they may be_,” comprises rational animals――that is, all mankind; which
would imply that our rational soul should be traced “to the lowest
speck of gelatinous matter” as its first origin. We need not dwell
here on this absurdity. The professor confesses that “we have
crocodiles, lizards, snakes, turtles, and tortoises, and yet there is
nothing――no connecting link――between the crocodile and lizard, or
between the lizard and snake, or between the snake and the crocodile,
or between any two of these groups. They are separated by absolute
breaks.” Such being the case, it would seem that the professor had a
sufficient ground for denying the theory of evolution altogether. But,
no; whilst confessing that there is “no connecting link,” he pretends
that we must show that no connecting link has _ever_ existed. His
words are:
“If, then, it could be shown that this state of things was
from the beginning――had always existed――it would be fatal to
the doctrine of evolution. If the intermediate gradations
which the doctrine of evolution postulates must have existed
between these groups――if they are not to be found anywhere
in the records of the past history of the globe――all that is
so much a strong and weighty argument against evolution.
While, on the other hand, if such intermediate forms are to
be found, that is so much to the good of evolution, although
… we must be cautious in assuming such facts as proofs of
the theory.”
The wisdom of this last caution is undeniable; but is there not a
contradiction in the phrases “there is no connecting link” and “the
intermediate forms may be found”?
He then proceeds to show some osteologic relations by which birds and
reptiles seem to be connected, but from which, as he concedes, no
proof of the theory of evolution can be formed, and he concludes in
the following words: “In my next lecture I will take up what I venture
to call the _demonstrative evidence_ of evolution.” Let us, then, give
up all further examination of the second lecture, and proceed to a
short inquiry upon the kind of evidence condensed in the third.
We must say at once that the evidence contained in the whole of this
third lecture neither directly nor indirectly demonstrates that one
species of animals has been evolved out of another species. Granting
that the animal remains described by the professor correspond entirely
to his description of them, and waiving all question about the correct
interpretation of the same, we shall merely pass in review the logical
process by which such remains are made to give testimony to the
Darwinian view.
In the exordium Mr. Huxley assumes, as a point already established in
his second lecture, that the evidence derived from fossil remains “is
perfectly consistent with the doctrine of evolution.” We have seen
that this is not true. The professor, entirely forgetful of all the
facts which he himself had acknowledged to “directly contravene the
whole theory of evolution,” insists on the relations between birds and
reptiles and their intermediate forms. “We find,” he says, “in the
mesozoic rocks animals which, if ranged in series, would so completely
bridge over the interval between the reptile and the bird that it
would be very hard to say where the reptile ends and where the bird
begins.” And he adds that “evidence so distinctly favorable as this of
evolution is far weightier than that upon which men undertake to say
that they believe many important propositions; but it is not the
highest kind of evidence attained.” If we ask the professor why this
evidence is not the highest, he will give us this reason:
“That, as it happens, the intermediate forms to which I have
referred do not occur in the exact order in which they ought
to occur if they really had formed steps in the progression
from the reptile to the bird; that is to say, we find these
forms in contemporaneous deposits, whereas the requirements
of the demonstrative evidence of evolution demand that we
should find the series of gradations between one group of
animals and another in such order as they must have followed
if they had constituted a succession of stages in time of
the development of the form at which they ultimately arrive.
That is to say, the complete evidence of the evolution of
the bird from the reptile should be of this character, that
in some ancient formation reptiles alone should be found, in
some later formation birds should first be met with, and in
the intermediate formations we should discover in regular
succession forms which I pointed out to you, which are
intermediate between the reptile and the birds.”
This answer proves not only that the evidence alleged is not the
highest kind of evidence in favor of evolution, but also that the
evidence conflicts with the hypothesis of evolution in such a manner
as to cut the ground from under the feet of the lecturer. For if the
intermediate forms between the reptile and the bird are
contemporaneous with the reptile and the bird, it follows that the
bird has not been evolved from the reptile through those intermediate
forms. It is therefore in vain that Mr. Huxley appeals to this
evidence as “so distinctly favorable to evolution.”
The body of the lecture consists of an attempt to show, from the
osteology of the genus _Equus_, that our modern horse proceeds from
the _Orohippus_. The lecturer first describes the characteristics of
the horse, using the term “horse” in a general sense as equivalent to
the technical term _Equus_, and meaning not only what we now call the
horse, but also asses and their modifications――zebras, etc. He invites
us to pay a special attention to the foot and the teeth of the horse;
and then he reasons as follows:
“If the hypothesis of evolution is true, what ought to
happen when we investigate the history of this animal? We
know that the mammalian type, as a whole, that mammalian
animals are characterized by the possession of a perfectly
distinct radius and ulna-two separate and distinct movable
bones, We know, further, that mammals in general possess
five toes, often unequal, but still as completely developed
as the five digits of my hand. We know, further, that the
general type of mammals possesses in the leg not only a
complete tibia, but a complete fibula. The small bone of the
leg is, as a general rule, a perfectly complete, distinct,
movable bone. Moreover, in the hind-foot we find in animals
in general five distinct toes, just as we do in the
fore-foot. Hence it follows that we have a differentiated
animal like the horse, which has proceeded by way of
evolution or gradual modification from a similar form
possessing all the characteristics we find in mammals in
general. If that be true, it follows that, if there be
anywhere preserved in the series of rocks a complete history
of the horse――that is to say, of the various stages through
which he has passed――those stages ought gradually to lead us
back to some sort of animal which possessed a radius, and an
ulna, and distinct complete tibia and fibula, and in which
there were five toes upon the fore limb no less than upon
the hind limb. Moreover, in the average general mammalian
type, the higher mammalian, we find as a constant rule an
approximation to the number of forty-four complete teeth, of
which six are cutting teeth, two are canine, and the others
of which are grinders. In unmodified mammals we find the
incisors have no pit, and that the grinding teeth as a rule
increase in size from that which lies in front towards those
which lie in the middle or at the hinder part of the series.
Consequently, if the theory of evolution be correct, if that
hypothesis of the origin of living things have a foundation,
we ought to find in the series the forms which have preceded
the horse, animals in which the mark upon the incisor
gradually more and more disappears, animals in which the
canine teeth are present in both sexes, and animals in which
the teeth gradually lose the complication of their crowns,
and have a simpler and shorter crown, while at the same time
they gradually increase in size from the anterior end of the
series towards the posterior.”
The professor then proceeds to show that all these conditions are
fulfilled:
“In the middle and earlier parts of the pliocene epoch, in
deposits which belong to that age, and which occur in
Germany and in Greece, to some extent in Britain and in
France, there we find animals which are like horses in all
the essential particulars which I have just described, … but
they differ in some important particulars. There is a
difference in the structure of the fore and hind limb, … but
nevertheless we have here a horse in which the lateral toes,
almost abortive in the existing horse, are fully developed.”
This horse is the _Hipparion_.
In the miocene formations “you find equine animals which differ
essentially from the modern horse … in the character of their fore and
hind limbs, and present important features of difference in the teeth.
The forms to which I now refer are what are known to constitute the
genus _Anchitherium_. We have here three toes, and the middle toe is
smaller in proportion, the lower toes are larger … and in the fore arm
you find the ulna, a very distinct bone,” etc., etc.
Lastly, in the oldest part of the eocene formation we find the
_Orohippus_, which is the oldest specimen of equine animals:
“Here we have the four toes on the front limb complete,
three toes on the hind limb complete, a well-developed ulna,
a well-developed fibula, and the teeth of simple pattern. So
you are able, thanks to these great researches, to show
that, so far as present knowledge extends, the history of
the horse type is exactly and precisely that which could
have been predicted from a knowledge of the principles of
evolution. And the knowledge we now possess justifies us
completely in the anticipation that when the still lower
eocene deposits and those which belong to the cretaceous
epoch have yielded up their remains of equine animals, we
shall find first an equine creature with four toes in front
and a rudiment of the thumb. Then probably a rudiment of the
fifth toe will be gradually supplied, until we come to the
five-toed animals, in which most assuredly the whole series
took its origin.”
To say plainly what we think of this long argumentation, we believe
that it demonstrates nothing but the eminent talkative faculty of the
lecturer. It all comes to this: Unmodified mammals have five fingers
and five toes, whereas the modern horse has only one. Therefore the
modern horse is but a modification of a pre-existing form, and is to
be traced to the _hipparion_, the _anchitherium_, the _orohippus_, and
other more ancient forms which we have not yet discovered, but which
we hope to discover hereafter. Now, this style of reasoning is simply
ridiculous.
First, even granting all the premises of the professor, the conclusion
that one species is derived from another by evolution would still
remain unproved. For who told Prof. Huxley that the animal remains on
which he bases his argument belong to different species, and not to
different varieties of one and the same species? Surely, a greater or
less development of one or two bones cannot be considered a sufficient
evidence of specific difference; for we know that even in the same
variety there may be a different development; as in the hound, which
sometimes possesses a spurious hind toe, and in the mastiff, which
occasionally shows the same peculiarity. Hence the professor has no
right to assume that the horse, the hipparion, the anchitherium, etc.,
are animals of different species; and therefore his argument has
nothing to do with the evolution of one species from another.
Secondly, to assume without proof that “unmodified mammalia” have five
fingers and five toes is to assume without proof the very conclusion
which was to be demonstrated; for it is to assume that the modern
horse, which has neither five fingers nor five toes, is not an
unmodified mammal, but a product evolved by some more ancient form.
Now, this is what logicians call _petitio principii_.
Thirdly, what does Prof. Huxley mean by _unmodified_ mammalia? What
are they? For, in his theory of evolution, every animal is a
_modification_ of a preceding form, and the whole series of living
beings contains nothing but _modified_ organisms. To find, therefore,
an unmodified mammal, it would be necessary to find the _first_ of all
mammals from which all other mammals of the same class have proceeded.
This first mammal is still to be discovered, as the professor
concedes. How, then, could he know that the unmodified mammal has five
fingers and five toes? And if he did not know this, how did he assume
it as the very ground of his pretended demonstration?
Fourthly, how does Prof. Huxley know that the horse proceeds from the
hipparion, the hipparion from the anchitherium, and the anchitherium
from the orohippus? Of this he knows nothing whatever. He has no other
ground for his assertion, except the different ages to which those
deposits belong: but a difference of age does not prove that the older
is the parent of the younger. Alexander the Great existed before
Annibal, Annibal before Cæsar, Cæsar before Napoleon. Will our
professor infer from this that Napoleon was the lineal descendant of
Alexander the Great?
Fifthly, it is not true that “the history corresponds exactly with
what one could construct _a priori_ from the principles of evolution.”
The principles of the theory of evolution demand that the more complex
organisms be considered as evolved from the less complex, and the more
developed as evolved from the less developed; for, according to the
theory, the further we go back towards the origin of life, the nearer
we approach the “protoplasm” or the “gelatinous matter.” It would
therefore be more in accordance with the theory of evolution to say
that the five-toed animals must have proceeded from animals possessing
a simpler and less developed organism, and that the horse is the
parent of the hipparion, and of the anchitherium and of the orohippus,
which is quite contrary to geological evidence. Hence geological
evidence flatly contradicts the principles of evolution. In other
terms, if mammalia of different species have been evolved from one
another, those animals whose organism is more developed must be more
modern. Now, the orohippus has an organism more developed than that of
the horse. Therefore the orohippus, by the principles of the theory,
is more modern than the existing horse. But geological evidence shows
the contrary. Therefore geological evidence directly conflicts with
the principles of evolution.
Sixthly, the whole argument of the professor may be condensed in the
following syllogism: If the theory of evolution is true, then we must
find such and such fossils. But we find such and such fossils.
Therefore the theory of evolution is true. By this form of reasoning
one would prove anything he likes. Thus, for example, we might say, if
Professor Huxley has graduated at Yale College, New Haven, he must
know the English language. But he knows the English language.
Therefore he has graduated at Yale College, New Haven. The fallacy
consists in supposing that such and such fossils could not be found,
except in the hypothesis that evolution is true. Hence, to avoid the
fallacy, the conditionate proposition should have been inverted――that
is, it should have been: If we find such and such fossils in such and
such deposits, then the theory of evolution is true. But this
proposition could not be assumed without proofs.
But, says the lecturer:
“An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the
facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it. If that
is not scientific proof, there are no inductive conclusions
which can be said to be scientific. And the doctrine of
evolution at the present time rests upon exactly as secure a
foundation as the Copernican theory of the motion of the
heavenly bodies. Its basis is precisely of the same
character――the coincidence of the observed facts with
theoretical requirements. As I mentioned just now, the only
way of escape, if it be a way of escape, from the
conclusions which I have just indicated, is the supposition
that all these different forms have been created separately
at separate epochs of time; and I repeat, as I said before,
that of such a hypothesis as this there neither is nor can
be any scientific evidence; and assuredly, so far as I know,
there is none which is supported, or pretends to be
supported, by evidence or authority of any other kind.”
These sweeping assertions are all founded on the assumption that the
facts have been shown to be in entire accordance with the hypothesis.
But we have shown that the facts contradict the hypothesis. It is
therefore a scientific necessity to deny the hypothesis. Moreover,
scientific hypotheses are not proved by the mere coincidence of the
observed facts with theoretical requirements; it is necessary to show,
further, that the observed facts cannot be reconciled with a different
theory. Hence, even if the professor had shown the agreement of the
facts with his hypothesis, he would still have had no right to
conclude in favor of his hypothesis on that ground alone; for he would
have been obliged to show also that the Mosaic theory does not agree
with those facts. What he says about “the only way of escape” is a
vain boast, which has no real importance except in as much as it may
serve for rhetorical effect. We have no need of seeking a way of
escape; for we still follow our own old way, which remains
unobstructed. We need not “make the supposition that all different
forms have been created at separate epochs of time,” though they may
have been so created; nor do we require “scientific evidence” of the
truth of creation, for we have sufficient Biblical and philosophical
evidence of it; nor do we want evidence of certain distinct or
“separate” creations, for we have this evidence in the Book of
Genesis. If any one needs “a way of escape,” it is the professor
himself, who has ventured to defend a theory equally condemned by the
Mosaic history of the origin of things and by the characteristic
peculiarities of the geological remains which he has produced. As for
us, even if it were proved that the horse, the hipparion, the
anchitherium, and the orohippus are animals of different species,
nothing would oblige us to admit that these animals have been created
“at separate epochs of time”――that is to say, in different Scriptural
days; for these days, or epochs, are each sufficiently long to
encompass the events to which the geological record bears testimony.
On the other hand, were we to assume that such animals have been
created at separate epochs of time, we do not see on what ground the
professor could refute such a conjecture. He might say, of course,
that there is no “scientific evidence” for the supposition; but we
might reply that there are many facts which science must accept on
other than scientific evidence; and we might even maintain that those
fossil remains on which the lecturer has founded his pretended
demonstration are themselves a _primâ facie_ evidence in favor of said
supposition. But the supposition is not needed, as we have remarked.
The professor concludes his lecture thus: “I shall consider I have
done you the greatest service which it was in my power in such a way
to do, if I have thus convinced you that this great question which we
are discussing is not one to be discussed, dealt with, by rhetorical
flourishes or by loose and superficial talk, but that it requires the
keenest attention of the trained intellect, and the patience of the
most accurate observer.”
These words were applauded by the audience, and we too are glad to
applaud. But we may be allowed to doubt if the lecturer, in dealing
with the question of evolution, has shown much respect for the maxim
which he proclaims. We do not mean, of course, that Professor Huxley’s
intellect is untrained, or that his scientific observations are
inaccurate, but we think we can safely say that his logic is not as
accurate as his scientific observations, and that his trained
intellect is apt to relish sham arguments and superficial talk. When a
man can gravely express the opinion that “there may be a world where
two and two do not make four,” the intellect of that man makes a poor
show indeed; nor does it make a better show by assuming that “there
may have been a time when the relation of cause and effect was still
indefinite.” In like manner, when a man in the discussion of a
historical question ignores all historical documents except those
which he thinks favorable to his views; when he strives to evade the
evidence of certain facts which cannot be reconciled with his theory;
or when he brings as a proof of the theory what under examination is
found to clash with the principles of the same theory, we must be
excused if we cannot admire his logic.
The lecturer’s misfortune is that he is a victim of that proud and
absurd system of knowledge which is named “modern thought.” The
apostles of this system strive to suppress God. The universe,
according to them, is not necessarily the work of an intelligent
Being. Give them only a few specks of “gelatinous matter,” and they
will tell you that nothing else is required to account for the origin
of life, intellect, and reason. If you say that this is impossible,
because the effect cannot be more perfect than its causality, they
will inform you that the words _cause_ and _effect_, though still
tolerated, are becoming obsolete, just as the ideas which they
express. If you ask, How did the “gelatinous matter” itself originate?
they will let you understand that their science cannot go so far as to
attempt a clear answer; because, as Prof. Huxley adroitly puts it,
“the attempt to fix any limit at which we should assign the
commencement of the series of changes is given up.” This suffices to
form a just estimate of the scientific hypotheses concocted by the
leaders of “modern thought.” We are apt to boast of our superior
knowledge: but it is one of the disasters of our time that the absurd
theories of such a perverted science find ready acceptance among
educated men.
[152] _Quis est tam vecors, qui ea quæ tanta mente fiunt,
casu putet posse fieri?_――Who is so silly as to believe that
things so wisely ruled can be the effect of chance?
UP THE NILE.
I.
When Philip’s son, on his way to the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the
African desert, selected the abode of the fabulous Proteus for his
future city, the gods encouraged their much-loved child with a
favorable omen. For whilst Dinocrates, the architect, was marking out
the lines upon the ground, the chalk he used was exhausted; whereupon
the king, who was present, ordered the flour destined for the
workmen’s food to be employed in its stead, thereby enabling him to
complete the outline of many of the streets. An infinite number of
birds, says Plutarch, of several kinds, rising suddenly like a black
cloud out of the river and lake, devoured the flour. Alexander,
troubled in mind――as the workmen, no doubt, were both in mind and
body, although the historian does not so relate――consulted the augurs.
These discreet men, who read the divine Mind in their own fashion,
advised him to proceed, by observing that the occurrence was a sign
the city he was about to build would enjoy such abundance of all
things that it would contribute to the nourishment of many nations.
The workmen having swallowed their indignation in place of their food,
the work proceeded, and Alexander, before continuing his journey,
witnessed the commencement of his flourishing city, B.C. 323. Thus
rose up Alexandria, the gate of the Orient. Centuries are as naught in
its calendar; nay, thousands of years give but a feeble idea of the
length of its civilized existence. Enter the portals of the Alexandria
of to-day. What a new world spreads out before you! Is it not all a
masquerade? These strange boatmen with their bright-colored robes,
their magpie chattering――are they real? Color――color everywhere: the
cloudless blue sky above, the green waters beneath, the dark
complexions, the red, green, yellow of their garments, the endless
confusion of colors in, around, and about. Close the eyes, or they
will be dazzled. Struggle now, or see, those fellows will tear you
apart and carry you in pieces to the shore, head in one boat, legs in
another――happy you if even both legs are in the same boat. Fight hard
now to retain your entire individuality. Well done! Now follow this
handsome Arab; he is a dragoman and will protect you. Take his
olive-green suit and bright red fez for a guide. See how he strikes
right and left; and, by Allah! down go a score of boatmen. Are they
hurt? No matter; they are only Arabs, and menials at that. He has you
in his own boat now――sound, too, nothing wanting; feel, if you are in
doubt――yes, head, arms, legs, body, all here; and he stands in the
stern and smiles complacently. He will talk to you in any language,
unintelligibly perhaps, but then with such grace and dignity; you must
pretend to understand him. He will give you any information, from the
cost of building the pyramids to the price of donkey-hire; will take
you anywhere――to Pompey’s Pillar, Assouan, the Mountains of the Moon.
And when you timidly inquire where the mountains are, thinking you
might like to make a short visit, he smiles patronizingly, and waves
his hand gracefully to the south. Up there!――three thousand miles or
more. But what is that to him? You are surprised that he should have
creditors, a man of his appearance; but you are relieved, for he pays
his debts, and the custom-house officials smile, place their hands on
their hearts, and bow your luggage out of the custom-house. You are
already beginning to feel proud at being the friend of so great a man.
That famous flirt Cleopatra lived here, and toyed with the hearts of
men――some of them real men, too; not the Egyptian fops of the day, the
Greek society men, or the Roman swells, but such men as Antony, who
lost half the world for her at Actium. She it was who amused herself
by swallowing pearls, and finally left this world to avoid the honor
of adorning the triumph of Octavius. The augurs were right.
Alexander’s city did contribute to the nourishment of many nations,
physically and intellectually. Its sails whitened every sea, bearing
to the capital and provinces of the empire the treasures of Egypt,
Arabia, and India. Students flocked to its schools; its great library
contained over seven hundred thousand volumes. Even as late as A.D.
641, when Amru captured the city after a siege of fourteen months, in
his letter to Omar he tells him that he found there four thousand
palaces, as many baths, four hundred places of amusement, and twelve
thousand gardens. Amru was inclined to spare the library, being urged
to do so by John Philopanus; but Omar sent orders: “If the books
contain the same matter as the Koran, they are useless; if not the
same, they are worse than useless. Therefore, in either case, they are
to be burnt.” Even in their destruction they were made useful; for
Abdollatiff says there were so many books that the baths of Alexandria
were heated by them for the space of six months. Those mystical
enigmas of Western childhood――Cleopatra’s Needles――turn out to be but
obelisks after all, and not of the best. They stood originally at
Heliopolis, but Tiberius set them up in front of the Cæsarium in honor
of himself. Those old emperors were fond of raising monuments to
themselves, that future generations might wonder at their exploits,
which many times were performed in imagination only. One has fallen,
and is a white elephant on the hands of England. The English do not
know what to do with it. Mohammed Ali gave it to them, and even
offered to transport it free of expense to the shore and put it on any
vessel sent to remove it. Possibly he thought it reminded the people
too much of Tiberius, and wanted to set up one for his own
glorification. No vessel was sent, and here it remains, half covered
with _débris_. Pompey’s Pillar is a column of highly-polished red
granite ninety-eight feet nine inches in height, twenty-nine feet
eight inches in circumference, erected by another of those modest
Roman emperors――Diocletian by name――for the same purpose that Tiberius
set up the old obelisk. It is a wonder that some of these
unpretentious rulers, with their characteristic modesty, did not carry
out the idea proposed to Alexander by Dinocrates, and have Mount Athos
cut into a statue of themselves, holding in one hand a city of ten
thousand inhabitants, and from the other pouring a copious river into
the sea. Perhaps they thought this city would be deserted, the
inhabitants fearing that natural instinct would cause the hand to
close and grab up everything, people and all. What a motley mass of
humanity throng its narrow streets――Greeks, Jews, Turks, and people of
almost every nation in Europe, but few Copts, the descendants of the
old Egyptians. When Cambyses made his trip to Egypt, 524 B.C., he
persuaded most of them to leave the Delta and retire to the Thebaid,
where their descendants are found to this day. It is hard to
understand the Copt. In other parts of the world a man who can trace
his pedigree a few centuries back carries that fact in his face, and
considers himself, and is considered, above other men. Here we talk in
an off-hand, familiar way with Copts living in the same place where
their ancestors have lived for six thousand years or more――men who can
trace their ancestry through a long roll of illustrious names to the
world’s conquerors, the Rameses and Ositarsens; and they were not
proud of it――in fact, they did not seem to know anything about it.
Perhaps it was such an old, old story that it had been forgotten ages
before.
A well-managed railway leads to Cairo. Strange!――a railway in the land
where the grandson of Noe settled, where Joseph outwitted the king’s
cunning ministers: Mash el Káheral, the victorious city, called Cairo
by the Western barbarians, with donkeys and camels, eunuchs and
harems, palm-trees and dahabeeáhs, all within sight of the station,
and yet to be pushed into an omnibus! O Western civilization! will you
never let this picturesque world alone? To travel five thousand miles,
thinking all the way of riding on donkeys like Ali Baba, or perched
high on a camel like Mohammed, and then be conveyed to the hotel in an
omnibus, as though in London or New York! I thought I could detect a
frown on the Sphinx’s usually impassible face, as one passed it the
other day. You can easily imagine the pyramids holding serious debate
as to the advisability of ruining themselves as objects of interest by
tumbling over and crushing out these new-fangled contrivances. We are
going up the Nile, so we steal a hasty glance at the pyramids, nod to
the Sphinx as though we had been on speaking terms for three or four
thousand years, visit the citadel at sunset, get bewildered at the
strange sights, do and see everything in the orthodox style, and are
off. Going up the Nile, I determined to write a book, so voluminous
notes were taken――measurements and statistics enough to puzzle the
brain of an antiquarian; such meteorological observations,
too!――Probabilities would have found it hard to digest them. All
travellers do this. Coming down the Nile, I concluded that I would not
write a book. Most travellers do this. Before going to the East I had
no idea of the vast amount of literature existing touching Egypt, the
Egyptians, and the Nile trip. Returning, I was conversant with it. I
had seen the people through the richly-tinted glasses of euphonious
Curtis, had studied them through the sombre spectacles of erudite
Wilkinson and Lane. I had watched them through the soft lens of a
woman’s tender mind, and been startled at their wondrous doings under
the magnifying-glasses of highly marvellous Prime. I intended telling
why I went to the East. Most writers think an apology due their
readers for leaving home, or, at least, that they should give their
reasons, the difficulties of engaging a dahabeeáh, to report what the
reis said, and how our dragoman answered him――all in broken English,
of course. But I will simply tell a short story――how certain
pale-faced howadjii from the West sailed up to the second cataract of
the Nile and back again, and what befell them.
The wind blew from the north, and we started. Now, it is a peculiarity
of the Nile trip that the wind always blows from the north before the
dahabeeáhs start, although it generally takes four or five pages to
tell it, after “everything is on board and all impatient for the
start,” and the reader is left in some doubt as to whether the boat is
going at all. But as the course is to the south, and these boats
cannot tack, the reader may now understand why he is kept so long
waiting until “the breeze blows fresh from the north, the great sail
drops down like the graceful plumage of some giant bird, and the
shores glide past like the land of the poet’s dream.” We commenced the
voyage by running aground, and we continued it somewhat in the same
way. We did not travel on land; for I said something above about the
direction of the wind and its connection with our starting, so that
one might infer we were on a boat. But scarce a day passed that we did
not run aground at least once, and often three or four times. Finally
we became so used to it that, seated in the cabin, we could tell by
the shouting what means were being employed to shove the boat off. The
invocations were always the same. Would a good Moslem, think you, call
upon any but the two sacred names, Allah, Mohammed――the God and the
Prophet? But the intonations of the voice told the story. Grunting out
these sacred names, starting from the extremity of the toes,
struggling and fighting with each nerve and muscle as they came up,
told us unmistakably that they were pushing with long poles. Now a
fearful colic seizes the crew; they groan and cry, and in the deepest
misery implore God and the Prophet to free them from their sufferings;
and we are well aware that they are in the water, making pretended
strenuous efforts to raise the boat with their backs. A bright, lively
chorus tells us that they are setting sail. A dead silence informs us
to a moral certainty that they are eating their meals. Let me tell you
something about the dahabeeáh; for it is to be our home for many
weeks. The _Sitta Mariam_, as we called it, was ninety-seven feet
long, sixteen in width, and drew three feet of water. The forward part
was reserved for the use of the crew. In the hold they kept food and
clothes. On the deck they slept――the more fastidious ones on
sheepskins, the others upon the bare boards. In the Orient everything
is just the reverse of the Occident. We cover our feet and expose the
head while sleeping. They wrap up the head with care, and expose the
feet to the sometimes chilly air of the night. A box placed near the
bow, six feet high, the same width, and two feet deep, served for a
kitchen. Aft of the forecastle were nine state-rooms, and a
dining-saloon fifteen feet square. A flight of steps led to the upper
deck, which extended to the stern of the boat. Handsome Turkey rugs,
divans, and easy-chairs made this a most comfortable lounging place
for the howadjii; and, in sooth, when not eating or sleeping, we spent
all our time here. Near the stern we had a poultry-yard, several coops
filled with turkeys, chickens, and squabs. We always had one or two
live sheep with us, carried in the rowboat――called felluka――which
floated astern. The foremast was placed near the bow, and from its
summit, forty-two feet from the deck, swung the large yard or
trinkeet, one hundred and fifteen feet long. From this was suspended
the triangular sail called “lateen.” When furled, the rope was so
bound around it that, although securely held, yet, by a strong pull
directly downwards, it was immediately let loose. In the rear, aft the
rudder, we carried a smaller sail of the same description, called a
“balakoom.” The boat was of three hundred and eighty ardebs――about
forty tons――burden. I have said that we called it the _Sitta Mariam_,
or “Lady Mary.” Originally it was named _The Swallow_, and the year
before a native artist had been engaged to paint this name upon it.
Thinking the word should be written as an Arabic one, he commenced at
the wrong end. To add to this, by some mischance he omitted a letter;
the result was the name on the side of the boat in large, bold
letters, “Wallow.”
A few words concerning the ship’s company. The howadjii were four
Americans. The next most important personage is Ahmud Abdallah――_i.e._,
servant of God――our dragoman, he of the olive-green suit and red fez.
Has any one ever determined the precise etymology of the word
dragoman? Often I am constrained to think that it is an abbreviation
of the words “dragger-of-man.” On one point I am clear: this will give
a more accurate idea of the position of the individual than any other
yet suggested. From the time you come in contact with one of this
species until you run away from him――for he will never leave you,
unless your money should become exhausted――he is continually dragging
you around. Do not think the howadji is bullied by his dragoman. On
the contrary, the meekness, suavity, and urbanity of that individual
are beyond description. He receives his master’s orders in silence and
with bowed head, but a keen observer might often detect a sneering
smile, showing how little he thinks of obeying them. Ahmud was a
handsome Arab, thirty-six years of age and an Oriental Brummel. What a
wardrobe of bright-colored trousers and richly-embroidered vests he
had! Each afternoon he would squat cross-legged upon his bed, and
ponder for an hour or more over the sacred mysteries of the Koran. An
hour scarce sufficed to dress, and then he would appear on deck in his
suit of bright Algerine cloth, the little jacket relieved by a white
vest set off with red or blue, his feet encased in red slippers
beautifully contrasting with his stockings of immaculate whiteness, on
his head the jaunty fez. When the sweet breezes were wafting us softly
up the stream, and a stillness and repose unknown in other lands
seemed to pervade all nature, Ahmud, in his gorgeous attire, would
appear on the quarter-deck, seat himself in the most complacent
manner, light his cigarette, and appear the ideal of self-satisfaction
and contentment. We had contracted to pay him a certain sum _per
diem_; in return he was to supply boat, sailors, food, and everything
requisite for the voyage――as he expressed it: “You pay me so much
every day; no put hand in pocket at all.” When reproved, he would
become sulky like a spoilt child, and remain in that state for several
days, replying as concisely to our questions as politeness would
permit, and otherwise having nothing whatsoever to say to us. Ali
Abdakadra, his brother-in-law, was a fine-looking young Arab of
twenty-three. He was supposed to be the assistant dragoman. My private
opinion――of course not communicated to him――is that he was solely
interested in supplying those materials with which the highways of
another and still warmer clime are thought to be paved. This is not a
very lucrative occupation, nor one conducive to man’s advancement in
this world; but, notwithstanding our advice, he persisted in it. I do
not think there ever issued from the lips of any man so many
resolutions of doing so much, so many good intentions; and I am
morally certain that so many resolutions and intentions never before
were so utterly fruitless. Shortly after we started he came to me full
of excitement, and informed me that he was going to write a guide-book
for the Nile. “Now,” said he, “there is Ibrahim, our waiter; he has
made this trip several times, and yet knows nothing about the temples
or tombs――I doubt whether he has even seen them. This is my first
trip. I will take notes and write a book. Will you lend me your Murray
to assist me?” I consented. The book remained unopen in his room for
two months. I then called the loan. He took not a note, but left many,
on temples, obelisks, and tombs. When visiting temples, Ali was the
first to arrive, and when we came up we were informed by enormous
letters, written with a burnt stick, that Ali Abdakadra had visited
that temple on the current day. When sent upon an errand he did not
wish to perform, he would proceed at a pace which could be easily
excelled by a not overfed crab. One of our party, at Ali’s earnest
request, spent some time instructing him in taxidermy. He would take
back to Cairo any number of birds and sell them; had even counted his
profits, and told us how he would expend them. Result: He half-skinned
a hawk in the most bungling manner, and then left it hanging up until
the offensive odor caused us to order it to be cast overboard. Ibrahim
Saleem is our waiter――not a talker, but a worker, a model of neatness
and propriety, performing his duties with perfect regularity and
order. Reis Mohammed Suleyman, a short, well-built man, is the most
laborious of them all. The responsibility of the boat is upon him, and
he is fully equal to it. He is a very quiet man, except when angered,
and then through his set teeth swears by Allah and the Prophet to
wreak the direst vengeance upon the offender. He is pious, however,
and prays frequently. When a sheep is to be killed, he is the butcher;
and never was sheep more skilfully killed and prepared for the table.
Any sewing of sails, clothes, or of anything else that is to be done
is brought to him and, squatted cross-legged on the deck, he is
transformed into a tailor. In the evenings, when the rest of the
sailors amuse themselves with song and dance, Reis Mohammed will sit
for hours in perfect silence, holding the line in his hand, and, after
thus patiently waiting, will draw up a catfish weighing from twenty to
thirty pounds. He is devotedly attached to his merkeb (boat), and woe
betide the unfortunate sailor who injures it in the slightest manner!
It is customary, when we reach the towns wherein any of the sailors
reside, for them to leave the boat for a few hours――or for the night,
if we remain so long――and visit their homes. Reis Mohammed lived at
Minieh; when we reached it he would not leave, preferring to stay with
his boat to the pleasure of seeing his wife or wives. I can see Reis
Ahmud, the second captain, before me now, leaning like a statue upon
the broad handle of the rudder, the only evidence of life being the
thin clouds of smoke issuing from his lips. Hour after hour he would
maintain that position, moving only when it was necessary to shift the
helm, and then not using his hands, but moving it by the weight of his
body resting against it. His eyes were most singular in appearance,
and for a long while I was puzzled to account for their strange
effect. Coming on the quarter very early one morning, I found him
kneeling before a small glass and staining around his eyes with a
black substance called kohl. He is the drummer of the crew, and in the
evenings, seated with the sailors, he plays the darbooka, or native
drum. This instrument is of the same shape and material as those used
at the festive gatherings of the Egyptians ere Moses was――nay, even
before the wrath of God had showered the deluge of waters upon the
iniquitous world. It is made of earthenware in the shape of a hollow
cylinder surmounted by a truncated cone; this is covered with
sheepskin. It is played with the fingers. Ali Aboo Abdallah, our cook,
is to be noticed principally on account of his name, which illustrates
the system of nomenclature in vogue among certain Mohammedans. Before
he was married his name was Ali something or other. His first boy was
named Abdallah, and the father then became Ali Aboo――_i.e._, the
father of Abdallah――the son giving the name to the father, to show the
world that the latter was the proud possessor of an heir. A seeming
bundle of old clothes lying on the deck, but showing, by faint signs
of animation at meal-time, that animal life existed within it,
represented Ali el Delhamawi, Reis Mohammed’s uncle, the oldest man of
the crew. The duty of this animated rag-bag was to hold the tail of
the sail during the upward voyage, and to go through the movements of
rowing on the home-trip. Next in order come Haleel en Negaddeh, a
surly, well-built Arab, appointed by the owner to look after the
welfare of the boat; Mahsood el Genawi, a slim, cross-eyed fellow;
Ahmud Said el Genawi, a fine specimen of a man, the most powerful and
the hardest worker among them all; Hassein Sethawi, a tough, wiry
little fellow, the barber of the crew; Ashmawi Ashman, the baby of the
party, the best-dressed man, petted by the others, and, as a natural
consequence, doing but little work; Gad Abdallah, another servant of
the Deity; Ahmud es Soeffle and Hassein es Soeffle, known to us by
their most striking non-Arabic peculiarity――silence――and Haleel el
Deny, the queer-looking old man who cooks for the crew. Last, but not
least, comes Mohammed el Abiad, or Mohammed the White, the blackest
man of all. He was the funny man, the court-jester. He was always
saying funny things, so we were told, and whenever he opened his lips
the others burst out laughing, including sober old Reis Mohammed. He
was useful to us by keeping the crew in good-humor. All his physical
strength was exhausted in expelling the sallies of wit from his mouth.
He had his own ideas concerning manual labor, which, summed up into a
maxim, were about as follows: Make it appear to others that you do
more work than any one else; do as little as you possibly can. For
squatting and doing nothing he was unsurpassed. In grunting, singing,
and contorting every lineament of his visage when at work he excelled
all the others taken together. Here is a specimen of his funny
sayings: On asking him, through Ahmud, why he was called “the white”
when he was so black, he said it was because his father was called
Mohammed the Green, and he was the blacker of the two. At this the
crew laughed immoderately. Oriental wit or humor is doubtless
unappreciable by the dull minds of the Western Christian dogs.
Now that you know us all――boat, crew, and howadjii――come, sail with
us, see the strange scenes, watch the moving panorama, and witness the
daily comedies enacted around us.
We are about to stop under the cliffs of Gebel Aboo Layda, the Arabian
chain, which here borders immediately on the river――not a very safe
place, either; for Ali requests me to fire some pistol-shots to
frighten away the thieves. There is no village near, and we have no
guard. When we stop near a village, two or three miserable-looking
creatures crouch around a fire on the bank. They are our guard. I feel
morally certain that as soon as we leave the quarter-deck the guard
goes to sleep. I have come to this determination from a study of these
Arabs. Their idea of worldly happiness is eating, smoking, and
sleeping; of heavenly bliss, the same, with the beautiful houri added.
The next day we reach Manfaloot. It is market-day, and the sailors are
going ashore to buy provisions. The strange sights and scenes so
confused me that I was not quite sure of being awake. Sometimes it
seemed like a play; I was nervous, and hurried for fear the curtain
should fall before everything could be seen. How I wished my ears
changed into eyes, and a pair set in the back of my head! Now I begin
to comprehend the scenes about me. Perhaps this is real life after
all. That tall, handsome woman carrying herself so erect, with the jar
balanced on her head, is perhaps not doing this for our amusement
merely. I can sleep now without laughing. I am becoming part of this
strange world. Let us look around Manfaloot while the sailors are
laying in our stock of provisions. Here is the shopping street. Nature
has kindly spared these people the need of a committee on highways.
Each individual has resolved himself into a pavier. No taxes for these
streets――two rows of houses built of sun-dried bricks, running
parallel, with a space of seventy feet between. Sidewalks and gutters
are trodden hard by the passers-by――a cheap, primitive mode of paving;
a little dusty at times, ’tis true, but then Allah sends the dust: it
can do no great harm, and there is no need of repairs. Look at this
house. The owner has visited Mecca. How do we know it? See that
railway train painted over the door, with a bright blue engine; two
engineers, each three times as tall as the engine, smoke-stack and
all; the cars red, green, yellow, running up and down hill at the same
time. Six of them are filled with giants painted green――apt color,
too, for men who would travel on such a train. It looks like the
slate-drawing of a school-boy. Yes; but these are modern Egyptian
hieroglyphics. The train tells us that the owner has travelled; and
where should a good Moslem go but to Mecca? So the owner is a hadji
and wears a green turban. All the children suffer with ophthalmia.
This ophthalmia must be something like lumps of sugar; the flies seem
to think so, at least. What a crowd is following us! But they are
respectful; seem amused at the pale faces and curious garments of the
howadjii. How their eyes dilate at the sight of Madam’s gloves! “The
Sitta has a white face and black hands. Allah preserve us! she is
actually taking off her hands. No, it is the outer skin; and now they
are pale like her face. By the Prophet! this is strange.” They crowd
around her, touch her hands, then her gloves, timidly and
respectfully; no, they cannot understand it. Abiad is going to ask for
a sheep; the crew have selected him, for they feel confident we cannot
refuse him when he asks in his humorous way. Followed by the grinning
crew, he appears before us, and, putting up his hands to the sides of
his head to represent long ears, ejaculates, “Ba-a! ba-a!” We were not
convulsed with laughter, but the good-hearted “Sitta” promised them a
sheep for Christmas-time, which was near at hand.
This fertile country contains about five millions of inhabitants.
Above Cairo the valley of the Nile and Egypt are synonymous. For,
where neither artificial irrigation nor the magic waters of the Nile
give life to the parched soil, the sand of the desert renders the
country as utterly unproductive as the bitter waters of the Dead Sea.
The river varies in width from three hundred and sixty-five yards at
Hagar Silseleh to a mile or more in other parts. The narrow strip of
productive soil is in no part more than ten miles in width, save where
the quasi-oasis of the Fyoom joins the west bank near Benisoeef. In
many places the banks of the river mark the boundaries of the
available soil. The cultivation of the land follows the receding
waters. The rising of the Nile commences in July, and the greatest
height is reached about the end of September, from which time the
waters gradually recede. In December we grounded upon a certain
sandbank covered with two feet of water. I noted the spot, and when we
passed it on our return voyage, about the 6th of March following, the
natives were planting melons upon it in a layer of the richest and
most productive soil, left there by the receding waters, borne upon
their bosom from the far-distant sources of the Blue Nile. From its
far-off Abyssinian home the fertilizing Blue Nile flows on to
Khartoom, where it meets the White Nile coming from still more distant
parts, and from there the single river rushes on in its long,
uninterrupted voyage to the sea. Until quite recently the cause of the
annual overflow of the Nile was unknown. The priests, the most learned
men of ancient Egypt, were unable to give Herodotus any reason for it.
Some of the Greeks, wishing, says he, to be distinguished for their
wisdom, attempted to account for these inundations in three different
ways. But the careful historian, placing no confidence in them,
repeats them, as he says, merely to show what they are: The Etesian
winds, preventing the Nile from discharging itself into the sea, cause
the river to swell. The ocean flowing all around the world, and the
Nile flowing from it, produce this effect――an opinion, he observes,
showing more ignorance than the former, but more marvellous. The third
way of resolving this difficulty is by far the most specious, but most
untrue: the Nile flowing from melted snow. For how, he asks in his
quaint way, since it runs from a very hot, from Libya through the
middle of Ethiopia to a colder region――Egypt――can it flow from snow?
And he then goes on, with seeming modesty, to venture his own opinion:
“During the winter season the sun being driven from his former course
by storms, retires to the upper part of Libya. This, in a few words,
comprehends the whole matter; for it is natural that the country which
the god is nearest to, and over which he is, should be most in want of
water, and that the native river streams (_i.e._, the sources of the
Nile) should be dried up. He attracts the water to himself, and,
having so attracted it, throws it back upon the higher regions. I do
not think, however, that the sun on each occasion discharges the
annual supply of water from the Nile, but that some remains about him.
When the winter grows mild, the sun returns again to the middle of the
heavens, and from that time attracts water equally from all rivers. Up
to this time those other rivers, having much rain-water mixed with
them, flow with full streams; but when the showers fail them, and they
are attracted in summer by the sun, they become weak, and the Nile
alone, being destitute of rain, is hard pressed by the sun’s
attraction in winter. In summer it is equally attracted with all other
waters, but in winter it alone is attracted. Thus I consider the sun
is the cause of these things” (Herodotus, _Euterpe_). From that time
many able minds have given to the world vain conjectures upon this
most interesting subject. The extensive discoveries of modern African
explorers have furnished a much clearer idea of the cause of this
beneficent overflow than the ingenious theory of Herodotus or the
opinions of his wise Grecian friends. During the first few days of the
inundation the water has a green tint, which is supposed to be caused
by the first rush of the descending torrents, carrying off the
stagnant waters from the interior of Darfour. This is thought to be
unwholesome, and the natives store up beforehand what water they may
need for these few days. A red tint follows this, caused by the
surface-washing of red-soiled districts. When the inundation subsides,
the water is of a muddy color, pleasant to drink, and quite innocuous.
The paintings of the old Egyptians represent these three conditions of
the river by waters colored green, red, and blue.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER IX.
A BRIGHT EVENING.
Everybody knows the great sights of Rome by repute, if not by sight,
and it may safely be said that no one cares to hear more of them in
the way of description. Indeed, seeing them first, we almost regret
having heard so much, and find it difficult to free the real object
from the _débris_ of our preconceptions. There is, however, an endless
number of less notable objects, little bits here and there――a stair, a
street, a door-way, or garden, half rough, or almost altogether rough,
but with some beautiful point, like a gem that has had one facet only
cut. These, besides their own beauty, have the charm of freshness. The
stale, useful guide-book, and the weary tribe of tourists, know them
not.
One of these unspoilt places is to be found almost next door to _casa
Ottant’Otto_. It is a chapel attached to an Augustinian convent in
which the changed times have left only one _frate_ with his attendant
lay brother. The chapel has a rough brick floor, and large piers of
stone and mortar supporting, most unnecessarily, the white-washed
roof, and the walls at either side are painted with a few large
frescos of saints. There are two chapels only, one at each side of the
principal altar, adorned with such poor little bravery as the _frati_
and the frequenters of their church――nearly all beggars, or very
poor――could afford. The chapel has, however, one beauty――a Madonna and
Child over the high altar. The Mother, of an angelic and flower-like
beauty, holds the Infant forward toward the spectator, and the Infant,
radiant with a sacred sweetness, extends his right hand, the two
fingers open in benediction.
Mass is said here early in the morning, and a Benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament given every Tuesday evening an hour before _Ave
Maria_, the bells ringing always three times for each service.
The Signora had spoken at home of this little church of Sant’Antonino,
and had laughingly called the attention of the family to the slipshod
ringing of the Angelus, where the different divisions of strokes, the
bell being swung from below, “spilled over,” as she expressed it, in a
number of fainter strokes before and after the regular ones. “But it
is a dear little place to go to,” she said. “There one finds the Lord
as one might have found him when on earth visibly――in the midst of the
poor, with but few followers, and no splendor of circumstance to take
one’s eyes away from him. And sometimes, if one’s disposition be
fortunate, his presence overflows the place.”
Coming homeward alone, one evening, just as the bell rang, Mr. Vane
stepped into the chapel, and, after hesitating a moment inside the
door, went up the side aisle and seated himself in a corner. He had
been there more than once early in the morning, but this was his first
evening visit, and he did not care, for several reasons, to encounter
any of his family, should they come.
The congregation was, as the Signora had said, poor enough. There were
a few old women, with kerchiefs on their heads; a sober, decent man,
who hid himself in a retired corner, and knelt with his hands covering
his face during the whole service; a lame old man, with a worn and
sorrowful face; and a young mother, with an infant in her arms and two
little ones clinging to her skirts.
Not one of these paid the slightest attention to the others, or showed
any consciousness of being, or expecting to be, observed. All looked
toward the altar, on which the Host was now exposed, and all prayed
with a fervor which could not but communicate itself to the spectator;
for it was the quiet fervor of faith and habit, and was not excited by
beautiful sights, or music, or the presence of a crowd. They beheld
the mysterious token of the Holy Presence, and the Madonna――the Lady
of Health, they called her――and worshipped, as untroubled by vanity as
by doubt.
The two little ones whispered and played behind their mother’s back,
but no one was disturbed by them. No one ever hushes the play of
children in a Roman church. The infant crowed and prattled at first,
and pulled the kerchief from its mother’s head; but espying presently
the candles, and hearing the organ and voices, it fell into a trance,
divided between staring and listening, which held it motionless till
the service was over. Rather late came a young woman dressed in an
absurd travesty of the prevailing fashion, with a cheap soiled skirt
trailing behind her, a hideous tunic pulled in about her and tied
behind in that style that gives a woman the appearance of one trying
to walk in a sack, and a bonnet made up of odds and ends of ribbon and
flowers and feathers pitiable to see. But the poor thing had donned
this miserable finery with no worse intention than that any lady has
when assuming Worth’s last costume, and, hearing the voice of prayer
as she passed, had done what the lady of fashion would not, perhaps,
have done――obeyed its summons, and entered modestly and humbly the
presence of God. Perhaps it was the one pleasure in a hard life, that
occasional promenade in what she conceived to be a fine dress; perhaps
she had been pleased, and was thankful for it, as we sometimes are for
pleasures no more harmless; it may be she was disappointed and had
come to find comfort. Who knows?
Mr. Vane looked intently at this girl a few minutes in a way he had,
something penetrating in his scrutiny, yet nothing offensive; for it
was as far removed from impertinent curiosity as from a too familiar
sympathy. Then the Litany recalled him. As he listened to it, he
thought that he had never heard music at once so good and so bad. The
organ was like a sweet, courageous soul in an infirm body. All the
wheezing and creaking of the bellows could not prevent the tones from
being melodious. How many there were in the choir he could not tell.
The absurd little organ-loft over the door, reached by a ladder in
full view at the side, had so high a screen that the singers were
quite hidden. They sounded like a host, however, for their voices
echoed and reverberated from arch to arch and from end to end of the
chapel, so that, without the aid of sight, it was hard to know where
the sound had its origin; and when, at every fourth verse, the priest
and congregation took up the song, the air literally trembled with the
force of it. Mr. Vane fancied he felt his hair stir.
His heart stirred, most certainly; for the power and earnestness of
the singing, which made a mere cultivated vocalism trivial and tame,
and perhaps the sustained high pitch of it――all contained within four
notes――touched the chord of the sublime. They sang the titles of the
Virgin-Mother, calling on her, by every tender and every glorious
privilege of hers, to pray for them; and their prayer was no more the
part of an oft-repeated ceremony, but the cry of souls that might each
or all, in an instant, be struggling in the waves of death. Life
itself grew suddenly awful while he listened, and he remembered that
salvation is to be “worked out in fear and trembling.”
He lifted his eyes to the picture over the altar, and it was no longer
a picture. The figures floated before him in the misty golden light of
many candles, as if there were blood in their veins and meaning in
their faces. The Mother extended her Child, and the Child blessed
them, and both listened. She was the Mystical Rose, the Morning Star;
she was the Help of the weak, the Mother of divine Grace. They sang
her glories, and this listener from a far land forgot the narrow walls
that hemmed him in, and saw only those faces, and felt, as it were,
the universe rock with acclamations. She was a queen, and under her
feet, and about her, bearing her up, were angels, prophets, martyrs,
confessors, and patriarchs. Their wings, wide-spread and waving; their
garments of light, as varied in hue as the rainbow; their radiant
faces were like the crowding clouds of sunset; and over them all,
buoyant, glowing with celestial sweetness and joy, floated the woman
crowned with stars, the only human being whom sin had never dared to
touch. The stars swam about her head like golden bees about a flower;
and as a flower curls its petals down, half hiding, half revealing,
the shining heart which is its source and life, so the Mother bent
above and clasped the Infant. In the centre of this vision was the
Blessed Sacrament exposed, more marvellous than any vision, more real
than any other tangible thing; so that Imagination was bound to Faith
as wings to the shoulders of an angel.
There was a little stir in one corner of the chapel; for the strange
gentleman had nearly fallen from his chair, and a lay brother, passing
at the moment, supported him, and asked what he would have and what
ailed him.
The gentleman replied that nothing ailed him, that he needed nothing
but fresher air, and he immediately recovered so far as to go out
without assistance. He had, indeed, been more self-forgetting and
entranced than fainting, and even when he stood on the sidewalk, with
familiar sights and sounds all about, could hardly remember where he
was. He walked a little way up the hill opposite, and stood looking
absently along a cross-street at the other end of which a new Gothic
church was in progress.
A man who had been standing near approached him with an insinuating
smile. “Our church is getting along rapidly,” he said in English,
appearing to know whom he addressed. “We shall soon have divine
service in it, I hope.”
“Divine service!” repeated Mr. Vane rather absently, not having looked
at the meeting-house, and scarcely knowing what was being said to him.
“What divine service?”
“Oh! the Protestant, of course,” the stranger answered with great
suavity. “I am a minister of the Gospel.”
“What Gospel?” inquired Mr. Vane, looking at the speaker with the air
of one who listens patiently to nonsense.
The man stared. “The Gospel of Christ. There is no other.” He knew who
Mr. Vane was, and had expected to be himself recognized. “It is time
the Gospel should be preached in this wicked and idolatrous city.”
“Is it worse than other cities?” Mr. Vane asked calmly. “Most cities
are wicked, but few cities have saints in them, as this has. We are
told that the wheat and the tares shall grow together till the final
harvest. As for your religion”――he stretched his hand to a load of
straw that was passing, and drew a handful out――“it has no more Gospel
in it than there is wheat in that straw.”
The rattling bells of Sant’Antonino were ringing for the _Tantum
Ergo_. He turned, without another word, and went back, kneeling just
within the door till the Benediction was over.
When he went into the house the Signora was singing the “He was
despised and rejected of men,” from the _Messiah_. Before her on the
piano stood a picture that had just been sent her――her favorite
devotional picture, which she had long been trying to get. Outside a
door, overgrown with vines and weeds, and fastened by a bolt, stood
the Lord, waiting sorrowfully and patiently, listening if his knock
would be answered. Solitude and the damp shades of night were all
about him, the stars looked cold and far away, and the lantern he held
at his side, faintly lighting his face, showed through what rough,
dark ways he had come to that inhospitable heart. Underneath was
written: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.”
The Signora was singing, “And we hid, as it were, our faces from him:
he was despised, and we esteemed him not,” tears rolling down her
face, her eyes fixed on the picture. Finishing, scarcely uttering,
indeed, the last word, she started up and kissed the picture in a
passion, then, hurrying across the room, flung the door wide.
“Open every door in the house!” she cried out.
Bianca, surprised but sympathizing, simply obeyed, and pushed open the
door near her; Isabel exclaimed, “Dear Signora!” and seemed half
frightened. Mr. Vane stood silent and looked at the picture.
“Oh! I know it is figurative and means the heart!” the Signora went
on, as if some one had reproved her. “But when we do something
material, we know that we have done it. When we think we have done a
spiritual good, how can we know that it is worth anything for us――that
the motive was not selfish? If, for example, the Lord should come here
now, poor and hungry, and knock at my door, I would serve him on my
knees; but if I should say I love him, who knows if it would be true?”
“_Signora mia!_” It was a thin and feeble voice, but she heard it
through the passion of her talk, and, turning, saw on the threshold an
old man, who stood trembling, hat in hand, and leaning against the
side of the door for support. He had followed Mr. Vane home from the
chapel to beg for alms, but had not been able to reach or make him
hear or understand before the door was shut. He was going painfully
away again, when it was flung open by the Signora.
She went to him with her hands outstretched. “Enter, in the name of
the Lord,” she said joyfully, and led him to a chair. Kind as she was
invariably to the poor, this one she looked on as almost a miraculous
guest. He had come at the very moment when her heart was breaking to
do some active good, as if her wish had called him, or as if the Lord
she compassionated had taken his form to prove her.
Never was a beggar more welcomed, more tenderly questioned as to his
needs. He was fed as, probably, he had never been fed before; for the
Signora gave him of what had been prepared for her own table, and
served him like an honored guest.
He was pleased, but did not seem to be either surprised or
embarrassed. He ate and drank rather lightly, and, without being
bidden, put in a leathern pocket he wore what was left of the food.
There was no air of greediness in the act, but rather an intimation
that no one would think of eating what he had left, and that what had
been offered him must not be wasted. When Mr. Vane gave him some
decent clothing in place of his faded rags, he was grateful, but by no
means elated. How he looked was to him a matter of the smallest
possible consequence. He could feel hunger, thirst, and cold, but
pride or vanity he knew not. His body, ugly, emaciated, and diseased,
obtained from him no attention, except when it could obscure and
torment his mind with its own torments. He never thought for it, but
waited till it called. When the sisters gave him money, he looked at
them earnestly, with his dim and watery eyes, and wished that the
Madonna might ever accompany them. He did not predict for them riches
or happiness, but only that gracious company. When the Signora bade
him come to her every day for a loaf of bread and a glass of wine, he
thanked her in the same way. Evidently he understood that what he was
receiving was a heavenly charity, of which God was the motive and
reward, and that he had, personally, nothing to do with it, except as
he profited by it. But he had, indeed, more to do with it than he
believed; for it was impossible that kind hearts should remain unmoved
by the sight of such forlorn poverty and suffering.
They questioned him about his life and circumstances. He was quite
alone. One son he had had, who went to some foreign country years
before, and had never been heard of since. He supposed that he must
have died on the passage or immediately on arriving; for Filippo had
promised to write and send for him, or send him money, and nothing but
death would have made him break his promise to his father. His wife
had died more than ten years before; and he had no one left to care
for him. Where was his home? they asked. Well, he slept in the
lodgings provided by the city, because they did not allow people to
sleep in the street. He used to sleep on one of the steps of the
church of _Ara Cœli_ and he liked it better, for he could go off by
himself. Still, the government gave them straw to sleep on, and that
was something. It was rather cold on the steps, even in summer.
“But where do you go in the daytime?” they pursued, finding the idea
of no house or home of any description a hard one to take in.
He went into churches sometimes; at others he sat on a house-step, and
stood under the eaves if it rained. He was indeed able to say, “The
birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes,” but he
had not where to lay his head.
“I cannot listen to any more,” the Signora said. “Do you know, my
friends, what seems my duty to do? Well, I will tell you. At this
moment it seems to me that I should send you all to a hotel, or to any
place you can find, and fill half my rooms with little beds for poor
men, and the other half with beds for poor women, and spend all my
time and money in taking care of them. Gloves, and a bonnet, and all
sorts of luxuries look to me like sins, in the light of this man’s
story; and as to having more than one room for myself, it is
monstrous. Either pack your trunks at once, or send this fascinating
wretch off to sleep on the municipal straw.”
“You can’t send us off; for you have promised to keep us as long as we
stay in Rome,” Isabel said triumphantly. “If you should turn your
house into a refuge, you would be doing evil that good may come, by
breaking a promise.”
When their guest had gone and they were sitting at supper, the
conversation still turned on the Roman poor and their manner of
receiving charity, and Mr. Vane expressed his astonishment that so
little of servility should be mingled with this constant begging.
“You must remember,” the Signora said, “that the mendicant religious
orders have given a sort of dignity to poverty, and, though theirs is
of a different kind, the people do not distinguish. Then among the
many voluntary poor there are two who are particularly cherished in
Rome――Santa Francesca Romana and Blessed Labré. The women sitting at
the church-door could tell you, if you should try to shame them, that
Santa Francesca once sat at a church-door and begged from early
morning till _Ave Maria_; and the poor who ask you for a _centessimo_
in the street know that Labré went about begging, and in clothes as
filthy and ragged as any of theirs. Of course they do not distinguish
the motives, and have, many of them, made a Christian virtue an excuse
for a miserable vice; but, _come si fa?_ as they would say. We cannot
spend our time in arguing with them; and, if we should, it would be
time thrown away. They have no comprehension of what we call
independence; and they think that the blessings they bestow, and the
merit we acquire in giving to them, are worth far more than the paltry
copper coin they receive from us, and that we are, in reality, their
debtors.”
They hurried their supper a little; for they were going out, and it
was already nine o’clock. Before they had risen from the table Marion
came in to accompany them, and the carriages were at the door.
This matter of the carriages, and the division of her party in them,
simple as it seemed, had given the Signora some thought. She was
afraid that some new complication might arise between Marion and
Bianca, and wished earnestly that they should come to an understanding
immediately. Nothing appeared to be easier, yet every day was a
succession of little obstacles to their speaking together in that
accidental privacy which they would naturally prefer. Still, she could
not well put them in a carriage together. It would look too pointed.
There seemed no other way, then, than to take him in the cab with her,
and give the _calèche_ to Mr. Vane and his daughter. That any one
should suppose that an attraction was growing up between her and this
new friend had never occurred to her mind; yet both Mr. Vane and
Bianca saw in every word and act of hers a new proof of it. Any one
with eyes could see that Marion and Bianca liked each other
particularly, the Signora believed. One had but to watch a few
minutes, and it became evident that in company each was always so
placed as to see and, if possible, to hear the other; and though one
might not detect them looking directly, yet sometimes a glance,
passing from one part of the room to another, swooped like a bird, and
caught the one object it wished to seize within its ken. Yet Bianca
provoked her somewhat. The girl was too serious and gentle, too
discouragingly friendly. Why, thought the Signora, with that admirable
good sense which we sometimes have when we think for others――why, when
two persons are admirably fitted for each other, and everybody is
willing, and neither of them can quite set about anything till the
matter is decided; and when the gentleman, not to be too abrupt in his
proposal, or expose himself to an unnecessary mortification, gives the
lady that gentle, questioning glance which says so plainly, “May I
speak?”――why, in the name of common sense, should she not drop her
pretty head in token of assent, and allow at least a hint of a smile
to encourage him? Echo answered, Why?
The upper air was silver with a late moonrise when they went out,
while below the lamps burned goldenly through a velvety darkness.
Their own street was quiet; but there was a crowd on Monte Cavallo.
The glimpse they caught of the piazza of the Trevi fountain in passing
showed it full and bright, and the Corso, when they reached it, was
swarming with people and brilliant with lighted shops.
“What contrasts there are in Roman life, even in its most quiet
times!” Marion said. “I wonder if any one ever was bored here? I doubt
it. How well I remember one day of my last visit, three years ago now!
It was a bright February afternoon, and I went out for a walk in the
Campagna, and saw the ground covered with flowers, and myriads of
birds flying about and singing. Coming back to town out of that
verdant quiet, I went to the Corso. It was roaring with the height of
the last day of Carnival. It looked as if all the world had gone mad
with reckless mirth, and, by a common consent, were pressing to that
one spot. It was with difficulty I got across the street, shaking a
monkey from one arm, and escaping from the lasso of a huge devil on
the other side. A few minutes brought me to the Gesù. There what a
scene! The church all in darkness, except the tribune, where the
Blessed Sacrament was exposed in the midst of a blaze of candles that
shone on a crowd of faces all silent and turned toward the altar. Now
and then the organ played softly; now and then a quiet figure stole in
and found room to kneel where it seemed there was no room for more. It
was so still that every time the heavy curtain lifted there could be
heard through the whole church the rattling of the tin boxes of the
beggars outside. Half an hour later I reached the Corso again, just in
time to see the horses rush by like meteors between two solid walls of
men and women. And, lastly, just as the stars were coming out, burst
the fairy spectacle of the _moccoletti_, when the narrow street became
like a strip cut out of the live sky, thick with dancing stars, and
palpitating with the soft pulses of the Northern Lights, blue, green,
rosy, and white. I could have said it was not ten minutes before it
was all over and I was walking home through a silent, star-lit night.
The next morning at six I went to a church and received the Lenten
ashes on my forehead. I do not wonder that Romans are lazy, for their
imaginations are so kept on the _qui vive_ that muscular action must
necessarily be distasteful. They cannot help regarding life as a
_festa_.”
They reached their destination, a palace close to St. Peter’s. Two
servants stood bowing in the _portone_, and a little girl, the
daughter of one, presented each of the ladies with a bunch of
orange-blossoms. They passed into the court, where a fountain tossed
its sparkling arch of water, sprinkling the greensward, which here
replaced the usual pavement, and went up the grand stairs. The groined
arches over their heads were glowing with color, trees, flowers,
vines, birds, and butterflies――not an inch of wall was unpainted. Pots
of flowering plants stood at the ends of the stairs and at the
landings, and statues showed whitely through their fragrant screens.
Here and there a lamp dropped from a gilt chain, and softly illumined
this superb entrance. At the end of the first entry two servants held
back the crimson velvet curtains of an open door, receiving the
visitors into a chamber furnished in crimson, the walls of crimson and
gold, the ceiling painted with sunset clouds, and a crescent of
candles burning in front of crystal lustres. Reaching the next door,
they looked down a vista composed of twelve or fourteen rooms, all
softly lighted except the last, which was brilliant. The light struck
along on door after door, all gilded, and set with mirrors at one side
and paintings at the other, the curtains of silk or velvet drawn back
on gilt spears or arrows. The floors were mostly uncovered, some of
them of rare marbles or mosaics; a few were partially covered with
thick Persian mats or carpets. One room was furnished in gold-colored
satin, and profusely ornamented with the most delicate porcelain; a
second was of a rich sea-green, sparkling all through with crystal
ornaments, the chandelier of Venetian glass, the cornice made of large
shells, and the ceiling painted in coral branches, tangled full of
long grasses. Another chamber, of deep blue, was rich in old
porcelain; another, hung with tapestry, bristled with old armor, and
every sort of sword and knife arranged in figures, daisies of
radiating daggers, and swords and shields made into mimic suns.
Everywhere that gold could be it was lavished――on doors and windows
and cornices; and one room had the whole panelling breast-high, and
the large fireplace, heavily gilded.
In the last room they found the people they had come to see――a young
couple as bright and pretty as a pair of canaries in their gilded
cage.
There was no other company except a white-haired old _canonico_, who
had an apartment in the palace, and who was in some way related to the
family. To this clergyman Bianca, at first a little shy among
strangers, took immediately, and, seated by his side, became at once
on the most friendly terms with him. His sweet and dignified manner,
and the pleasure he showed in her evident confidence, were very
pleasant to see. She told him all her story that could be told to any
one, what she had seen and what she wished to see, and answered his
questions with a childlike frankness; and, in return, he showed his
interest in her by the number of his questions, and promised her all
sorts of favors.
There was something peculiarly attractive and beautiful in this man,
in whom were united the sacredness of a holy vocation, the
venerableness of age and of a pure and unstained character, and the
graciousness of an accomplished gentleman.
“I think you will all like to hear of something which I saw at the
Vatican this morning,” he said when the conversation became more
general. “I was presenting two French ladies. The audience was small,
and among the persons present were the superior of the nuns of the
Trinità dei Monti, and a younger nun of her community who had come
with her as companion. This young nun had for several years been
afflicted with a stiffening of the right hand and arm which drew them
close to the breast, rendering them of course perfectly useless as
well as painful. Before starting, the superior had told her to put a
black glove on this right hand, so that it should not show so much, as
her black habit and veil would render it less prominent than if it
were bare; but when they had gone a part of the way the nun begged
permission to take the glove off. The superior objected, saying that
it might be unpleasant to the Holy Father to see her hand in that
position, the fingers stiffened as they were. The nun said nothing for
a while, but, when they had nearly reached the Vatican, begged again,
still more earnestly, to be permitted to remove the glove. This time
the superior consented. Well, they went in, and the audience was about
over, when, in giving his benediction, the Pope observed that the
young nun blessed herself with her left hand.
“‘_Filuola mia_, why do you not bless yourself with your right hand?’
he asked.
“‘_Beato padre_,’ she replied, ‘I cannot move my right hand; but if
you would do me the grace――’ She said no more, but looked at him with
imploring eyes.
“He was silent a moment, then he said, ‘Pray!’ and covered his face
with his hands, as if praying or recollecting himself. Looking at her
again then, he told her to bless herself with her right hand.
“‘But, _santo padre_, I cannot move my right hand,’ she said.
“He persisted: ‘Nevertheless, do as I bid you.’
“The superior took the nun’s right hand, and, lifting it for her, made
a sort of cross with it.
“‘Pray again,’ said the Holy Father, and hid his face a second time,
and seemed to pray.
“‘Now bless yourself with your right hand, and do it without help,’ he
said.
“She immediately lifted her hand and made the sign of the cross on her
forehead and breast as freely as if nothing had ever ailed her. She
was cured.”
The prelate told his story with simplicity and in a soft and slightly
tremulous voice, affected by the sacred and tender scene he had so
lately witnessed, and his audience exclaimed with delight. None of
them, except the two American gentlemen and Isabel, were at all
surprised. Too many such tales are known in Rome of Pius IX. to excite
astonishment.
“I have seen the good nun this afternoon,” he continued, “and she is
perfectly happy. She can play on the piano again, and do everything
just as before.”
Finishing, he nodded toward the door, where a servant was standing,
and presently rose to take leave. His evening visits never exceeded an
hour, and, since he did not like to disturb the pleasure of social
intercourse with the thought of going, a servant was always instructed
to intimate to him when the hour was past.
“The only parting which I wish to foresee and prepare for is the final
one,” he said smilingly.
“What a terrible sound that expression ‘final parting’ has!” Bianca
exclaimed, seeming to be already pained at the thought of losing this
new friend.
“That is because you interpret it wrongly,” he replied, with a kind
glance at her. “You know it does not mean everlasting separation, but
that there are to be no more partings, because after the next meeting
we need never part again. It is simply the end of a long pain.”
He gave her his hand, which she kissed as naturally as an Italian
would have done, though it was the first time she had rendered that
homage to any one.
When he had gone, the company went up to the _loggia_, which was one
of the attractions of the house.
“You see we have a private stairway,” the Contessa M―――― said, opening
a narrow door hidden in the panelling of the room they had been
sitting in. “But it is so very narrow, enclosed in the thickness of
the wall, that I will not ask you to go by it.”
“I do wish she would let us go this way, though,” Isabel whispered to
the Signora. “How romantic it is! Who knows who may have slipped up or
down that stair in the wall, who may have stood listening behind the
panel while people were talking in the _sala_, and what may have been
revealed or hidden there? It is like a chapter out of a tragical
story――one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s, for example. Do you think we might not
go up?”
Their hostess had, however, already led the way to a more commodious
stair, and they could but follow. Besides, it is only in very romantic
stories that ladies in beautiful silk and gauze dresses can go through
secret and narrow stairways, cobwebbed attics, and dusty, haunted
chambers, without detriment to their toilets, and the young _contessa_
wore that evening a lace flounce which she might not care to injure
even for the sake of hospitality.
They passed through room after room, each worthy of a palace, mounted
stair after stair, one servant preceding them with a lamp, and another
following, walked over the roof of a part of the palace, climbed
another stair, and came out on the _loggia_, or highest house-top.
The scene was enchanting; for the whole city was visible, and, by one
of those kaleidoscopic changes constantly seen in a town built on
hills, the city looked from here lo be situated in a round basin
rising evenly on all sides to the tree-fringed horizon. The grand
front of St. Peter’s was scarcely a stone’s throw from them,
apparently, and the two fountains of the moonlighted piazza stood
wavering and white. It was not difficult to imagine them two angels
standing there with garments softly waving in the night air.
Mr. Vane paused a moment at the Signora’s side. “I perceive more
clearly every day why you may well be unwilling to leave Rome,” he
said. “I wonder I could ever have expected it.”
“And yet it never appeared to me easier,” she replied very gently. “I
have had all the happiness that can be had here, and ‘enough is as
good as a feast,’ you know.”
She meant to please him, yet she fancied that he frowned slightly. He
said no more, however, but stood looking about, and, after a moment,
joined Isabel, with whom the young couple were having a lively
conversation.
The Signora felt hurt. It seemed that Mr. Vane was losing confidence
in her and becoming every day more distant. For a week or more she had
felt that he was withdrawing his friendship from her, and changing in
many ways. When had she heard a jest from him, or seen in him that
quiet and deep contentment which he had shown at first? She had half a
mind to ask him what the matter was. Perhaps she would some time, if
opportunity favored. Meantime, it would be wiser not to distress
herself. And just as she came to this conclusion an interpretation of
his remark suggested itself to her that made the blood rush to her
face painfully. Had he remembered with annoyance that half-proposal of
his, and, either to remove any lingering pity she might feel for him
or to save his own pride, wished her to understand that it had been
the impulse of the moment, and that he no longer entertained the wish
to be more than a friend to her? In such a case her reply, with its
hint of a possible change in her, had been most unfortunate.
There was one moment of cruel doubt and mortification, then she put
the subject resolutely away. “I have been neither unkind nor bold nor
dishonorable, and I have therefore nothing to be ashamed of,” she said
to herself.
Meantime, Marion had stopped near Bianca, who stood looking at her
father and the Signora. “How beautiful the Signora is!” he said. “Do
you see that the golden tinge in her hair is visible even in the
moonlight? And her eyes are the color of the Borghese violets she
loves so much. I sometimes think that a rather tall and noble-looking
woman like her should always be _blonde_, and that dark eyes belong to
the slight and graceful ones.”
“We have always thought her beautiful,” she replied. “But we are so
fond of her that we should admire her if no one else did. You must
remember how we always praised her to you.”
He had been wondering how she would like having the Signora for a
step-mother, and if she saw the likelihood of it. Perceiving a slight
reserve in her speech, he did not pursue the subject, but stood
looking at her a moment. Since he was silent, she glanced up in his
face to see what it meant――if he were dissatisfied, perhaps, with her
reply, or if he had taken any notice of it. He was certainly taking
notice of her, and so close a notice that her eyes dropped again under
it.
A quick glance showed him that he should have another minute
uninterrupted with her, and he spoke: “Dear Bianca, I came to Europe
to seek you. When I found in Rome that you had gone into the country
for a visit, I could not wait, but followed you. I went to your
lodgings in Frascati, and learned that you had all gone up to
Tusculum. I meant to watch, and meet you as you came down, and know by
your first glance at me if I was as welcome as I could wish to be. I
had with me the spy-glass that I always take into the country, and, as
I swept the country with it, I espied a little party standing under
the wall of the Cappucini villa on the Tusculan hill. One of their
number had climbed the steps of the shrine there to decorate it, and,
just as I recognized her, she turned and stepped down toward me. The
glass was so clear and strong that she seemed stepping within my
reach, and to me. I accepted it as a good omen, and returned to Rome
content. I think you know me well enough to be sure that this is no
trifling fancy, and that, if you can put your hand in mine, with the
help of God, I will never allow you to regret it. Was my omen false?”
She listened with her lovely face lifted and lighted, and, when he
ended, uttered a soft little exclamation, “O Marion!” and gave him her
hand.
“How beautiful St. Peter’s is by this light!” Mr. Vane said, glancing
round at them from the other side of the _loggia_, whither he had
gone.
His glance became a gaze as he saw them coming toward him; for Marion
held openly the hand that Bianca had given him, and led her to her
father. “Are you willing, sir?” he asked in a low voice.
The others were about joining them, and Mr. Vane could only press
their two hands together. He glanced sharply at the Signora as she
approached, and saw her face flash out in a swift smile when she
caught sight of their position.
“I have been a fool,” he muttered.
“Everything is beautiful by this light,” Marion said, with a smile
that gave a double meaning to his rather tardy answer.
When they started for home, they found that, by some happy mistake,
the cab had been sent away, and there was no other in sight, so that
the simplest way was for them all to return in the _calèche_, crowding
a little. The crowding was effected by Bianca sitting on the front
seat between her father and lover. Leaning back there, she gave
herself up to a delicious silence, only half-listening, except when
Marion spoke, then drinking in every word. What a wonderful thing it
was that here, by her side, sat her future husband, the man to whom
she was to be united for ever and ever! Her life, as she thought,
swung round into a harmony unknown to it for a long time, never known
in its perfection till now. Looking forward, she had no fear. Nothing
but death could separate them, and death must come to all. Let it come
sooner or later, when God should appoint; she could bear it for him or
for herself. She was full of courage and thankfulness, and ready now
to live a full life, and begin to do some good in the world.
Mr. Vane spoke of the young woman he had seen that afternoon in the
little church of Sant’Antonino. “She made an impression on me,” he
said. “She set me thinking; or, rather, the sight of her condensed
some floating impressions in my mind into thoughts. She was a figure
that almost any well-dressed lady or gentleman would smile at
involuntarily, if they did not pity her. But looking into her face,
when she was serious and thought herself unobserved, I found it an
uncommon one. I fancied there was something enthusiastic and aspiring
in her, and that her ridiculous dress was an abortive expression of a
fine impulse. She wanted to do or be something more and better than
she had yet done or been; and having, perhaps, no sympathy from any
one, and no education to assist her, knew not how to act, and thought
more of getting out of the position she was in than of choosing
properly what change she should make. Fancy how easily a girl of
uneducated mind and tastes, and of an enthusiastic disposition, might
make such an absurd attempt. She is, perhaps, disgusted with the
sordidness and vulgarity of her life, and believes that the ideal life
is that which appears beautiful to the eyes. She has heard, maybe has
read, a little of great deeds and heroic adventures, and she
associates them always with the well-dressed and the high-living. She
thinks, very likely, that the noble have always noble thoughts, and
that beautiful sentiments go with beautiful dresses. And so the poor
thing cuts her dowdy petticoat into a train, and puts a cheap feather
in her hat, and fancies that she is nearer the sublime. I don’t
believe she really sees the trumpery things when she puts them on. She
is looking at them through a thousand visions, and sees the velvet
train of some heroine, and the jewelled cap and feather she wore. Poor
thing! These visions of hers cannot, however, hide the sneering laugh
from her, nor make her deaf to the scornful word; and I have an
impression that to-night she took off her stage-robes with a bitter
heart――unless, indeed, the Benediction consoled her.”
Isabel looked at her father with a steady and serious gaze while he
was speaking, and, the moment he ended, said to him with an air of
conviction: “Papa, you have the best heart in the world.”
He laughed a little, but seemed to be touched by this tribute. “I am
glad you think so, my daughter,” he said. “Indeed, I am particularly
glad just now, for a reason I will tell you, if you come here a
moment.”
She leaned forward instantly on to his knees, and put her cheek close
to his face.
“Because,” he whispered, “my other daughter thinks that there’s a
certain heart worth more than mine.”
“Whose?” she demanded in an indignant whisper.
“Marion’s.”
“You don’t mean――” she exclaimed, and glanced round at her sister.
“You’re the only one of the family who didn’t know it, and I don’t
want you slighted,” he replied. “It’s a settled affair.”
Isabel threw her arms around her sister’s neck and kissed her. “I
never dreamed of such a thing,” she said; “but I am delighted all the
same. You’re a million times welcome into the family, Marion. But I
want you to understand that you are not better than papa.”
By this they had reached home, just as the soft bells of their
basilica were striking midnight.
When they had said good-night to Marion and gone up-stairs, all turned
with smiling faces to Bianca, and gathered about her, waiting one
moment to see who should speak first, or if the congratulation was to
be silent. By some slight motion or look she imposed silence, at the
same time that her face expressed the sweetest happiness and
gratitude.
“That dear _canonico_ has given me an invitation for us all to go next
week and hear his Mass in the crypt of St. Peter’s,” she said. “Our
number is just right; for only five can go at a time. We are to be
there at eight o’clock.”
“Am I included?” Mr. Vane asked.
“O papa!” Bianca turned to him, and, putting her hand in his arm,
leaned against his shoulder. No plan of hers could be perfect that did
not include him; yet the cruel thought flashed through her mind, in
spite of her love for him, that in the crypt of St. Peter, next to
Calvary the most regally sacred spot on earth, a Protestant was
singularly out of place, and that no one should enter there who did
not bow to St. Peter as the Prince of the Apostles and the holder of
the awful keys.
The question produced a momentary painful embarrassment in the others,
too, by reminding them strongly of that difference of faith which they
sometimes were able to quite forget.
“My little girl must not have a cloud on her sky to-night,” the father
said tenderly. “What is wanting to your happiness, Bianca?”
“That you should be a Catholic,” she replied, trembling; for, with all
their affection and confidence, she had never presumed to speak to him
on the subject.
“You have your wish,” he answered.
She looked at him doubtfully, but did not dare to say a word.
“I am in earnest, children,” he said, feeling a hand clinging to his
other arm. “I was baptized this morning at the American College.”
Not a word was said, but on either side his daughters surrounded him
with their arms, and pressed their faces to his breast.
When at length they remembered to look for the Signora, she had
disappeared.
TO BE CONTINUED.
DR. KNOX ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.[153]
The disjointed state of Christendom, resulting from the divisions
existing among those who profess the Christian religion, whether we
regard it in the light of reason or of faith, is both grievous and
deplorable. Much labor has been expended on the removal of the causes
which have produced these divisions, at different periods in the
history of the Christian Church. In recent times――not to speak of the
long past, for the evil is of remote date――several efforts have been
made to bring about the return of those who, three centuries ago, went
out from the sacred fold of the Catholic Church. Men of genius,
learning, and virtue took a leading part in some of these movements;
nevertheless, they did not meet with any notable success. The best
known of these, perhaps, was the one made in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, in which the celebrated Leibnitz and the great
Bossuet were the principal actors engaged. If this effort was not
otherwise fruitful, it at least was the occasion of their contributing
two of the most valuable works on the subject――_The System of
Theology_, by the German philosopher, and _The Exposition of the
Catholic Faith_, by the Bishop of Meaux. In the Established Church of
England, in our own day, a number of its members, especially among the
clergy, profess to seek and to labor for what they call “a corporate
union” with the Catholic Church. So far as one can see up to this
moment, though no one can tell what may happen, there has been in this
direction no promise of great results. In this country the efforts for
unity have taken a more limited sphere for their activity, and ever
and anon there is a stir made in public about a union among
Protestants, confined, however, to those who are called
“evangelicals.”
The unperverted religious sentiment naturally yearns after an
all-embracing and real unity. Man’s heart has sympathies which cannot
be confined to himself, or to a family, or to a nation, or to a race.
Only when man is so devoted to purposes which embrace the whole human
race as to raise him above all lower instincts of his nature, does he
become conscious of his true dignity and of the greatness of his
destiny. Humanity is a word that has a real meaning, conveying a great
truth, and it is fraught with mysterious power. These aspirations of
the soul are the workmanship of God, and Christianity, as a universal
religion, must aim at directing them to their proper objects. For
Christianity is the universal religion, or it is nothing.
The symptoms of unrest which manifest themselves among those
Christians who are divided up into hostile sects are a sign of a noble
life stirring within their souls――a life which cannot contemplate with
joy the wranglings of hostile creeds. These aspirations after that
unity which will bind all men, without distinction of race,
nationality, or color, into one common brotherhood of love――these
cravings of the heart to act for universal ends, for the realization
of God’s kingdom upon earth――are the evidences of a Christian spirit
which seeks for a clearer vision and a closer communion with the true
church of Christ.
With these views and in this spirit, which are in harmony with his
own, we purpose to consider the interesting and important article of
Dr. Knox on “The Organic Unity of the Church.”
WHAT IS THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH, ACCORDING TO DR. KNOX?
Here is his answer to this question in his own words:
“First, as to the nature of the expected church unity and
the elements that compose it. We assert, in the general,
that it is the highest possible unity. Christ prayed that
his disciples might be made _perfect_ in one. The adjective
τέλειος is defined by Robinson as something ‘complete, full,
perfect, deficient in nothing.’ The word used by the Saviour
is τελειωμένοι, and had an adverbial sense, so that Robinson
would have us read: ‘That they may be perfected so as to be
one――_i.e._, that they may be perfectly united in one.’
Tholuck says the idea of unity is expressed in a stronger
way here than elsewhere――‘it is a perfect unity.’ Other
authorities might be cited as showing that the unity in the
divine thought, and which ought to be in our own, is a
complete unity, in distinction from one that is partial,
unsymmetrical, ineffective.”
That the unity which makes the church of Christ one “is the highest
possible unity” there can be no manner of doubt, since its animating
principle is that unity which springs from the relation subsisting
between Christ and his Father. This relation which unites Christ to
the Father, and the church to Christ, and the members of the church to
the Father through Christ in most perfect unity, is a unity than which
a higher and more perfect cannot be conceived, for it springs
immediately from the divine Essence. The language of Christ’s prayer
for unity makes this evident beyond all dispute. “That they,” he says,
“all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee.” Again: “That
they may be one, as we also are one.” Once more: “I in them, and thou
in me: that they may be made perfect in one.” Finally: “That the love
wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.”[154]
Once would have been doubtless sufficient to have rendered this
petition of Christ effective, yet he repeats the same in almost every
sentence in this memorable and most solemn prayer. What else could
have been Christ’s purpose, in the reiteration of his petition for
unity, than to explain clearly his meaning, to make manifest the
earnestness of his desire for it, and to impress upon his disciples
its transcendent importance?
But this relation subsisting between Christ and his Father, and which
is the type of the essence of the church, is an essential,
indivisible, and indestructible relation. The relation, therefore,
existing between Christ and his church and her members, from which her
unity springs, is also essential. That is, aside from this unity, the
church cannot be a subject even of thought――is unthinkable. Were it
possible that it should be lost for a moment, the church, at the
instant her unity was lost, would no longer exist. For the unity of
the church is not derived from her organism, but, on the contrary, the
organism of the church is derived from her unity, which has its rise
in that essential, indwelling, and abiding presence of the invisible
relation which exists between Christ and his Father: “I in them, and
thou in me: that they may be made perfect in one.” Just as the life of
the soul springs from the presence of the divine Essence, and this
life pervades and sustains the whole body and its members, so, in like
manner, the unity of the church, which springs from the presence of
this divine relation, pervades and sustains the whole church and her
members. The unity of the church is also indivisible. Multitudes may
leave the church, but their absence does not break her unity. Many may
lose the unity of the church, but it never can be lost from the
church. Thousands may deny the unity of the church, but it will
continue to exist in spite of their denial. In the nature of perfect
unity, one and indivisible are correlative; for each of its parts
contains and acts with the force of the whole. As God is everywhere
present in the world, and the soul everywhere present in the body, so
the unity of the church is everywhere present and pervades the whole
body of the church. It is also an indestructible unity. For whatsoever
may be the action of the lapse of time or the deeds of men, they can
neither disorganize, reduce, nor overthrow it. Being divine in its
nature, the hand of man may menace, but it is powerless to destroy the
unity of the church. It will remain, after men have done their utmost
and worst against it, as it was before.
This unity in which the Divinity dwells is the primal source of the
life of the church, and, through her, of each and all of her members;
is the type and exemplar of the perfect organism in which each and all
of her acts proceed from one formal principle and one central point of
active force. The church, therefore, may be defined, in the sense of
Christ’s prayer, as that visible, organized body, in which the members
are made one with God and with each other in Christ, by a
participation of the invisible communion existing between Christ and
his Father in the unity of the divine Essence.
In all this we have added nothing to the above passage from our author
explanatory of “the expected church unity.” What we have done was to
render its meaning more explicit, and this will be readily
acknowledged in reading his own explanation, as follows:
“The starting-point, of course, is unity of faith,
especially faith in Christ. The union of believers to one
another results from their union to a common Lord and
Saviour: ‘I in them, and thou in me: that they may be made
perfect in one.’ The second element of a true unity is love.
We need not dwell here, for it is a point conceded. The
third element is oneness of aim and effort. The
conversations and prayer of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth of John show that faith and love in Christian
hearts are with a view to definite results. In the fifteenth
chapter it is said: ‘He that abideth in me, and I in him,
the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do
nothing.’ And in the seventeenth chapter this fruit and this
doing are declared to be the glorifying of Christ, and, as
contributing to that, the bringing the world to believe in
him. All highest glory to God and good to man are contained
in believing and loving the Lord Jesus. All the fruits of
the Spirit enumerated by Paul in Galatians depend from the
branch that abideth in Christ the vine. No man can be in
Christ by faith without wishing all others to be――without
praying the prayer of Jesus, and working the work of Jesus,
that they may be. And this being the effect on all real
disciples, it is clear that a union of faith and love is
also a union of aim and effort.
“We are prepared to say, in the fourth place, that the one
thing remaining to render this union complete――a perfect
unity, such as Christ prayed for――is oneness of
organization. By organization is meant, as the word imports,
everything pertaining to the outward structure and furniture
of the church――its government, methods of operation,
ordinances, worship, etc.”
DR. KNOX ON THE NECESSITY OF THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
“We can but observe,” he says, “in the first place, that
most of the good we know in this world is connected with
organization, and is nothing without it. It is the nature of
all life to organize, and the most perfect of organisms is
that which we have in the human form――Scriptural type, by
the way, of the organization belonging to the spiritual life
that is in Christ’s body, the church. No one thinks it
necessary to depreciate the organic part of man in order to
exalt that which is intellectual and moral.… It is not
enough to say of human life in the general: ‘What we want is
good-will, right understanding between man and man――no
matter about society and government. That is merely exterior
and organic; we wish to do with essentials.’ For all the
ends of social welfare it has ever been found that organized
society _is_ one of the essentials, and without it the
public weal cannot be promoted.”
“It is the nature of all life to organize.” Precisely so. Perhaps it
would be more accurate to say that the nature of all life is organic;
for life and organism are related to each other as cause and effect,
and hence are inseparable. Christianity unorganized would be a pure
nonentity. Christianity is a life――specific life; it is therefore by
its very nature specific, visible, organic.
“For all the ends of social welfare it has ever been found that
organized society is one of the essentials, and without it the public
weal cannot be promoted.” Organized society is essential to all life,
and no less essential to its own defence and preservation; for what
would have become of Christianity without organization when the
colossal power of the Roman Empire was set to work to exterminate it?
Christianity would have been strangled in its cradle. What would have
become of Christianity unorganized when the barbarians from the North
overthrew the Roman Empire? Christianity would have been swept from
the face of the earth. What would have been the issue if Christianity
had been left to individual effort when the Moslems attacked Europe
and threatened to feed their horses from the altars of Christian
churches? Why, Europe would be to-day Mohammedan, and, if any
Christians were left, they would be at the mercy, as the Servians
were, of the Grand Turk. Christianity unorganized, facing an
organized, hostile, powerful force, would have been as chaff before
the wind.
THE SECOND REASON FOR CHURCH UNITY.
“Especially,” says Dr. Knox, “ought we to note how this fact
of exterior organization has been recognized in the
provision for the general _spiritual_ well-being. If you say
the elements of that well-being are primarily interior and
spiritual, such as love, faith, fellowship, yet as
positively are they never dispersed from the exterior and
physical――that is, from the organism through which they
obtain their manifestation. The church is that organism.
Hence whenever, under apostolic preaching, there was in any
community the beginning of Christian knowledge, faith,
obedience, there was the immediate beginning of a Christian
church.… In all their epistles and prayers it was the
_visible_ as well as vital thing――the church at Rome,
Ephesus, Corinth――which they have in their eye as an object
of beauty and blessedness: ‘Now ye are the body of Christ
and members in particular, ye are all baptized into one
body.’… Their virtual unity must become visible; their
essential unity, organic unity.”
In this passage there is laid down a most important principle: “The
interior and spiritual are never dispersed from the interior and
physical.” That is, an invisible church is an absurdity, and a simple
interior piety a dream. On this principle we would change the last
sentence, and make it read thus: “Their virtual unity is always
visible; their essential unity, organic unity.”
THE THIRD REASON FOR UNITY IS EXPRESSED AS FOLLOWS:
“Just in ratio that effort for a common end becomes earnest and
efficient does it tend to a common organized method.” Grant it, we
say, and it follows that just in ratio as the common end is important,
so will the effort become earnest and efficient in producing a common
organized method for its realization. But no greater or more important
end than the one that Christ came upon earth to realize, which was the
salvation of the world, can be imagined. Hence Christ established his
church as a common organized method for the realization of his divine
mission; and it follows that, so far as his power extends, he would be
with it, watch over it, and protect it until it accomplished the
purpose for which he had called it into existence. And those who would
subvert the church established by Christ, judged by this principle,
really attempt, whatever may be their profession, to overthrow
Christianity.
DR. KNOX’S FOURTH REASON FOR THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
“Oneness of organization is indispensable to oneness of
manifestation. The union for which Christ prayed is apparent
as well as actual――‘perfect in one, that the world may know
that thou hast sent me.’ Now, it is certain that the
numerous church organizations are in apparent conflict with
unity. They are regarded by multitudes as diverse, and even
adverse, corporations. Allow that this, to a great extent,
is only in appearance; yet just to that extent it is an
evil. The impression is not the one Christ seeks of an
impressive unity. And ecclesiastical history reveals how
often the evil appearance has been identical with the actual
evil. The setting up of separate church establishments tends
inevitably to jealousy, strife, ambition, alienation, as the
universal experiment proves.”
Every sentence almost of the above passage is a death-blow to the
entire movement of Protestantism from its origin as a system of
religion. As its very name signifies, it began in denial, and its
fertility is not in the direction of unity and oneness of
organization, but in that of breeding strifes, sowing discords, and
exciting enmities. New sects are ever on the increase in its bosom,
new church organizations are set up in the same sect against each
other, and its main drift is plainly in the direction of mere
individualism, ending in entire negation. “O Protestantism!” exclaims
one of its adherents, “has it, then, at last come to this with thee,
that thy disciples protest against all religion? Facts which are
before the eyes of the whole world declare aloud that this
signification of thy name is no idle play upon words, though I know
that this confession will excite a flame of indignation against
myself.”[155]
There is one point in the above extract on which we must differ from
the learned doctor, and that is where he maintains that “the conflict
with unity” among Protestants is “apparent” and not “adverse”; and
here are some of our grounds:
This apparent unity among Protestants has its centre and source
elsewhere. For every one of the revealed truths of Christianity which
they maintain as fundamental, conceding for the moment that they are
even agreed upon these, will be found in the last analysis to depend
upon the authority of the Catholic Church. For example, the Bible is
to Protestants the sole source of all revealed truth, and the only
rule of faith. Now, that the Protestants received from the Catholic
Church the Bible is a simple historical fact. Again, how do they know
that the book called the Bible contains the whole of the inspired
written word of God, and nothing else? Only from the unimpeachable
witness and guardian of the Bible――the Catholic Church. Take from
under the truths of Christianity, which Protestants still retain, the
logical support of the Catholic Church, and Protestantism, as a system
of religion, in ratio as men begin to feel the necessity of rendering
to themselves a rational account of their religious convictions, will
be abandoned and fall into utter ruin. And whatever fruits of
Christian virtue or flowers of piety grow on the tree of
Protestantism, they are parasitic; for the sap which gives life to the
tree is derived from its roots, which are nourished in the soil of the
garden, to their sight concealed, of the Catholic Church. In this
virtual relation to the Catholic Church lies the hope of the salvation
of those Protestants who are really in good faith. The unity among
Protestants, therefore, is only “apparent,” while its conflicts with
unity are real and “adverse.”
For the moment you enter on an examination of those doctrines in
detail, regarding which, to use the language of this author, “there is
throughout evangelical Christendom a substantial unity,” that instant
innumerable and irreconcilable differences and contradictions arise.
There exists among what are called evangelical Protestants a vague and
affective desire for unity, but it is only strong enough to bring them
together occasionally to display before the public their complete lack
of real unity. They may even be led by it to recite the Apostles’
Creed, as though they were of accord in their belief as to the meaning
of its contents; but let no further strain be put upon their bond of
unity, lest it should snap into a thousand pieces, revealing, in the
words of our author, “different organic bodies with features facing
all ways, hands striking one against another, feet moving off in
independent directions, and lips uttering the whole alphabet of
shibboleths.” Grapes are not gathered of thorns.
DR. KNOX’S FIFTH REASON FOR UNITY.
“Organic unity,” he says, “is a required element in the _moral power_
the church is yet to wield. The Romish Church has borrowed untold
strength from this source――one in name and form the world over.”
Dr. Knox’s evidently reluctant compliment to the Catholic Church ought
not to be passed by without due recognition. It is a very high
compliment: the highest possible compliment, according to his own
showing. For he has laid down the principle that “the interior and
spiritual are never dispersed from the exterior and physical.” Now, as
the Catholic Church is “the world over one in name and form”――that is,
in “the exterior and physical”――it follows she must be one in “the
interior and spiritual,” as the former are never “dispersed from” the
latter. The Catholic Church, therefore, is truly the church of Christ,
as she alone is “perfect in one.” She alone possesses the inward and
outward notes of that unity which Dr. Knox and those who agree with
him are expecting to come as the ideal Christian Church. They have
only to work out their premise to its logical conclusion to be landed
in the bosom of the Catholic Church, which is the realization upon
earth, so far as human nature will allow, of the ideal Christian
Church.
“If her [the Catholic Church’s] actual unity,” he proceeds to say,
“had answered to her organic, Protestantism must needs have been still
heavier armed to make head against her.” This is not a reasonable
supposition. Prior to the sixteenth century the actual unity of the
Catholic Church did answer to her organic, and she was in a fair way
to Christianize and civilize the whole world. But the religious
secession started by Luther and his followers stopped the church in
her course, and set Christians against Christians, broke up the
fraternity of Christian nations, and sowed everywhere the seeds of
dispute, enmities, and wars in the bosom of Christendom. Millions of
her children, backed up by political powers, turned against the
church, and concentrated their attacks chiefly in the direction of the
overthrow of the Roman See, and the destruction of the centre and
guardian of the unity of her organization, the Roman Pontiff. If her
vital energies and vast resources were turned towards where the
attacks were the fiercest, in order to meet and repel their effects,
this was, in the nature of the situation, a necessity, and furnishes
no ground for an accusation. But God in his providence turns the
enemies of his church into instruments of her glory; for, as in
repelling the errors of Arius and his adherents, the church was
necessitated to define, and for ever establish beyond all dispute, her
belief in the divinity of Christ, so in like manner, in her defence
against the errors of Luther and his followers, she was compelled to
settle beyond dispute all doubt of the authority, the rights, and
prerogatives communicated by Christ to his Apostle Peter and to the
successors of his see, the Roman Pontiffs. The bark of Peter has had
to battle through a threatening storm which has lasted three
centuries, but she has come out of the danger in perfect safety, with
increased strength and renewed splendor. For her “organic unity,”
thanks to the action of Protestantism, being greatly perfected, her
“actual unity” now can display itself with a correspondingly-increased
vigor and vitality. Her interior, spiritual beauty will be brought out
more clearly to the sight of the world, attracting all souls; for
whatever may be said of the power and majesty of her “name and form
the world over,” the real beauty and glory of the church, like that of
the king’s daughter, “is all within.” The glory of this new phase of
the church, of which it seems Dr. Knox has had a glimpse, though he
does not appear to recognize her features, he expresses in the
following manner: “But when the day dawns that shall give us a visible
springing from an interior unity, that will be a spectacle like the
sign of the Son of Man in the heavens.”
After the compliment which we have already noticed, it would be
unusual if the holy Church did not receive some bitter words of abuse.
Here they are in the concluding lines of the paragraph under notice:
“Though Satan, in the person of Rome and Rationalism,
‘dilated stood,’ as Milton describes him in his attitude
towards Gabriel,
“‘Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved,’
“he would know that sign, as when Gabriel showed him the
golden scales aloft, and he
“‘Fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.’”
This language belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when
the sectaries of that period universally held that the pope was
Antichrist, and the Catholic Church his kingdom. It might be heard
from the mouth of a ranter in Exeter Hall, or, in days gone by, in the
Broadway Tabernacle, or come from the pen of the vaticinating Dr.
Cummings, and not excite surprise; but we submit that such language is
unworthy of the cause which Dr. Knox so ably advocates, and is in
discord with the whole tenor of his article, which, we gladly
acknowledge, breathes throughout a more candid and a better spirit.
THE SIXTH REASON FOR UNITY.
“This is found,” he says, “in that element of efficiency that lies in
economy.” This is an important element, but we have already encroached
beyond our limits, and must hasten to our close. The article proceeds
to show that there is a “rapidly-increasing unity of faith, affection,
and aim” among evangelical Christians, and details the grounds for the
hope of a “prospective unity of organization,” explaining “the causes
at work to produce it.”
ACCORDING TO DR. KNOX, THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH ONCE EXISTED.
“Furthermore,” he continues, “the church has once been in
the perfect unity we are advocating. The members ‘continued
steadfast in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in
breaking of bread, and in prayers’ (Acts, ii. 42). The
unity, according to this record, began in theological
doctrine, but extended to outward organization (fellowship),
to visible sacraments (breaking of bread), and forms of
worship (prayers). This was what Christ had just before
prayed for a making perfect in one; a unity, interior and
exterior, spiritual and organic.”
In another passage he describes the discordant elements of
Protestantism, and draws, without knowing it, the portrait of the
actual Catholic Church, and contrasts her perfect unity with the
divisions of the Protestant sects. Here it is:
“In the primitive church, when Christ would have the body
constituted with diversity――not all head, or hands, or feet;
not all hearing, seeing, or smelling, but a body with many
members, and each member its own function――he yet did not
think it necessary this diversity should be sectarian in
order to be Christian. He did not give some to be
Episcopalians――high, and low, and ritualistic; some to be
Congregationalists――associated, and consociated, and
independent; some to be Methodists――Protestant, Primitive,
and Episcopal; some to be Baptists――open and close; some to
be Presbyterians――old and new, Cumberland and Covenanter,
Associate Reformed and Presbyterian Reformed, and others
perhaps unreformed, to say nothing of Burgher and
anti-Burgher, Secession, and Relief. Here was variety――a
very millennium of it, such as it was. It was a variety,
however, that finds no place in the New Testament, and no
mention in Christ’s catalogue of particulars. This was his
list of bestowments that Paul enumerates, when he ‘gave some
to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and
some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints,
for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ.’ Having these, the body was thought to be well
furnished without the modern inventions above specified.
Here was variety and here was efficiency. ‘Many members, but
one body.’ ‘Diversities of gifts, but one spirit.’
‘Differences of administration, but the same Lord.’
‘Diversities of operations, but the same God, which worketh
all in all.’ Read the whole twelfth chapter of 1st
Corinthians, and the fourth of Ephesians, and see how amply
diversified is the church of God: all the more beautiful and
useful for the reason Paul here declares, that God has so
constructed it that there should be ‘no schism in the body.’
The variety and beauty lie in the varied members and their
varied functions; not, as our sectarian conservatives would
have it, in there being different organic bodies with
features facing all ways, hands striking one against
another, feet moving off in independent directions, and lips
uttering the whole alphabet of shibboleths.”
This description is not very complimentary to that movement which
started with the profession of renewing the religion of the Gospel and
of primitive Christianity. Judged by Dr. Knox’s standard, it is clear
that Protestantism, whatever it may be, is not primitive Christianity.
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH IS LOST.
The entire article under consideration is based on the supposition
that the visible organic unity of the church that once existed, no
longer exists, but is lost. “It is also,” says Dr. Knox, “universally
admitted and expected that this lost unity will at some time be
regained” (p. 666). Now, that scandals would come, and tares would
grow with the wheat, heresies, schisms, and sects would arise――all
this we are told in the New Testament; but that the unity which Christ
communicated to his church should be “lost,” and, therefore, his
church fail――this we read nowhere in the pages of the inspired Word.
On the contrary, we read in the Gospels that Christ promised to “build
his church,” and that he predicted that “the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.” And we also read: “Behold I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world.” How one who believes in the
divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and that
Christ built his church, and can admit, nay, assert, that she has
“lost” her unity, the very essence of her being――that, consequently,
the church of Christ has failed――we are at a loss to know, and look
for further explanation and instruction on this subject from Dr. Knox.
But it must be remembered also, and taken into account, that when
Christ offered up his prayer for unity, he not only petitioned that
his disciples might be one, but he also said: “And not for them only
do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in
me.” This covers all time, and leaves no room for the supposition that
the unity which was the object of his prayer should ever be “lost.”
How to meet this difficulty is the question of questions among those
who, under one pretext or another, have separated themselves from the
unity of the Catholic Church. Their ingenuity has been exercised not a
little on this point, and the world has listened to the Greek
patriarchal theory, and to the Anglican branch theory, and the
invisible church theory of some of the so-called reformers, but all
these theories are like clouds without rain and broken cisterns that
can hold no water. For once admit that the unity of the church for
which Christ prayed has ever existed, and concede that it has been
lost, no matter what theory or hypothesis you may devise, at that
moment, the conclusion is inevitable, Christianity is a failure.
The unity of the church of Christ was divine, and the human cannot
create or give birth to the divine. This truth has been recognized and
acted upon even among Protestants. The Irvingites and Mormons teach on
this point their fellow-Protestants a lesson in sound logic. “We
start,” they say, “as all Protestants do, in admitting that the
Catholic Church was in the beginning the church of Christ, and that at
some period of time afterwards she became corrupt and failed. This is
our common premise. Now, to establish the church, which is a divine
institution, requires a special divine mission and authority; hence
our claim to this special divine inspiration and authority for the
reinauguration of the church of Christ upon earth.” This reasoning on
the part of the Irvingites and Mormons, as against other Protestants,
is unanswerable and leaves them nowhere.
If the Christian Church ever existed, it exists now in all its
vitality and force; for the divine creative act which called it into
existence was as real, continuous, and immutable as the creative act
which called into existence the universe. The same Almighty who said,
“_Fiat Lux_,” said, “_Edificabo ecclesiam meam_”; and, considering the
place she holds in the hierarchy of creation, there is less reason to
suppose that the church should fail than that the whole universe
should go to utter wreck and ruin.
The learned doctor has an inkling of this insurmountable difficulty,
and hence he looks forward to one scarcely knows what kind of
supernatural action which is to “compose” out of the existing
different evangelical sects a visible organic unity. The idea of
composing the unity of the church is a contradiction in terms. If
lost, only a new divine creative act can restore it. To expect this
after the Incarnation and the Day of Pentecost is a chimera. The only
escape from this, and the only perfectly consistent one, is that this
unity is still existing, clothed with “a divinely-appointed organism
_jure divino_,” and open to all who really and sincerely believe in
Christ. He does not deny that the church of Christ does still exist;
he admits its possibility, and says:
“We do not base our argument for ultimate unity of
organization on the assumption that there is a divinely
appointed organism defined in the New Testament. We may
believe the Scriptures contain nothing explicit on this
point――no _jure divino_ model of church polity. If, however,
there is such an appointed form――which is here neither
affirmed nor denied――we insist that it is the best form, and
our point holds good――viz., in the coming development of an
earnest faith and fellowship, that form will ultimately be
apprehended and accepted. In that mental condition into
which the church is soon to come, it will be recognized that
the end is the main thing, and the agency of no account
except as it is adapted to the end. And as in the arts of
ordinary life, as in politics and public education, it is at
length discovered what the best way to the desired result
is; and as the earnest effort for the valued result lays
hold at last of the best method, which thus becomes the
common one, so must it be in the great earnest religious
movement of these latter days, looking to the millennial
age. Mark well the process. The faith and love of the
church, quickening into new life in these pre-millennial
efforts, will emerge into a spiritual earnestness little
short of a new experience; this earnestness will content
itself with nothing short of the most effective method; the
effective method will be accepted as the best, and the best
method is the one method which shall complete the spiritual
unity of God’s people in an organic unity.”
Agreeing with Dr. Knox in “the nature of the unity of the church,” and
that the principle of “life is organic,” and also that the church with
this unity and organic life has existed, the conclusion is evident:
either he must yield up his premises, or enter into the fold of the
Catholic Church as the only claimant to this unity and organization
whose title is unimpeachable. May that day “of earnest faith and
fellowship” of which he speaks be hastened, when will be apprehended
and accepted “that church polity” “defined in the New Testament,”[156]
and which “completes the spiritual unity of God’s people in an organic
unity!” “May the generation now coming upon the stage … not pass away
until these things are fulfilled!”
[153] “The Organic Unity of the Church. By Wm. E. Knox,
D.D., Elmira, N. Y.” _The Presbyterian Quarterly and
Princeton Review_, Oct., 18;6.
[154] St. John xvii.
[155] Dr. Jenischuber, _Gottesverehrung und Kirche_, § 210.
[156] To those of our readers who are desirous of seeing the
argument drawn from the New Testament on this point, and at
the same time the whole question as between the Catholic
Church and the Presbyterians or evangelicals fully treated
and placed in a clear light and in a masterly manner on the
basis of the Holy Scriptures, we recommend the volume
entitled _The King’s Highway_, by the Rev. Augustine F.
Hewit. The Catholic Publication House, New York.
MONSIEUR GOMBARD’S MISTAKE.
CONCLUDED.
About a month after this memorable expedition of M. Gombard’s the town
of Loisel was in a state of extraordinary commotion; the elections
were going on, which meant that all men had gone mad, that the seven
devils were let loose, and that no man could be sure of sleeping in
his own bed from one night to another. The decree had gone forth that
General Blagueur was the government candidate, which signified that
every man was to vote for him, and that every man who didn’t was a
dead man――every man, that is, who had anything to lose or anything to
hope for from the powers that were. No one knew who this General
Blagueur was, or where he came from, or anything about him, except
that he was the right man whom it was their business to put into the
right place. This was all it concerned them to know or to care as
dutiful subjects of Napoleon III. But though there were many such at
Loisel, there were many of another sort, who set their backs stiffly
against the right man, and were perversely bent on having a wrong man
of their own. It does not matter to our story whether this rebellious
outburst was justifiable or successful. It may be mentioned, however,
for the comfort of the many who are born sympathizers with rebels in
every class and country, that the rebellion of Loisel did succeed, and
that General Blagueur was ignominiously beaten. But what a price
Loisel paid for this wicked victory! A detachment of troops was at
once sent down to prey upon its vitals and hold a cocked pistol at its
head. The state subsidy promised to the local municipality for
rebuilding the tumble-down hospital was refused; the concession for a
railway to connect it with the main line, after having been distinctly
promised to an enterprising company, was withdrawn; the prefect was
“promoted” to a post in a dismal, out-of-the-way town in an eastern
department. It was said at one moment that the mayor was going to be
dismissed, or in some way visited by the imperial displeasure. But
this was one of those unreasoning panics that are common to every
period of social terror; men lose their heads, and see monstrous and
impossible events impending. The government, powerful as it was, never
dreamed of laying a finger on M. Gombard.
The worthy mayor forbore, with his usual prudence, from taking any
prominent part in the war that was raging at Loisel, and ostensibly
left the prefect all the honors and perils of leadership; but it was
perfectly well known, as he admitted to friends in confidence, that if
M. le Préfet reigned, M. le Maire governed; and M. le Maire’s power
arose in great measure from the consummate tact with which he managed
to hide this fact from everybody, above all from M. le Préfet. Now, it
happened that, just when the excitement of the contest was at its
greatest, when the wildest stories were afloat about the sinister
machinations of the government, the base and cruel means it employed
to compass its ends――setting brother against brother, and wife against
husband, carrying bribery and discord and all manner of corruption
into the very marrow of the bones of Loisel――it happened that, when
things were in this state, a young man arrived at the principal inn of
the place. He did nothing to provoke the anger or suspicions of the
population: he was silent, unobtrusive, speaking to no one at the
_table-d’hôte_ where he took his meals; but before he had been two
days at Loisel the entire town was infuriated against him. He had been
seen standing before a dismantled old round tower that guarded the
entrance to the town, and once had boasted of battlements and a
cannon; this report had gone abroad the first day of his arrival, and
the next morning it was positively stated that he had been seen by an
applewoman and a milkman walking _round_ the tower, and scrambling
upon a broken wall close by to get a view _into_ it. It was at an
early hour, before anybody was likely to be abroad. Such facts,
resting on such clear and forcible evidence, admitted only of one
interpretation――the stranger was a paid miscreant sent down to examine
the tower with a view to fortifying it as of yore, and so terrifying
the refractory towns-people into surrendering their independence to
the government. A council was called by the outraged citizens, and in
ten minutes the fate of the engineer was decided. A rush was made on
the inn where he lodged; he was seized, dragged forth amidst the yells
of the enraged mob, and would have rendered up his mercenary soul to
judgment there and then, if the prefect had not chanced to ride up at
the moment to the scene of popular justice.
“What is this? Call out the soldiers! I will have every man of you
shot, if you don’t release your prisoner!” he cried, charging boldly
into the fray.
“He’s a spy, a traitor! We won’t have him here! He wants to murder us;
to butcher our wives and children,” etc. Fifty people shouted out
these and similar cries together; but they had ceased maltreating the
unfortunate stranger, and were now only clutching him and threatening
him with clenched fists.
“If he is guilty of any misdemeanor or crime, or intent to commit
crime, he shall be made to answer for it; but it is the business of
the law to see justice done, not yours. Let go your prisoner!” said
the prefect in a tone of high command.
Courage and the prestige of lawful authority seldom fail to impress
and subdue an excited mass of men. The mob fell back, and two
_gendarmes_, at a sign from the prefect, stepped forward; the crowd
made way for them. “That man is under arrest. Conduct him to the
_mairie_ and lock him up,” said the prefect.
The _gendarmes_ marched off the rescued man, a crowd trooping on with
them, hooting and yelling with an energy that sounded far from
reassuring, though it was so in reality, being a kind of safety-valve
to the excited mob. It was a great relief, nevertheless, to the object
of this manifestation to find himself locked up and safe out of its
reach. He was not a coward, but the bravest may be permitted to shrink
from such inglorious danger as this from which he had just escaped.
He had not been many hours in captivity when a sound of steps and
voices approaching the door announced that some one was about to
appear――probably the magistrate. The key turned in the lock, and M.
Gombard entered, accompanied by two other persons: one was a clerk who
was to take down in writing the interrogatory of the mayor and the
prisoner’s replies; the other was a witness who was to sign it. The
moment M. Gombard beheld the prisoner his countenance changed; he felt
it did, though no one present noticed it. In the hatless, muddy,
battered-looking man who rose painfully to salute him the mayor
recognized the lover of Mlle. Bobert. Was he still only her lover? In
all probability he was her husband by this time. When M. Gombard had
mastered his surprise and recovered from the shock of the discovery,
he proceeded to examine the prisoner. The latter made no attempt at
self-defence; he admitted, with a frankness which the reporter set
down as “cynical,” that he had visited the round tower on the two
occasions alleged; that he would gladly do so again, if the citizens
of Loisel gave him the opportunity. He had a natural love for old
monuments of every description, and was professionally interested in
them――especially ancient fortifications and fortresses of every kind;
this old tower was a curious specimen of the fifteenth-century style,
he was anxious to take a sketch of it, and so on, with more in the
same tone. The clerk wrote on with great gusto, interlarding the
prisoner’s remarks with commentaries intended to complete them, and
explain more fully the depth of malice every word revealed: “The
accused looked boldly at M. le Maire”; “the accused here smiled with a
fiendish expression”; “the accused assumed here a tone of insolent
defiance”; “the countenance of the accused wore an air of cool
contempt,” and so on. Meantime, the mayor was wondering at the calm,
dignified manner of the prisoner, and admiring his well-bred tone and
perfect self-possession; he was evidently no common kind of person,
this lover, or husband, of Mlle. Bobert. At the close of the
interrogatory, when the clerk had wiped his pen and was folding up his
document, the mayor, with a vaguely apologetical remark, inquired
whether the prisoner was a married man. The answer came with the same
quiet distinctness as the preceding ones: “No, monsieur, I am not.” He
bowed to M. Gombard, and M. Gombard bowed to him. The interview was at
an end. “The case looks bad,” observed the reporting clerk, as the
door closed behind them, M. Gombard himself locking it, and pocketing
the key unnoticed by the others, who hurried on, loudly discussing the
matter in hand.
“Do you not think it looks badly, M. le Maire?” inquired the reporter.
“Very badly. We shall be the laughing-stock of the whole country, if
the prisoner is brought to trial; we shall pass for a community of
cowardly idiots. We must do our utmost to prevent the affair getting
into the local paper, at any rate. You are a friend of the editor’s;
have you influence enough with him, think you, to make him sacrifice
his interest for once from a patriotic motive? It would be a fine
example, and you will have done the town a service which I shall take
care they hear of in due time.”
The reporter held his head high and looked important. “I was thinking
of this very thing, M. la Maire, while I was taking down the
prisoner’s answers,” he said. “I did my best to swell the silly
business into something like a charge, feeling, as you say, that we
should be disgraced if the case were trumpeted over the country as it
really stands; but the best way to hinder the mischief will be to keep
it out of the paper. I think I can promise you that this shall be
done.”
“Then my mind is at rest. The honor of Loisel will be saved!” said M.
Gombard.
“It shall, it shall, M. le Maire!” said his companion. He was excited
and big with a sense of patriotic responsibility.
The next day was the grand crisis in the electioneering fever――the
opening of the ballot-box. All Loisel was abroad and on tiptoe with
expectation; there was no buying or selling that day. No wonder the
unlucky inmate of the lock-up was forgotten. M. Gombard, however, had
not forgotten him.
Late on the previous night, when the town had gone to bed and the
streets were silent, nobody being abroad but the night watch and a few
stragglers whose business and state of life made them avoid public
notice and daylight, M. Gombard might have been seen stealing out by
the back door to his own stable, and thence to the corner of a
neighboring street, where he fastened his horse to a lamp-post, and
stole back to the _mairie_ with the quick, furtive air of a thief. He
stepped softly down the stone passage that led to the lock-up room,
laid his dark-lantern on the floor outside, and then turned the key
slowly and with as little noise as possible. The dead silence that
reigned in the place made the slight grating of the key sound like a
shriek. When the mayor entered the room, the prisoner was walking up
and down, trying to keep his blood in circulation; for the cold was
intense, and he was famished with hunger. “I have come to release
you,” M. Gombard said. “There is no time to lose. I have left a horse
ready saddled at the corner of the street that leads straight to the
ruined tower; you will mount him and ride for your life.”
The prisoner could hardly believe his ears.
“What does this mean?” he said. “You are a perfect stranger to me, and
whoever you are, you must run a great risk in rendering me this
service. May I ask why you take this interest in me?”
“I am glad to pay back a service that one whom … that was rendered to
me not long since when passing through Cabicol. I will not say more;
but you will learn all from the person in question most likely some
day. Meantime, have no hesitation in accepting this service at my
hands. It is a debt of gratitude that I am happy to be able to pay.
Come, every minute is precious.”
The prisoner was not inclined to shut the door on his deliverer;
whatever his motive might be, mysterious or romantic, it was a
merciful chance for him. The two men left the house, stepping softly,
stealthily like a couple of thieves. When they reached the entrance of
a street, M. Gombard stopped, and pointed silently to where the
gaslight fell upon the horse, giving him the appearance of a phantom
beast amidst the surrounding gloom. The traveller held out his hand,
and grasped the mayor’s in a long, strong pressure. M. Gombard
returned it, and noticed now that his companion was bareheaded.
“You forgot your hat!” he said in a low voice.
“I lost it in the fray this morning.”
“Then the town of Loisel owes you another. Take this; it will serve
you on the road as well as a new one.”
M. Gombard pulled off his hat and handed it to the fugitive, turned
brusquely from him, and hurried home.
No one remembered the stranger who had provoked the popular fury,
until two days after his arrest, when the agitation of the
electioneering crisis had subsided, and the authorities had leisure to
attend to ordinary business. Then it was discovered that the bird had
flown, no one knew when, no one knew how. There was great
consternation amongst the subordinate officials at the _mairie_ whose
duty it was to have looked after him; but each declared he was not
responsible, that the prisoner had not been given into his charge,
that the prisoner was only put there temporarily, and ought to have
been conveyed at once to the jail, etc. This did not prevent them
shaking in their shoes in mortal dread of being turned out of their
places. The reporter was one of the first to hear of the escape. He
flew at once with the intelligence to M. Gombard. M. Gombard looked
him straight in the face and burst out into an uncontrollable fit of
laughter; he shook, he held his sides, he laughed till he cried again.
The reporter did not at first know what to make of it; but at last the
contagion of M. le Maire’s mirth was irresistible. He began to laugh
also, and then M. Gombard roared, and the two kept it up until they
nearly died of it. At last M. Gombard, who was the first to recover
himself, took out his red cotton handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and
blew his nose, and, after sundry gasps and subsiding chuckles, said:
“It is the cleverest joke I ever saw performed in _my_ life, and you
are the cleverest rogue I ever met with! It was bad enough to play it
off unknown to me, to keep the fun of the thing to yourself; but then
to walk in here with such cool impudence, and never move a muscle of
your face while you announced it as the latest intelligence! Ha! ha!
ha!” And off he went again, falling back in his chair, and laughing
till the tears rolled down his cheeks.
The reporter was in a terrible state. He had not the faintest notion
what the fun was about, and he had really joined in it till he could
laugh no more. One thing was clear: somebody had done something which
M. le Maire thought extremely clever and was highly diverted at, and
that he――the reporter――had the credit of.
“Tell me, how did you do it?” said M. Gombard, again recovering
himself and mopping his face, that was now as red as the handkerchief.
“Really, M. le Maire, I――I don’t quite understand,” said the reporter,
smiling and trying to look at once confused and knowing.
“Come, come, no more of this! Tell it out like a good fellow; let me
have the fag-end of the fun at any rate. How did you manage to give
them all the slip?”
“Positively, monsieur, there is some mistake. I don’t see――I don’t
understand――” stammered out the reporter.
M. Gombard gave a tremendous gasp, as if the laughter were still in
him and it required a huge effort to keep it down.
“Well, well,” he said, “I won’t press you, but I think you _might_
have trusted me; we are old friends now. However, keep your secret and
accept my best compliments. You missed your vocation, though; you
ought to have been a diplomatist. I see no reason after this――after
this”――here he began to shake again and brought out the cotton
handkerchief――“why you should not be minister some day. _Vous irez
loin, mon cher――vous irez loin!_”
There was a knock at the door. The two men stood up.
“M. le Maire, I am to understand that you are rather glad than
otherwise of this――this mysterious disappearance?” said the reporter,
with some hesitation.
“Glad! You deserve the Cross for it!” exclaimed the mayor. “It is the
greatest service you could have rendered to the town. Some day or
other they shall hear of it.”
“I really must disabuse you of a false impression,” began the
reporter. “Anxious as I was to be of use, my share in this matter――”
“Tut, tut!” said M. Gombard, “none of this nonsense with me, my dear
fellow. Keep your own counsel――quite right; but don’t be such an idiot
as to deny your services to those who can reward them. Mark my words:
_Vous irez loin!_” He tugged gently at the reporter’s ear, and,
shaking hands with him, sent him away happy and elated, but utterly
mystified.
The affair made some noise; a _procès verbal_ was drawn up, there was
an interrogatory of the clerks, and before a week the escape of the
spy was forgotten.
Just before Easter――that is, three months after this little
electioneering incident――M. Gombard had occasion to go to Cabicol
again. This time, however, he was not alone; he was accompanied by M.
le Préfet, the new one, who was making a _tournée_ in his kingdom, and
took the mayor with him by way of a moral support. He was a timid man;
he knew that his appointment was unpopular, and that M. Gombard’s
influence might help to reconcile people to it.
They alighted at the _Jacques Bonhomme_ to change horses and take some
refreshment before officially inspecting the town of Cabicol. M.
Gombard was anxious to get some news of Mlle. Bobert, when the
marriage had taken place, and how it was supposed to prosper so far;
but there was no opportunity of saying a word to the landlord, for the
prefect was there, and M. Gombard had no plausible excuse for leaving
him. He could not help remarking the strange expression of the
landlord’s countenance on first beholding him; the scared, incredulous
glance he cast upon him, and the mysterious manner in which, on
assisting him from the chaise, he pressed his arm and whispered: “I
congratulate you, monsieur; I congratulate you.”
What could the fellow mean by this extraordinary behavior! But the
mayor remembered how oddly he had behaved on the occasion of his
former visit, and set him down as an original, a harmless monomaniac
of some sort.
Just as they were starting, and the prefect was receiving the
compliments of M. le Curé at the door of the _Jacques Bonhomme_, M.
Gombard seized the opportunity of a word with the landlord. Pointing
his cane towards the old house opposite, he observed in a careless
manner:
“Your pretty heiress is married by this, of course? What is her name
now?”
“Married! Alas! no,” replied the landlord mournfully. “Monsieur has
not, then, heard?”
“Good heavens! she is not dead?” cried M. Gombard, dropping his
feigned indifference in an instant.
“She is blind, monsieur――stone blind! It was a terrible accident; she
was thrown from a carriage, and the shock and injuries she sustained
destroyed her sight. They say she may recover it after a while; but I
doubt it, monsieur, I doubt it.”
“And her _fiancé_――has he given up――”
The mayor was here cut short by the prefect, who called out from the
post-chaise, where he had already seated himself.
“Come, M. Gombard, we had better be starting.”
M. Gombard left Cabicol with a sad heart. He looked wistfully up at
the latticed window under the grand old escutcheon where he had last
caught a glimpse of the beautiful young creature, now so heavily
stricken. It made his heart ache to think of her in that lonely house,
her bright eyes sightless, dwelling in perpetual night. Why had not
his rival insisted on marrying her in spite, nay, because, of this
catastrophe? He could fancy how her brave and generous nature would
refuse to accept what she considered a sacrifice; but what sort of a
love was his that could not overcome such reluctance? Poor child! How
gladly _he_ would have devoted himself to soothing and cheering her
darkened life! But perhaps he was wronging his rival; it might be that
she had merely postponed their marriage, that they both believed in
her ultimate recovery, and that she preferred waiting, until it had
taken place, until her brown eyes had been restored, until the spirit
which once animated them should awake and vivify them as of old.
M. Gombard did not return to Cabicol for many a long year after this.
He left Loisel, and went to live in Normandy, where an uncle had died
and left him some property――a rambling old house, surrounded by some
wooded fields and a fruit-garden; the house was called the Château,
and the fields were called “the Park.” M. Gombard had not been long in
possession of this ancestral estate before he was elected mayor of the
village. He was the kind of man to be elected mayor wherever he
resided. Some men, we hear said, are born actors, doctors,
ambassadors, etc.; M. Gombard was born a mayor.
Life went smoothly with him amongst his fields and fruit-trees for
nearly ten years. Then friends took it into their heads, and put it
into his, that he ought to become a deputy; the elections were at
hand, and they put up his name as opposition candidate for the
department of X――――, whose _chef-lieu_ was Loisel. The proposal took
M. Gombard’s fancy mightily. To go back to the place where he had left
such a good name and exercised such undisputed influence; to go back
as representative of the department――this was a triumph that even in
perspective made him purr like a stroked cat. He started off one
morning in high spirits for Loisel. His most direct road lay through
Cabicol. The railroad landed him within a mile of the quaint old town
at eight o’clock in the morning. He was in the mood for a walk, so he
set out on foot. It was within a few days of Christmas; the weather
was intensely cold, but the sky was as blue as a field of sapphire,
and the sun shone out as brightly as in spring. He remembered the
first time he had been to Cabicol; it was about this season of the
year, but what miserable weather it was! Snow deep on the ground, and
then the heavy rains coming before it melted, and turning the roads
and streets into canals of mud and slush. This bracing cold, with the
sun cheering up the landscape, was delightful. M. Gombard walked on
with a brisk step, whistling snatches of one tune or another, till he
came within sight of the church. The first glimpse of the strong,
graceful spire, pricking the blue sky, so high, so high it rose,
brought a flood of soft and tender memories to the hard-headed, embryo
legislator; he smiled, and yet he heaved a little sigh as the
recollection of his first and his last visit to that fine old church
came back upon him. He wondered how life had gone with the fair
enchantress who had spirited away his heart from him in the brown
twilight of the Gothic temple; whether she had ever cast a thought on
him from that day to the present. And her sight――had she recovered it?
M. Gombard had often thought of this, and breathed a hearty wish that
it might be so. And was she married? In all probability, yes. The
chances were that she was now the happy mother of a blooming little
family, of which the man he had for a moment so vigorously detested
was the proud protector. If so, M. Gombard would call upon him and pay
his respects to madame. This was the proper thing for an opposition
candidate to do, and it would be an opportunity for Mlle. Bobert’s
husband to show his gratitude for former services.
He entered the town, now a busy, thriving place, and, crossing the
market-place, made straight for the _Jacques Bonhomme_. There it was,
not a whit changed, just as dingy-looking, with its stunted laurels
before the door, that stood wide open as in the midst of summer.
There, too, was the picturesque old manor-house opposite, just as he
had first seen it, only that the roof was not covered with snow nor
fringed with icicles. The ivy was thicker; it had grown quite over the
front wall, but had been roughly clipped away from a space over the
balcony, leaving the escutcheon visible――a gray patch amidst the
glistening green of the ruin-loving parasite. Two persons were coming
out of the house as M. Gombard drew near. A group of poor people stood
at the lodge, evidently awaiting them, with eager, questioning faces.
One of these persons was the doctor, the other was the _curé_. The
doctor walked on in silence. The _curé_ spoke: “Alas! my friends, she
is gone from us. We must be resigned; for the loss is all ours, the
gain all hers.”
M. Gombard felt a great pang go through him. He stood near the group,
and heard the tearful cries that answered the _curé’s_ words: “Ah, _la
bonne demoiselle_! Yes, it is a happy deliverance for her; but what a
loss for us, for the sick, for all Cabicol!” And they dispersed,
lamenting, and repeating through their tears: “_Pauvre Mlle. Bobert!_
Our good friend! She is gone! The funeral is to be to-morrow!”
So she had died, as she had lived, “Mlle. Bobert.” M. Gombard lingered
a moment, looking up at the deep, latticed window where the slight
figure would never be seen looking forth again. She was to be buried
to-morrow, they had said. He resolved to wait and attend the funeral.
He remained gazing up at the picturesque old edifice, which had
arrested his curiosity and admiration for its own sake before he had
become interested in its mistress. Whom would it go to now? he
wondered.
A step on the pathway outside made him turn and look in that
direction. He was startled, but not much astonished to see the
_fiancé_ of Mlle. Bobert approaching. Poor man! He looked much older
than M. Gombard had expected to find him. Evidently he had suffered
during these eleven years; his life had been blighted as well as hers.
The manly heart of the mayor went out to him in sympathy. He was
preparing to hold out his hand, when, to his consternation, the
gentleman raised his hat with the old courtly bow that M. Gombard so
well remembered. How was this? The unhappy man was ignorant of his
sorrow! He was saluting the dead, and he knew it not.
“Monsieur, pardon me,” said M. Gombard, meeting him with an
outstretched hand and a face full of genuine compassion. “You have
evidently not heard the sad news?”
“Concerning whom?” inquired the gentleman, giving his hand, but
looking very blank.
“Who? Why … Mlle. Bobert!”
“What has happened to Mlle. Bobert, monsieur?” asked the gentleman.
“What has happened? Good heavens! Can it be possible.… The worst has
happened: she is dead!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the gentleman. Was this man some near relation of
hers, or did he mistake _him_ for one?
“I tell you she is dead!” repeated M. Gombard, his surprise rising
rapidly to indignation. “She died only a few minutes ago, and she is
to be buried to-morrow!”
“Naturally; that is the law. A person who dies this morning _must_ be
buried to-morrow, unless,” the speaker continued, fancying he had here
a clue to M. Gombard’s excitement――“unless good reason can be shown
for obtaining a delay, in which case, as a resident, I may be of some
use to you; you seem to be a stranger here.”
M. Gombard could not credit his senses. Was he dreaming, or was this
man gone mad? He stared at him for a moment in dumb amazement. At last
he said:
“Perhaps I am under a mistake.… I may be taking you for a person who
resembles you strongly. Who are you, monsieur?”
“I am an archæologist by profession; my name is De Valbranchart.” He
drew out his pocket-book and handed a card to M. Gombard.
“_Henri, Comte de Valbranchart_,” repeated M. Gombard absently. He had
heard the name before; but where? “The name is not unknown to me,” he
added.
“It can hardly be unknown to any one who has read history,” replied
the count, with quiet _hauteur_. “The De Valbrancharts played a
stirring part in the history of France as early as the twelfth
century. But their day is over; they have no existence in the present.
I am the last of the name.”
“Where have I heard it before?” said M. Gombard musingly.
“Perhaps at Cabicol,” returned the count. “This old house was the home
of my family for three hundred years. Those are our arms carved upon
its front; for twenty years I have saluted them daily as I pass. It is
foolish, perhaps; but I feel as if the spirit of my ancestors haunted
the old roof-tree, and that they are not insensible to the filial
homage.”
As he said this he looked up at the stone shield, where a lion
passant, on gule, was still visible, surmounted by a fleur-de-lis
argent, en chef. Raising his hat deferentially to the worn and
partly-obliterated symbols of a glory that lived only in his faithful
memory, the Comte de Valbranchart bowed to M. Gombard and passed on.
“And so this was the lady-love he worshipped,” said M. Gombard to
himself, as the tall, pensive man disappeared down the street. “He
never loved _her_, perhaps he never knew her; and if I had only known,
I might have.… But it is no use regretting the irreparable. I should
have been a more miserable man at this hour, if I had won her and
loved her all these years.”
THE HOME-LIFE OF SOME EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETS.
“The happiest lives,” says Southey, speaking of his own, “are those
which have the least variety.” There never was a truer saying. All the
knowledge of the world involved in a stormy life, whether of vice,
adventure, poverty, or political prominence, is not worth the half of
the quiet happiness of a home-life and of what people lightly and
mistakenly call monotony. And not only in such a life does the soul
grow and the higher part of man gradually and calmly ripen, but his
mind grows, his art grows, his genius widens and deepens. There are no
shocks to arrest the creations of his mind; no periods of untrue,
feverish, excited joy, followed by a ghastly reaction and a sad blank,
to disturb the rest that alone produces lasting works. Not all poets
and artists understood this, because very few were perfect men; not
all common men understand it, because if their inborn propensities do
not (and they do in only exceptional cases) lead them to this quiet
haven, it requires severe experiences and much repentance before they
can enter such a state. It is true that the works universally reckoned
the greatest have been accomplished by men whose lives were spent
among storms; but since the men who wrote them could so heroically
overcome this inner obstacle, what magnificent things might they not
have done if their lives had been differently ordained! The _Divina
Commedia_, _Paradise Lost_, _King Lear_ were the offspring of volcanic
natures and volcanic circumstances: Dante and Milton were both lone
men, soured and discontented, unfortunate in their domestic, and
uneasy in their political, life; Shakspere was poor and despised, long
a wanderer and an adventurer, and not too well mated either. And this
brings us to the consideration of the more accessible and human side
of their nature, one which is intensely interesting to us; for the
more we read, the more we think, the more do we see how alike mankind
is at all stages of its career, how little difference there is in
human relations between us and our forefathers――nay, our remotest
ancestors, whether in other climes or in a totally different
civilization. Modes of thought have grown antiquated, systems of
philosophy have crumbled, faiths have disappeared, customs have
changed, but man and his passions remain the same as when he was first
made. And the men who are but names to us, whose record is in
forgotten tablets and antique parchments, even those whose works and
sayings are known to us in part, all lived the same common life to the
eye of their contemporaries, shared the same lowly necessities and the
same agitating feelings, and went through the same kind of outward,
prescribed life as the rind of their inner and individual one, as our
modern poets, artists, _savants_, discoverers, and even our single
selves. For ourselves, we almost invariably care more for the life of
a man than for his works; and as this century has developed a peculiar
turn for biography, even that of ordinary and obscure persons――which
is often none the less interesting――it has been a liking easy to
satisfy. If, however, readers of poets prefer to see their ideal with
their own eyes and look upon him as a demigod, biography is not a
thing likely to be pleasant to them. It is often disenchanting, and
many people shrink from the true if it be not likewise in accordance
with their preconceived notions. The English poets of the last century
were emphatically _men_, good specimens of their time and
surroundings, by no means souls stranded on a foreign world and
accidentally fitted with clogging bodies whose necessities were a
vexation to the spirit.
The earliest of the rising generation of that time who came
prominently before the public, and has never since lost his place, is
Dean Swift. He was “of the earth, earthy,” yet not a type of very
common humanity. His life was full of strange incidents and
extraordinary contradictions. He was, like Milton, by inclination
rather a politician than a writer, and yet his poems have outlived his
pamphlets. Sometimes he was coarse in language and brutal in manner――a
fashion of his age, itself a contrast to the other extreme affected by
society, that of a finical and artificial delicacy. Yet he won the
almost unsolicited affection of pure-minded, sensitive, well-educated
women. Now he was a miser, now a prodigal; now he entered a state
which so many other poets conscientiously eschewed, himself worse
fitted for it than they were; and now he showed a tenderness of
feeling and a nobleness of soul which seemed inconsistent with this
one life-act of defiant recklessness. For it was not hypocrisy; to
that lowest of depths he, at least, did not sink. His education was
desultory and his early circumstances narrow. His first situation was
a poor one, though in a refined home and with a great statesman――Sir
William Temple, whose reader and secretary he was. He got only twenty
pounds a year, but had the chance of a troop of horse which King
William offered him when he came to visit the youth’s patron at Moor
Park. His mind was inflamed by the stirring scenes during which his
poor mother had fled from Ireland――the times following the Revolution
and the Boyne――and he vindicated and abused his native country by
turns, like an indignant lover, always ready fiercely to defend her if
attacked by others, yet conscious of the unhappy state into which
civilization and literature had fallen, consequent on the civil
troubles since Elizabeth’s Reformation. At Richmond he owed an illness
to his gluttony, as he boldly if exaggeratedly confesses: “About two
hours before you were born,” he writes to a lady, “I got my giddiness
by eating a hundred golden pippins at a time; and when you were four
years and a quarter old, bating two days, having made a fine seat
about twenty miles further in Surrey, where I used to read, there I
got my deafness; and these two friends have visited me, one or other,
every year since, and, being old acquaintance, have now thought fit to
come together.” Dryden did not recognize the young poet as a brother,
and wrote him his opinion most bluntly, which Swift never forgave or
forgot, and for which once or twice he revenged himself on other
hapless and obscure poets who better deserved the same criticism. One
of the good deeds of his youth was his giving up an appointment in the
National Church, worth £100 a year, in favor of a poor struggling
curate with less than half that income and eight children to support;
but some of his friends thought that the loss of congenial society
which this small preferment involved somewhat moved him to this
renunciation. Going back to Moor Park, he made acquaintance with
“Stella”――Esther Johnson――a ward of his patron, a girl of fifteen, who
loved him devotedly, and whose heart he broke. He became her tutor,
and his genius, his appearance, and his manner captivated the
child-woman. Engaged at the time to a Miss Waryng, whom he fancifully
styled “Varina,” he broke his promise to her, and in the details of
their quarrel showed himself as insolent as dishonorable. At this time
of his life he was, if not a handsome, at least a very striking man.
He was tall and well made, with deep-blue eyes and black hair and
eyebrows, the last very bushy, and his expression stern and
haughty――the very hero of a young girl’s dreams. After Sir William’s
death he removed Stella to the neighborhood of his own parsonage,
where she lived in a little cottage with an elderly companion, and
never saw Swift except in the presence of a third person. Sir Walter
Scott charitably attributes his avoidance of marriage with her to
prudential reasons, and in this anomalous relation to the woman he
loved he sees an attempt “in the pride of talent and of wisdom … to
frame a new path to happiness”; and the consequences, he continues,
were such as to render him “a warning, where the various virtues with
which he was endowed ought to have made him a pattern.” In one of his
visits to London he met “Vanessa”――Esther Vanhomrigh――to whom he
offered the same Platonic friendship, with nearly the same results.
The girl died of grief and “hope deferred.” Another version of his
luckless love-affairs asserts that he ultimately married Stella, but
refused to live with her, and visited her formally the same as before.
Swift’s fits of avarice were great sources of amusement to his
visitors. It is said that he occasionally allowed some guests of his,
ladies of high rank, a shilling each to provide for themselves when
asked to dine with him. Another such droll tale, but rather
illustrating the contrary disposition, is told of him by Pope: “One
evening Gay and I went to see him. On our coming in, ‘Heyday,
gentlemen,’ says the doctor, ‘what’s the meaning of this visit? How
came you to leave all the great lords you are so fond of, to come
hither and see a poor dean?’ ‘Because we would rather see you than any
of them!’ ‘Ay, any one that did not know so well might believe you.
But since you are come, I must get some supper for you, I suppose?’
‘No, doctor, we have supped already.’ ‘Supped already? That’s
impossible! Why, it is not eight o’clock yet. That’s very strange; but
if you had not supped, I must have got something for you. Let me see;
what should I have had? A couple of lobsters; ay, that would have done
very well――two shillings; tarts, a shilling. But you will drink a
glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual
time only to spare my pocket.’ ‘No; we had rather talk with you than
drink with you.’ ‘But if you had supped with me, as, in all reason,
you ought to have done, you must then have drunk with me. A bottle of
wine, two shillings. Two and two is four, and one is five――just two
and sixpence apiece. There, Pope, there’s half a crown for you, and
there’s another for you sir; for I won’t save by you, I am
determined.’ In spite of everything we could say to the contrary, he
actually obliged us to take the money.”
Among the literary practical jokes he sometimes played was a book of
prophecies he published in ridicule of a yearly almanac of predictions
by one Partridge. The chief event foretold was the astrologer’s own
death on the 29th of March, 1708. As soon as the date was past an
elaborate account of Partridge’s last moments and sayings came out in
“a letter to a person of honor.” Partridge found it hard to persuade
people of his continued existence, and, having once complained to a
Doctor Yalden, was repaid by the latter by an additional account of
his sufferings and end by his supposed attendant physician. The poor
man was driven frantic; he says the undertaker and the sexton came to
him “on business”; people taunted him in the streets with not having
paid his funeral expenses; his wife was distracted by being
persistently addressed as Widow Partridge, and was “cited once a term
into court to take out letters of administration”; while “the very
reader of our parish, a good, sober, discreet person, has two or three
times sent for me to come and be buried decently, or, if I have been
interred in any other parish, to produce my certificate, as the act
requires.” Sir Walter Scott remarks, as an odd coincidence, that in
1709 the Company of Stationers obtained an injunction against any
almanac published under the name of John Partridge, as if the poor man
had been dead in sad earnest.
Unsatisfactory as was the homelife of Dean Swift, Alexander Pope’s is
scarcely more pleasant to look back upon. He was never married, and
his best associations with home were through his mother, whom he loved
dearly. But his continual ill-health and misshapen body made him
miserable, and he himself calls his life “one long disease.” Fame he
won early, but it did not sweeten his spirit. His early life was spent
near Windsor Forest, at the village of Binfield, where his father, a
prosperous tradesman, retired with his fortune of £20,000 when the boy
was twelve years old. Instead of putting this money in the bank, he
kept it in the house in a strong chest, and drew upon the sum for all
he wanted for many years, by which method it was considerably lessened
before his son inherited it. Many of the despicable traits or foolish
weaknesses of Pope’s character were due to his sufferings. He was
deformed in person, and so feeble that he had to be dressed and tended
like a child. He was laced in stays to keep him erect, and was so
small that at table it was necessary to place him in a high chair. Dr.
Johnson says that “his legs were so slender that he enlarged their
bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off by the
maid; for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and neither
went to bed nor rose without help.” He wanted help even in the night,
and would often call up a servant for coffee or for pen and paper; but
he was lavish of money to compensate for the trouble he gave, and a
servant in Lord Oxford’s house once declared that so long as it was
her business to answer the poet’s bell she would not ask for wages. In
other respects, however, Pope was absurdly miserly, and one of his
habits――that of writing his verses on the backs of letters and other
loose leaves and scraps――got him the nickname of “paper-sparing Pope.”
It was his friend Swift who originated this saying. He was hardly
thirty when his _Homer_ had gained him an independence, and he set up
his own house at Twickenham, though he still passed half his time at
his parents’ home at Binfield. Twickenham had the charm of society,
which to Pope was a great solace. Here he gathered a circle of
admiring friends; for the place was a kind of centre of literature and
fashion. Lady Mary Montagu, with whom he fell in love and then
quarrelled, was his neighbor; Bolingbroke lived at Dawley, and Lord
Burlington at Chiswick. Fine court people and “elegant company,” as he
writes, flocked to visit him, and, though he enjoyed it, he seems to
have been partly discontented with it. It was the weak protest of the
higher nature, dwarfed but not crushed by the lower. His filial piety
shines out as a redeeming point in his selfish, narrow, loveless life,
and it never wearied of its prolonged task; for his mother died at
ninety-three (in 1733), at his house, and he mourned her deeply and
tenderly. Another good and innocent trait was his love of gardening,
though it was but the formal, lifeless gardening of his day, when the
taste prevailed for grottoes and masonry and clipped trees. He writes
to Swift: “The gardens extend and flourish.… I have more fruit-trees
and kitchen-garden than you have any thought of; nay, I have melons
and pineapples of my own growth.” To another friend he writes: “I am
now as busy planting for myself as I was lately in planting for
another [his mother], and I thank God for every wet day and for every
fog that gives me the headache, but prospers my works. They will,
indeed, outlive me, but I am pleased to think my trees will afford
fruit and shade to others when I shall want them no more.” It is said
that Pope introduced the weeping willow into England. The story runs
that he discovered some twigs wrapped round an article sent from
abroad, and planted one of them in his garden. A willow sprang up,
from which numberless slips were taken, some to be planted in England,
others to be sent abroad. The old tree died in 1801. Its life seems to
have been but a short one. Pope’s grotto still remains, but the rest
of the garden has been sadly changed and disfigured by partition and
building. He also made a tunnel under the public road, on each side of
which his property lay. This reminds us of a peculiar tunnel diving
under the Parade at Ramsgate, on the Channel, and leading to a grotte
or series of catacomb-like passages in the chalk cliff overlooking the
sea. This is on the Pugin property, and there are like galleries, we
believe, a little further, leading from the gardens of Sir Moses
Montefiore.
Richmond, adjoining Twickenham, is as classic ground in its literary
associations. Here Thomson, the author of _The Seasons_, lived for the
twelve last years of his life, at a pretty cottage called Rosedale
House, now much altered and enlarged. But the summer-house in the
garden remains the same as it was in the poet’s time. “It is,” says
Mr. Howitt, “a simple wooden construction, with a plain back and two
outward-sloping sides, a bench running round it within, a roof and
boarded floor, so as to be readily removable all together. It is kept
well painted of a dark green, and in it stands an old, small walnut
table, with a drawer, which belonged to Thomson.” A tablet let into
the front of the alcove above bears the following inaccurate
inscription:
HERE
THOMSON SANG
“THE SEASONS”
AND THEIR CHANGE.
His famous poem was composed several years before, and begun when he
had scarcely a roof over his head. The first part, “Winter,” was
written in a lodging over a bookseller’s shop, to whose master he sold
the poem for three guineas. It was neglected until a clergyman,
“happening to turn his eye upon it, was so delighted that he ran from
place to place celebrating its excellence.” Would such simple means be
enough now to herald a new author, although literature is supposed
nowadays to be so much more respected and lucrative a calling than in
the last century? Before this stroke of luck Thomson had been drudging
as a tutor, teaching his patron’s little boy of five years old his
alphabet, and wasting his Scotch university education in such dreary
pursuits. He had been brought up for the Presbyterian ministry, being
himself a Scotch minister’s son; but he found himself unfit for that
calling, and set out from Edinburgh for London “to seek his fortune,”
with a little money and some letters of recommendation tied up in his
pocket-handkerchief. He had no sooner reached London than both were
stolen, and this misfortune was soon followed by a worse――the death of
his widowed mother. After the happy hit of his “Winter,” however, he
had no more trouble; the patrons of literature took him up, his poems
sold fast, and he completed his _Seasons_, while also throwing off
minor works, all equally admired by his contemporaries, though not
equally deserving. His writings were always moral and just; he never
flatters or plays with vice, and it has been said of him with truth
that he never wrote a line which, dying, he would wish to blot. We
think the same could be said of Wordsworth. But if private morality
did not suffer through him, public laxity in the sphere of politics
did; that is, he was innocently part and parcel of a corrupt system of
place-giving, irrespective of fitness for the office. It was the vice
of the age, alike in church and state. He held at different times two
sinecureships in the gift of government――one the Secretaryship of
Briefs in the Court of Chancery, the other the general surveyorship of
the Leeward Islands. In his private life he was fortunate; he
travelled abroad with Sir Charles Talbot’s eldest son, he visited all
the people worth knowing, and was flatteringly received by all, his
means were ample, yet he was not altogether happy. He was crossed in
love by a Miss Young, whom he addresses in his poems as Amanda, and
who cast him off for an admiral. His love, to judge by his letters,
was earnest and true; writing to her during their short engagement, he
says: “If I am so happy as to have your heart, I know you have spirit
to maintain your choice; and it shall be the most earnest study and
pursuit of my life not only to justify but to do you credit by it.…
Without you there is a blank in my happiness which nothing can fill
up.” His disappointment increased his melancholy, and, indeed, made
his faults come into worse relief; but he lived only five years after
it. Like many whose struggles have not been very hard or lengthened,
he believed too much in luck and grew careless and indolent; his
ambition was to live in peace, in luxurious dreams, in easy, social
fellowship. He was kind but apathetic, and as careless of himself as
of others, so that, though he had money enough to live more than
comfortably, he was once arrested for a debt of seventy pounds. The
actor Quin, as was often the case with friends of those detained in a
“sponging-house” in those rollicking days when such confinement was
not supposed to entail any disgrace, went to see him and ordered
supper from a tavern close by. When they had done, Quin said
seriously: “It is time now, Jemmy Thomson, we should balance our
accounts.” The poet, with the instinct of a debtor, supposed that here
was some further demand he had forgotten; but Quin went on to say
“that he owed Thomson at least £100――the lowest estimate he could put
upon the pleasure he had derived from reading his works; and that,
instead of leaving it to him in his will, he insisted on taking _this_
opportunity of discharging his debt. Then, putting the money on the
table, he hastily left the room.”
A ludicrous anecdote is told of Thomson, which, if not true, is
typical of his undoubted indolence――namely, that he would wander about
his garden with his hands in his pockets, biting off the sunny side of
the peaches that grew upon the wall. He was fond of walking, however.
Laziness often brings dirt in its train, and Johnson, himself no
Rhadamanthus on this score, calls Thomson slovenly in his dress, while
other biographers aver that he took care only of his wig. His barber
at Richmond said he was very extravagant about it, and had as many as
a dozen wigs. One other fault is hinted at: his love of drink, so that
the moral poet was not so exemplary in his life as in his works; but
he was honest, truth-telling, a good friend and master, as well as a
clever, imaginative, and cultivated writer.
It is curious to note how many poets have been bachelors. Gray, too,
was one. The son of a well-to-do London citizen, he was sent to Eton
and Cambridge, and at the latter place spent many years of his later
life. He was emphatically a student, rather cold and fastidious in
manner, but a devoted son and a true friend. His mother “cheerfully
maintained him [at college] on the scanty produce of her separate
industry.” He travelled with Horace Walpole, and learned modern
languages in his wanderings, and was one of the first English
sight-seers at Herculaneum. On his return to England his father died,
and he and his mother lived at West Stoke, near Windsor, where he
wrote his famous _Elegy_. One of his early friends, Richard West, son
of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, a kindred spirit, learned, young,
and poetical, but indolent, writes affectionately to Gray: “Next to
seeing you is the pleasure of seeing your handwriting; next to hearing
you is the pleasure of hearing from you.” Soon after the premature
death of his young friend Gray went to live at Cambridge, and ten
years later his happy, quiet life was disturbed by the death of his
mother――a blow he never recovered. Towards the close of his life,
thirteen years later, he writes to a friend: “I had written to you to
inform you that I had discovered a thing very little known, which is
that in one’s whole life one can never have more than a single mother.
You may think this obvious, and what you call a trite observation. You
are a green gosling! I was, at the same age, very near as wise as you;
and yet I never discovered this with full evidence and conviction――I
mean till it was too late. It is thirteen years ago, and seems but as
yesterday, and every day I live it sinks deeper into my heart.”
His favorite study at Cambridge――first at Peter-house College, then at
Pembroke Hall, between which places he spent nearly forty years of his
life――was Greek, taking, as he said, “verse and prose together, like
bread and cheese”; but his only public office was the professorship of
modern history, the duties of which he was, through ill-health, unable
to fulfil. The stiffness of his bearing and fastidiousness of his
dress made him a favorite butt of the undergraduates, and his real
attainments, intellectual as well as moral, were wholly powerless to
restrain within due bounds that spirit of mischief which the gravest
“dons” themselves confess to in their own far-off youth and heyday.
One of these jokes was the reason of his leaving Peter-house in
indignation and removing to Pembroke Hall. Gray had a nervous dread of
fire, and always kept a rope-ladder by him in case of danger. One
night the “boys” “placed exactly under his bedroom window a large tub
full of water, and some who were in the plot raised a cry of ‘fire’ at
his door. Gray, terrified by the report of the calamity he most
dreaded, rushed from his bed, threw himself hastily out of the window
with his rope-ladder, and descended exactly into the tub.” The two
bars to which he fastened his ladder are still to be seen at the
window of the chambers he used. But in later years, when the fame of
his scholarship was greater, the men crowded to see him when he walked
out. “Intelligence ran from college to college, and the tables in the
different halls, if it happened to be the hour of dinner, were thinned
by the desertion of young men thronging to behold him.” He is said to
have been thoroughly versed in almost every branch of knowledge then
cultivated. Besides the classics, European modern history and
languages, painting, architecture, and gardening occupied his
thoughts, and the more modern studies of criticism, political economy,
and archæology were not forgotten. Metaphysics also were familiar to
him. His taste in natural scenery was of a noble kind; mountains and
heaths were his favorites. When in the Scottish Highlands, he writes
to a friend: “A fig for your poets, painters, gardeners, and clergymen
that have not been among them; their imagination can be made up of
nothing but bowling-greens, flowering shrubs, horse-ponds,
Fleet-ditches, shell grottoes, and Chinese rails.”
In that age of artificiality this was a great step forward. Men
affected to be appalled by the savageness of life away from the
capital; they magnified the fleeting, ignoble gossip of their taverns
and coffee-houses into affairs of sublime importance. A country-house
to them was a doll’s house, a toy near London, tricked out with
fantastic imitations of foreign curiosities; a full, healthy, natural
life was their horror. But Gray, though of this age, was not of this
clique; he lived outside the world of fashion and coffee-houses; his
travels, and especially his studies, gave his mind a wider range. This
cannot be said of poor, jovial, unlucky Goldsmith, the jest of
Fortune, the Micawber among poets. There is a wonderful disparity
between his miserable, shiftless life and the fame of his works, both
prose and poetry. He is one of the most popular of poets and
novelists, and his life was one of the most checkered, though
uniformly unlucky, that ever were. Before he was twenty he wrote
street ballads to earn bread, but was ready to share his pittance with
any one poorer than himself. One winter night he gave the blankets off
his bed to a shivering creature, and “crept into the ticking to
shelter himself from the cold.” Never did avarice come near his heart;
indeed, his indiscriminate charity often brought him into sore
straits. He was for two or three years a sizar at Dublin University――a
sad position since the old generous days when the church protected and
encouraged poor students, and foundations that still remain were made
for their support. _They_ indeed remain, but the spirit of charity and
Christian brotherhood that inspired them has gone, and poor scholars
find the universities as worldly a place as any other, and have to go
through a fiery ordeal to gain knowledge. At last Goldsmith, goaded by
the contempt and insults he met with, even from his tutor, who once
knocked him down, ran away to Cork with one shilling in his pocket. He
once told Sir Joshua Reynolds “that of all the exquisite meals he had
ever tasted, the most delicious was a handful of gray peas given him
by a girl, after twenty-four hours’ fasting.” Refusing to become a
clergyman, for which career he felt unfitted, he studied medicine with
small success, though he managed to get a degree after such a tour
through Europe as reminds one of the mediæval students’ doings. He
started with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a
flute in his hand. He led village dances on the green, and beguiled
the evening hours of the gossips at the village inn, a barn being
often his sleeping-place. But he had also another resource――the
mediæval one of supporting theses before the learned faculties of
foreign universities. Having thus, as it was laughingly said by his
friends, “disputed” his way through Europe, he came back to London,
still a beggar, and found a wretched home among beggars in Axe Lane.
How often must that tragedy of disenchantment have been played out
before the eyes of those human moths who come to London and other
great centres “to seek their fortune”! For one that swims a thousand
sink, and each success is built upon the accumulated failures of
others perhaps no less intellectually endowed. The weary tramp after
situations, the timid offer of services that no one wants, the
despairing hint that the lowest wages will be more than welcome, the
cold dissympathy that need and shabby clothes almost always involve,
and all this repeated two, three, four times a year, is enough to
break the spirit of any man not endowed with the eagle’s courage.
There is hardly much to choose between the miserable avocations which
poor Goldsmith was driven to take up to keep himself from starving.
Once he was a chemist’s assistant in Monument Yard; then a poor doctor
on his own account, in the still poorer neighborhood of Southwark;
then, worse than all, an usher (or under-master) in a small school. “I
was up early and late; I was browbeat by the master, hated for my ugly
face by the mistress, worried by the boys within, and never permitted
to stir out to meet civility abroad.” Then he turned to that most
uncertain yet fascinating pursuit――letters, his old love. It barely
kept him alive; he was dunned and worried; lived in a wretched attic,
and wore clothes too shabby to go out in, except after nightfall. In
these days of brilliant gas-lit shops and streets even that comfort
would have been denied him. He was a bookseller’s hack, and wrote to
order, and was naturally delighted at the chance of an appointment as
surgeon on the coast of Coromandel; but this fell through, unluckily
for himself, though not for posterity. Goldsmith had a dog, to whom he
taught simple tricks, which were as great a vexation to the poor
animal as his own troubles were to the master (selfish human beings,
how little we follow the lesson. ‘Put yourself in his place’!), and
this faithful companion was a great solace to him.
The way in which the _Vicar of Wakefield_ was given to the world is
too well known to be more than glanced at. Version and counterversion
of the scene have been given by Johnson and others; it is pitiful to
think that such a book should have depended upon the chance of his
being able to get out to offer it to a publisher. While Goldsmith sat
a prisoner in his own room (it is still shown at Islington, London)
Johnson took the treasure and sold it for sixty pounds. It is to be
hoped the author changed his landlady after her behavior to him in
arresting him for his rent; but perhaps she had some provocation, for
when he _had_ money he did not always put it to the wisest purposes.
Others, too, must have been either foolishly trusting or deliberately
kind; for he owed £2,000 at his death, one of the bills being the
famous one at his tailor’s for the plum-colored coat made in elaborate
fashion. “Was ever poet so trusted before?” exclaimed his friend
Johnson. Among the friends who mourned his premature death (he was
only forty-five) were some poor wretches whom out of his own poverty
he had helped and befriended.
The year Goldsmith died, 1774, Robert Southey was born, a man whose
life was in all respects different――shielded, domestic, happy, and
uneventful. “I have lived in the sunshine,” he says of himself. He
worked hard and was thoroughly happy, singularly unambitious, but
imaginative and enthusiastic. He was born at Bristol, and his early
school-life and holidays with an eccentric aunt were among his most
cheerful reminiscences. This old lady, Miss Tyler, was one of those
excruciatingly neat housekeepers who make every one about them
uncomfortable. “I have seen her,” writes her nephew, “order the
teakettle to be emptied and refilled because some one had passed
across the hearth while it was on the fire preparing for her
breakfast. She had a cup once buried for six weeks to purify it from
the lips of one she accounted unclean. All who were not her favorites
were included in that class. A chair in which an unclean person had
sat was put out in the garden to be aired; and I never saw her more
annoyed than on one occasion when a man who called on business seated
himself in her own chair; how the cushion was ever again to be
rendered fit for her use she knew not.” Dust was of course her pet
aversion, and she took more precautions against it “than would have
been needful against the plague in an infected city.” Southey was
adoringly fond of his mother, from whom he inherited “that alertness
of mind and quickness of apprehension without which it would have been
impossible for me to have undertaken half of what I have performed.
God never blessed a human creature with a more cheerful disposition, a
more generous spirit, a sweeter temper, or a tenderer heart.” In all
this the happy poet was her counterpart. He went to Westminster
School, then to Balliol College, Oxford, but distinguished himself
rather by feats of physical prowess than by hard study. He learned to
row and swim, and lived a healthy out-door life, as he had done in his
childhood when he roamed the country round Bristol with Shad, his
aunt’s servant-boy. Vice and dissipation had no attractions for him,
though there were but too many opportunities for self-indulgence at
the university. At nineteen he wrote his first epic poem, “Joan of
Arc.” He was an enthusiastic republican, and one of the most eager
supporters of the Pantisocracy scheme――a social Utopia, to be realized
by a handful of young emigrants, who were to choose some tract of
virgin soil in America, and support themselves by manual labor, while
their wives would undertake all domestic duties. Their earnings were
to go to a common fund, and their leisure hours be spent in
intellectual exercises. Of course the pleasant dream faded away, and
the group of destined companions dispersed; but three of the
enthusiasts married three sisters at Bath, and some bond of the old
time was kept up for many years by this connection. Southey’s marriage
was not made public till the return of the bridegroom from Portugal,
where he had promised to accompany his uncle, on the very day his
marriage took place. His bride kept her maiden name and wore her
wedding-ring hung by a ribbon round her neck until her husband came
back, when she went with him to London, where they bravely lived and
struggled on a narrow and uncertain income. He too, like many other
poets, had refused, from conscientious motives, the prospect of a
comfortable provision in the National Church, and preferred to live by
his own exertions. The consequence was that he too often lived from
hand to mouth; yet his home circumstances were so bright that he never
seems to have been in the same gloomy “circle” of the literary
“Inferno” as most of his brothers. When he was thirty he settled at
Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake country, among the mountains, and
there, incessantly at work with his pen, he refused many a lucrative
offer which would have drawn him from nature to the distractions of
London life. He was as fond a father as he had been a son, romped and
played with his children, wrote nonsense verses for them, like poor
Thackeray, and yet never neglected their more serious education.
“Every house,” he used to say, “should have in it a baby of six months
and a kitten rising six weeks.” Once, when invited to London by some
great man, he writes: “Oh! dear, oh! dear, there’s such a comfort in
one’s old coat and old shoes, one’s own chair and own fireside, one’s
own writing-desk and own library; with a little girl climbing up to my
neck and saying, ‘Don’t go to London, papa; you must stay with Edith’;
and a little boy whom I have taught to speak the language of cats,
dogs, cuckoos, jackasses, etc., before he can articulate a word of his
own――there is such a comfort in all these things that _transportation_
to London seems a heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve.”
During an absence in Edinburgh he writes to his wife: “What I have now
to say to you is that, having been eight days from home, with as
little discomfort as a man can reasonably expect, I have yet felt so
little comfortable, so great a sense of solitariness, and so many
homeward yearnings, that certainly I will not go to Lisbon without
you――a resolution which, if your feelings be at all like mine, will
not displease you.” His happy life was as regular as clock-work:
drudging, money-making work, reading, _siesta_, poetry, meals, long
rambles, each had its appointed time, and his days were as full as
they were happy. The domestic propensities which worldly men called
his ruin and the marrers of his prospects of rank and wealth, were in
reality what inspired his poetry, and thus made him immortal. His
poetry belongs to our century, yet such a stride have we made――we will
not say forward in the sense of greater excellence, but in that of
utter difference――since his time that we venture to include him in
this sketch, reckoning by his birth and early struggles, which after
all made the _man_, and thus moulded the poet.
Melancholy, unhappy, restless Cowper was, with all the love and care
he elicited from good and devoted women, a great contrast to Southey.
He was terribly sensitive, clinging, loving, but somewhat weak. The
picture of the boy of six years old playing with his young mother’s
dress, pricking the pattern of her gown into paper with a pin, as he
describes himself in the pathetic poem on the receipt of his mother’s
picture, is a touching and suggestive one; for his mother died when he
was a child, and he never forgot her for the fifty remaining years of
his lonely life. This portrait was sent to him by a cousin in his old
age, and he writes thus in answer to the gift: “Every creature that
bears any affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you, the daughter
of her brother, are but one remove distant from her.… I kissed it [the
picture] and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night,
and of course the first on which I open my eyes in the morning.… I
remember a multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I received
from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression.”
Cowper’s house at Olney was not a cheerful one, and his frequent fits
of madness, or monomania, lasted sometimes for months, and even years.
They took the shape of religious despondency about his soul; he was
“only in despair,” he said, and often attempted to kill himself. His
second mother, who devoted her life to him, the widow of a clergyman,
Mrs. Unwin, saved his life many times over; he could not bear any
other companion, yet it was part of his delusion that she disliked
him. Every one has heard of his fondness for his hares, the first of
which came to him as a chance gift, to save the creature from being
killed by a negligent little boy; so at one time he had a large “happy
family” gathered around him, whose hutches, cages, and boxes he amused
himself by making. Some of these contrivances were novel and
ingenious. Three hares, five rabbits, two guinea-pigs, a magpie, a
starling, a jay, two gold-finches, two canaries, two dogs, a squirrel,
and a number of pigeons gave him plenty to do, besides his garden, of
which he was equally fond. When he had succeeded in himself making two
glass frames for his pines, he playfully wrote: “A Chinese of ten
times my fortune would avail himself of such an opportunity without
scruple; and why should not I, who want money as much as any mandarin
in China?” Cowper’s friends all had something to do with his poetry.
His poem “To Mary,” in which he notes the constant clicking of her
knitting-needles, was a tribute to Mrs. Unwin, and many of his early
verses were suggested by her; the “Task” and “John Gilpin’s Ride”
(written, he says, in the saddest mood, and as a forced antidote to
that sadness) were subjects given him by Lady Austen, a warm-hearted,
impulsive woman; and his cousin, Lady Hesketh, and her sister
Theodora, his only love, from whom he was parted in his first youth,
and who remained single for his sake, inspired some of his tenderest
and most delicate verses.
Lady Hesketh, writing to Theodora from Olney, gives the following
sketch of their friend’s life in its more tranquil and happy aspect:
“Our friend delights in a large table and a large chair. There are two
of the latter comforts in the parlor. I am sorry to say that he and I
always spread ourselves out on them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find
all the comfort she can in a small one, half as high again as ours and
considerably harder than marble.… Her constant employment is knitting
stockings, which she does with the finest needles I ever saw, and very
nice they are――the stockings, I mean. Our cousin has not for many
years worn any others than those of her manufacture. She knits silk,
cotton, and worsted. She sits knitting on one side of the table, in
her spectacles, and he on the other side reading to her (when he is
not employed in writing), in his. In winter his morning studies are
always carried on in a room by himself; but as his evenings are spent
in winter in transcribing, he usually, I find, does it _vis-à-vis_
Mrs. Unwin. At this time of the year he always writes in the garden,
in what he calls his _boudoir_. This is in the garden. It has a door
and a window, just holds a small table with a desk and two chairs,
but, though there are two chairs, and two persons might be contained
therein, it would be with a degree of difficulty. For this cause, as I
make a point of not disturbing a poet in his retreat, I go not there.”
So the dreamy, strange, yet often too realistic life of Cowper passed
away toward the last decade of the eighteenth century, and, like most
poets, he has left behind him the immortalized memory of the pure and
noble women who loved him with the love of a guardian angel. No man
ever needed it more, and in this case indeed God tempered the wind to
the shorn lamb.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER
FROM THE FRENCH.
DECEMBER 12, 1868.
With the fall of the leaves of autumn the cemeteries become populous.
The year 1868, as formerly 183-, will have been fatal to great men.
Berryer is dead! A great voice silenced. “I shall not, then, see the
happiness of France!” he said a little time before his death――this
holy death which has worthily crowned the good and noble life of a man
exceptionally great both as regards the intellect and the heart. How
all things pass and fade away! Oh! how sad is this world, in which so
many separations and farewells are the prelude to the last great
separation at death. Violeau, the sweet Breton poet, in writing to his
friend Pierre Javouhey, said:
Adieu, toujours adieu! C’est le cri de la terre.
L’homme n’est que regrets en son cœur solitaire:
Le bâton voyageur, le voile et le linceul
Dans l’ennui de ses jours l’ont bientôt laissé seul!
Adieu, always adieu! It is the cry of earth.
Man in his lonely heart is all regrets:
The traveller’s staff, the veil, and [last] the shroud,
In the weariness of his days, have left him soon alone.
Alone! It is one of the sadnesses of earth. On high is the great
meeting again, and the great and eternal happiness!
It is not only the death of the great orator lamented by France which
makes me write to you so sadly, dear; it is that Isa has taken the
veil, and we are going away. I cannot be so selfish as to consent that
my mother should spend a second 1st of January far away from her
Brittany, which she loves with the same fondness that I love Ireland,
and I have myself fixed our departure for the 20th――only a week hence!
I should like to hold back the sun. We all go to-morrow to Gartan.
_Isa_ is already in heaven; her mother reproaches herself for not
having divined her daughter’s longing, and resigns herself to this
separation better than I could have believed possible. It is true that
Lizzy is all that is delightful, and gives up to her the sweet little
Isa almost entirely.
Sarah, the radiant Sarah, came to me yesterday in trouble; her sister
writes to her distressing letters. Neither the enchantment of Spain,
the brilliant position of her husband, nor the princely state in which
she lives are able to satisfy this poor heart, to whom the first
condition of human felicity――_visible affection_――is wanting. This was
Sarah’s expression. “I understood her at once,” she said. Another
disappointed life, unless, indeed, the dear young wife should
courageously accept her trial. Will this ardent, simple, and perhaps
too-confiding nature be altogether downcast at finding her hopes
deceived, or will she cast herself on God, and serve him in his poor?
We must help her to do this, must we not? The Père Charles Perraud,
the Lent preacher of two years ago, is preaching the Advent at
Sainte-Croix. The _Annales_ quote the following words of Père Gratry:
“It was this same Charles Perraud, this being so entirely of the same
nature, his equal in goodness, greatness, and intellect, who during
the whole of his short life was his brother and companion-in-arms.”
Read an article by Alfred Nettement on the three La Rochejacquelein.
More mourning! Mgr. Pie has presided over the last obsequies of the
Comte Auguste, and Mgr. Dupanloup over those of Berryer. The Comte de
Chambord thus sees those who have remained faithful to him disappear
one by one. This great family of the Bourbons appears to have been
predestined for the deepest sorrows. Don Carlos is at Paris; he was to
have gone to hunt at Chambord, but the death of the Comte de la
Rochejacquelein has made him give up his intention. Spain has had her
’93. The despoiled and exiled Jesuits are come into France. Queen
Isabella is at Paris. How poor are the times we live in! It seems as
if every noble enthusiasm were extinct, and the whole world eaten up
with the frightful leprosy of selfishness. _Sursum corda!_ Would that
I could raise them all!
Shall I tell you of the immortal festival of the Immaculate
Conception, this glory of our age and of Pius IX.――become to us an
_unforgetable_ day since the sacrifice of Isa?
What memories! The Mass, the hymns, the crowd that filled the chapel,
the betrothed of Christ so beautiful beneath her veil, the sermon, the
last kiss, the last embrace, the tears――all these things cannot be
narrated.
Dear Kate, let us pray for Ireland.
DECEMBER 18, 1868.
I want to write to you once more from this room, where I have so loved
you, dear Kate.
_Rorate cœli desuper et nubes pluant Justum._
Threw a rapid glance over an article in the _Union_――a sort of
contrast between Berryer and Lamennais. From the first few lines I
recognized the lion’s paw; it is only Alfred Nettement who can write
thus. What a grievous difference between these two grand figures, and
what an abyss of sadness in these lines: “The grave-digger asks, ‘Is
there to be a cross?’ M. Bocher answers, ‘No; Lamennais said, ‘Nothing
shall be put over my tomb.’” In the Christian world nothing is talked
of but an admirable letter of Mgr. Dupanloup upon the Council. I have
read the letter of thanks of the Holy Father.
Kate dearest, I am going away full of serenity and hope, since this
departure is the will of God. We have seen almost everybody; these two
last days are reserved for intimate friends. All our preparations are
made. Most of the drawing-rooms are already closed, and this gives me
an impression of mourning. Jack’s desire has been granted: he died
peacefully yesterday evening while René was finishing the prayers for
the dying. Thus there is nothing more to keep us. I could not bear the
idea of leaving this good old man.
Margaret promises me to come from time to time to give a little life
to this isolated spot and visit Edith, so sorrowful at our departure.
Nothing would be easier, my dear, than to take her to Brittany, or
even to Orleans; but the doctor is utterly averse to this project, and
only undertakes to cure her on condition that she does not quit
Ireland.
Edward at first manifested a sombre despair, but we have succeeded in
calming him. The two _Australiennes_, whom we have tamed with so much
difficulty, have their eyes full of tears when they look at us.
Adieu dear Kate.
DECEMBER 31, 1868.
No more of balmy Ireland! but still the family, kind hearts, pleasant
society, walks and drives, concerts among ourselves, study, the poor,
and that which is worth all else――prayer. Ah! my God, on the threshold
of this new year I render thee thanks for the so many and great
benefits with which thou hast overwhelmed me. How sweet, O Lord! is
thy love. Bless the church, France, my country, my family. “When will
eternity come, in which endless centuries will pass as one day?”
René wrote to you the morning of our arrival, and told you of the
Christian calm of our adieux, so full of hope. Is it not a delightful
and wholly unmerited happiness to have had this long sojourn in
Ireland, when I had not expected to be able to remain there more than
a month at the most?
Three happy things to-day. Kate, Margaret, and Isa are come to me in
three letters, which I have just read over again to enjoy their charm.
Margaret announces a _resurrection_. Lady R――――, the recluse, whom no
one remembered ever to have met _anywhere_, has been going out for a
month past. I am rejoiced to hear it. I have so much desired it, and
so often asked it of God. But side by side with this unexpected news
is a shade――death; but death smiling, heaven opened, and an angel
taking flight from earth to return to God, and to pray for those who
remain in this vale of tears, where the love of God has spared her
from a lengthened sojourn: our dear little Victoria G――――, the
interesting orphan, is gone to heaven. What would she have done in
this world without guide or parents?
Quand on est pur comme à son âge,
Le dernier jour est le plus beau![157]
Emmanuel grows, “and is determined to live.” Margaret is admirable in
her goodness. It is this which I find so attractive in her; there is
nothing in the world preferable to goodness. Lizzy has been in great
distress for some days, her little Isa being threatened with the
croup. Poor mothers!――always anxious and tormented while on earth. O
the sorrows of mothers! Nothing touches me more; all my sympathy is
for them. They have here below the most immense joys and the most
heartrending anguish. What happiness must it be to have a child of
one’s own, to pray by his cradle, to consecrate him to God from the
dawn of his existence, and to see one’s self live again in him!
Kate, Kate, I do not tell you how greatly your pages touched me. What
wishes shall I offer you this evening that I have not offered a
hundred times before?――wishes for holiness, happiness in God, and of a
blessed union in eternity. May every one of your days add a flower to
your crown, my beloved!
JANUARY 3, 1869.
The year is begun; shall we see it close? Marcella was most
particularly kind and sweet on the 1st of January. I sent to the
nearest station an enormous package addressed to you, for your chapel
and poor; have you received it? The _three graces_ put into it some
bunches of violets. Our Brittany is charming, notwithstanding the
winter. Edith has written a long and kind letter; she is regaining her
strength. Mistress Annah, whom I asked to send me full details, tells
me of the amiability of the two children, who are making real
progress, and are scarcely to be recognized since the _terrible_
brother is no longer there. Adrien takes him to-morrow to a friend who
has some business at Paris. You cannot imagine what this child is.
René assures me that there is in him the making of a saint. God grant
it! He frightens me.
Picciola grows and grows――not only in height, but also in virtue.
Thérèse and Anna follow her; but, in any case, my darling advances
with wonderful rapidity. I have taken up Homer again, whom I am
translating from the open book. How much I prefer reading Bossuet or
Joseph de Maistre!
Lizzy sends me four pages of news――many particulars respecting Isa the
saint and Isa the angel, about the mothers, friends, etc.; but the
flower of the basket is that Mary Wells has entered a convent. Again
another who chooses the better part!
To-morrow the _Saint of the Seacoast_ is coming here; we shall try to
keep her. What an enjoyable life it is in this Brittany, the sister of
Ireland! We have installed with the keeper a blind old man, to whom
René reads every day, and who is a model of patience. If his eyes are
closed to earth, they are truly open to heaven, of which he speaks
luminously.
I speak to you but seldom of Hélène. She lives but for sacrifice, and
has entirely broken with the outer world since the day of which René
told you. Every three months a sign of life to her mother. O Gertrude!
_her_ life is a martyrdom!
God guard you, dear Kate!
JANUARY 12, 1869.
Visit to _M. le Curé_ with Picciola. This poor presbytery, close to
the church and the resting-place of the dead, reminds me of Lamartine:
“Là jamais ne s’élève
Bruit qui fasse penser;
Jusqu’à qu’il s’achève
On peut mener son rêve
Et le recommencer.
Paix et Mélancolie
Restent là près des morts,
Et l’âme recueillie
Des vagues de la vie
Croit y toucher les bords.”[158]
We are reading the Chronicles of Brittany for the instruction of the
children. What quantities of warm knitted articles are made during our
evenings! The good aunt of _M. le Curé_ often comes to our
manufactory. She is a very amiable woman, most charitably indulgent,
something of an artist, and enjoys an opportunity for conversation; my
mother is always pleased to see her. The good _curé_ is scarcely ever
in his presbytery; he is a Breton: and what need I say more?
René is unwell. He has a superb indifference about his health, and
this makes me uneasy. Tell him to suffer himself to be taken care of,
and to forget the outside world a little. He has a truly apostolic
soul――always seeking out some good to do, and utilizing even his
moments of leisure. How far I am behind him!
Our life is become an encampment; and, as Raoul says, we only want
turbans and bournous to be Arabs altogether. Already there are sounds
of departure, and yet it is so pleasant here! The _Saint of the
Seashore_ remained with us two days. “Adieu until eternity!” These
words made me start: has she had any warning of death? I have made her
promise to write to me on the slightest symptom of illness. Picciola
offered her some violets. “Thanks, dear child; I shall guard them
carefully and lovingly. I am passionately fond of flowers, because I
see in them an emblem, and because all the hearts of men are the
flowers of the garden of God.”
Letter from Margaret, who is sighing after our next meeting, and
complains of my silence and, what is a more serious matter, of that
also of Kate. Marcella writes to you; she is perfection.
Dear Kate, here is Isa’s photograph. Is it not herself, with her
gentle look, full of deep melancholy, and her graceful and dignified
attitude? Every one here says that she is made to look older than she
does; but to my eyes she is always charming. Her little hands, the
prettiest that an artist could dream of, can only be guessed at under
the well-represented folds of her wide sleeves. Lizzy has just lost
her father-in-law――dead from a sudden attack. Would that I could turn
aside all the sadness of a soul so worthy of happiness as hers! I have
read to Picciola the _Evening Prayer on board Ship_, and feel a sort
of envy at such emotions. To behold the ocean, and find one’s self a
small and feeble creature between sea and sky, a mere speck in
immensity; to see other skies, other shores; to contemplate the
wonders of the New World, the virgin forests and unknown regions,
nature in her primitive and magnificent beauty――all this must enlarge
the soul. Distant voyages would indeed be enjoyable, were it not for
the departures and farewells.
I salute your good angel, my very dear Kate.
JANUARY 22, 1869.
Listen to what _my brother_ is reading to me: “Learn to dwell in the
Wound of the Heart of Jesus. Would you develop your desires, and bring
forth good works? It is the nest of the dove. Do you love meditation?
It is the retreat of the solitary sparrow. Do you love tears and
sighs? It is there that the turtle-dove makes her moan. Are you
hungry? You will there find the heavenly manna which fell in the
desert. Are you athirst? There you will find the fountain of living
water which flows out of Paradise, and sheds itself abundantly in the
heart of the faithful.”
Kate dearest, my heart is always with you. We shall be at Orleans on
the 1st of February. It is a great pity to leave the country, where
everything is green and flourishing. My brothers wish to go to Paris,
and I wished very much also to go thither with them; but René has
asked me to employ the money that this journey would have cost in
clothing a whole family from the South, just arrived here in a
pitiable condition. To refuse would have been to show myself unworthy
of him or of you. Thus our meeting again is indefinitely postponed. A
saint once said: “Not to do good enough is to do a great harm.”
Anna, the attractive Anna, is feverish again, and it is partly on her
account that my mother presses us to go to Orleans, where we shall
consult several physicians. May not our temperature disagree with this
southern flower? What a poor thing is life, in which anxiety is always
at the side of happiness!
Would you like to have the following from Gertrude’s journal? It was
written at the time when she was beginning to divine Hélène’s desire:
“Grant, O my God! that this sacrifice may be possible to us; place my
child at a distance from her cup of sorrow, take her in the morning of
her life, all white, young, fair, loving, and beloved, my God――so
ardently and piously beloved!”
Read _Alix_, a beautiful book by Mlle. Fleuriot. It is a book which
gives one repose――a story of our Brittany: Paula, Mme. de Guenharic,
two strong-minded women, the Beatitudes, so attractive, the grave
Raymond, the fiery Tugdual, interested me intensely. Then this
beautiful and poetic Alix, the lily of Goasgarello, too early plucked;
this sweet young girl who was too well loved to die――how much her
story touched me! And this book is fact. Alix personifies the lily of
St. Brieuc, the beloved pupil of Mlle. Fleuriot, the chosen one of her
heart. Ah! how death is everywhere snapping the purest affections.
Picciola spends part of her recreation-time with _The Children of
Captain Grant_. She praised the book so much that it made me wish to
read it, and truly I find it full of interest from beginning to end.
What a talent for description and contrasts!
Dear Kate, pray for us and for Anna, that there may not be another
violent separation. My mother is writing to you. I have news of
Margaret from Lord William, who is like another brother to us.
I have made Marcella, who did not know any of Lady Georgiana
Fullerton’s works, read _Ladybird_. This book has astonished our dear
Italian, because she did not expect to find in it so much powerful
emotion, but she considers it admirably written and only too painfully
probable. The beautiful Gertrude――a noble intellect, but entirely
without direction――who through so many storms preserves her purity;
the father devoid of affection; the Spanish mother, consumed by
suffering, but whose mind would have exercised so powerful an
influence over that of her daughter; M. d’Arberg, a hero and martyr of
Christian self-devotion; the angelic Mary, whose gentle character
beams throughout all the narrative like a reflection of heaven――all
this is interesting, perhaps far too much so. René, to whom I
mentioned Marcella’s impressions, said in answer: “I do not like these
exciting dramas, but rather such readings as give rest to the mind,
and I can understand what St. Augustine meant by saying that he could
not enjoy any book in which there was not to be found the name of
Jesus. ‘The name of Jesus is a name of delight,’ says St. Bonaventure;
‘because, meditated upon, it is nourishment; uttered, it is sweetness;
invoked, it is an unction; written, a reparation of our powers, and in
all that we do it is a guide and support.’ St. Philip Neri also says:
‘The name of Jesus pronounced with reverence and love has a particular
power of softening the heart.’” Dear and beloved sister, _pax vobis et
nobis!_
JANUARY 29, 1869.
The corridors encumbered with packages, the windows without
curtains――everything shows that we are going away. Anna constantly has
this fever, and the poor mother a sword in her heart. The twins pray
earnestly, our poor make novenas. How impatient I am to be at Orleans!
The good doctor from Hyères, the devoted friend of Marcella, will be
there also on the 3d, to give his opinion respecting the dear child’s
state. May God be with us!
Have been out with René. Marcella never leaves her daughter. My
sisters are busy with their children. Gertrude helps my mother in her
correspondence. Visits to our dear neighbors who do not move about.
The _Southerns_ are installed in a tolerably comfortable cottage, the
father has found some work, the young daughters will be employed as
needle-women by our kind neighbors and in the village; all is
satisfactory with regard to them. Edward writes heartrending letters
to his good friend René. He declares that he will run away, and other
things of the same sort. Pray for this little volcano, dear Kate.
A letter from Karl, whose first steps in the priesthood are rewarded
by joys truly celestial. Oh! what grandeur is in the sacerdotal life;
but also what sacrifices. I forgot at the time to tell you of a visit
we paid the old English _Homer_, whose daughter was the involuntary
cause of Margaret’s trouble. Oh! how beautiful she is. Tall, _very_
tall, with black eyes full of mental vigor, luxuriant hair, remarkable
purity of diction. Another flower for the cloister. Will not so many
excellent souls obtain the redemption of England?
Kate dearest, with you I ask of God: _Trahe me post te_; or rather I
would say. _Trahe nos._ A thousand kisses.
FEBRUARY 10, 1869.
“My son, let not thy soul give way beneath the labors which thou hast
undertaken for me, neither suffer thyself to be discouraged by
affliction, but at all times let my promise strengthen and comfort
thee.” René has just read me these words, by way of consolation for
Marcella’s departure. Alas! yes; she left us yesterday, very
tearfully, with the doctor. She will again inhabit her châlet. I would
willingly have offered her the one consecrated by the death of Ellen,
but this association! Anna is so pale and weak, apparently undermined
by the fever which never quits her. The doctor shook his head in a
manner which did not augur hopefully. I questioned him apart. “You
have carried away this pretty little one from us too soon, madam,” he
said. “She needs the sun, the Mediterranean, the orange-trees, and the
perfumes of the South. I do not conceal from you that I greatly dread
for her the isolation in which she will shortly find herself.” I was
dreading it also. René had an inspiration: “If Madeleine were to go as
well?” “The graceful young girl who always looks at me with tears in
her eyes?” “The same.” “If you will believe the testimony of my
medical experience, monsieur, this child is also threatened.” I could
not restrain a cry of pain: “O my God! my God!” “Pardon me, madam,”
said the good doctor; “on no account whatever would I afflict the
family of Mme. de Clissey, but if you love this pretty creature, do
not keep her here.”
I was obliged to make a strong effort over myself to conceal the
terrible impression these words had made upon me. I obtained from the
doctor, who wanted to start immediately, a few days’ delay. God aided
me, dear Kate. Lucy, who is just now very much indisposed, suggested
that Edward should accompany Marcella, and, as Anna was inconsolable
at leaving us, Berthe confided her daughter to the care of Lucy. The
_four_ set out to-morrow; see how our home-party is lessened. You will
perhaps wonder that we are not all going to Hyères. My generous mother
had thought of it; but, besides the fatigue she feels, notwithstanding
her green old age, from these frequent changes of place, her sons have
important reasons for passing the winter here, and I cannot leave her,
even for Marcella. Moreover, my purse is quite exhausted, and I shall
find it necessary to be rigorously economical in order to provide for
the needs of my poor. I have been considering what retrenchments I
could make in my own expenses. What do you advise me, dear Kate? I am
afraid of mistaking superfluities for necessaries.
You can understand the grief of my heart. Marcella and I were as one
single soul, and this morning, in my meditation, I was considering
whether I had not loved her too much, and sacrificed more useful
occupations to the pleasure of being with her. I spoke about it to
René, my other conscience. “I do not think so,” was his answer.
Let us pray for the travellers, dear and excellent Kate.
FEBRUARY 20, 1869.
Comme un agneau cherchant le serpolet qu’il broute
Laisse un peu de sa laine aux buissons de la route,
Sur le chemin des jours est-il un voyageur
Qui ne laisse en passant un débris de son cœur?[159]
Margaret writes to me, regretting Marcella for my sake, and promising
to spend the summer with us. Marcella sends me beautifully long
letters every day, so that I am, as it were, present with her in her
daily life. In order that Anna may not be fatigued, the party makes
lengthened halts; the doctor is like a father to the poor little one.
Lucy is installed, charmed to have Picciola. You understand that the
dear and devoted Lucy is in our secret, and is going to attend
carefully to this other beloved invalid. But Lucy is so lively; she
has no experience, none of that sorrowful experience which gives one
the habit of taking care of others, and therefore, in order to be
quite at ease, I am sending Marianne, whom I have temporarily replaced
by a young Bretonne. Will it not be better thus? And, then, I can
count upon the doctor. Pray and get prayers for us, dear Kate!
Picciola has been growing too fast. Berthe has not the shadow of a
suspicion; she has seen in this an opportunity of doing good, and also
of preparing the twins for the sacrifice which circumstances may
demand of them later on. Teresa occupies her thoughts by study; the
good _abbé_ is alarmed at her progress. Alix and Marguérite are
charming; but where are the absent? I do not like empty places.
The _Annals_ publish some letters on the Catechism by Mgr. Dupanloup.
They are the most delicate and beautiful revelations, and show in all
its excellence this apostolic soul. He depicts in his unique style his
emotions as catechist at Saint-Sulpice, and we find here that love of
souls, and especially of the souls of children, which has produced his
finest pages upon education. There is an admirable passage upon Albert
de la Ferronays, speaking of his fervor. And then the great bishop
returns to the subject of this child grown into a young man, and
assisted by him in his last moments: “He had been always faithful.
Possessing a mind full of vivacity, and the most tender of hearts, he
kept them both in subordination, giving them only to God and to a
creature angelic as himself whom he met with on his way and married in
Italy. She did not then belong to the Catholic Church, but, being led
onward and persuaded by the virtues and example of her husband, and
perhaps also by sorrow, she made her first communion by the death-bed
of Albert, who thus had the ineffable and supreme consolation of
making his last communion together with her whom he had loved best
upon earth.” He adds that “these two souls were like two angels, and
an apparition in this world of the beauty of heaven.” The Père
Meillier, Superior of the Lazarists of Angers, is preaching the
station at Sainte-Croix, and the Père de Chazournes, author of the
admirable life of the Père Barrelle, preaches at St. Paterne.
Benoni is charmingly beautiful. I make him pray for our invalids, and
go myself daily to Notre Dame des Miracles. Oh! surely no more death,
dear Kate.
FEBRUARY 27, 1869.
Our Italians have again found their beautiful sunshine, and for two
days past Anna has had no fever, and Picciola is less pale. Marianne
has been charged to send me every three days an exact bulletin of
every hour and every minute. The devoted attention of the doctor is
unequalled; he regulates everything, meals, sleep, and the times of
going out. Marcella says, “This man is to me, as it were, an
apparition of Providence.” Think how she must suffer, especially when
she reflects that so long a sojourn in the North has been injurious to
the delicate chest of her child. Oh! I cannot believe it, when she has
so much loving care. Alas! what can affection do. Just now I was told
about Madame de C――――, left a widow a year ago, whose husband was
insane, and who has now lost her child, the only happiness of her
life. The angels who take flight are not those who are to be pitied.
MARCH 5, 1869.
Tolerably good news of the _exiles_. But I have painful forebodings.
René gently scolds me for my sadness. Pray for our sick ones, dear
Kate.
The great poet Lamartine is just dead. Doubtless at his last hour his
mother’s God, the God of his earliest years, consoled and softened his
dying moments. Oh! these great minds misled, these sublime dreamers
who wander out of the right way, what sorrowful pity they inspire. How
everything passes away and dies! I was reading this evening that M.
Guizot, writing to one of his friends, and telling him that he is
teaching his little children to read, adds: “I know of only three
lives here below: family life, political life, and Christian life; I
am leading the first, with the memories of the second, and the hopes
of the third.”
Read _Anne Séverin_, by Mrs. Craven, author of the _Récit d’une Sœur_.
The style is perfect. The angelic women who appear in it, the Catholic
youth of Guy, the fragrance of Christian sentiment which pervades the
impassioned descriptions of these pages, combine to make them present
a beautiful whole. Mme. Bourdon has reproached this work with having
shown us three generations living by love alone; she recalls the
answer made by Alexandrine when reminded of the happy days she had
spent with Albert: “I no longer think of those days.” Alexandrine was,
as it were, transfigured by the love of God, and such sacrifices as
hers are not required of every soul.
Did I tell you of my happiness at again seeing Sainte-Croix? I prefer
our cathedrals of stone to the most beautiful churches of Italy,
always excepting Saint Peter’s at Rome. It is so calm, so solemn, so
Catholic! I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing for you a fine
passage by the eloquent Abbé Bougaud, in one of his discourses, I do
not now remember which: “There is in the grandeur of Christianity at
Orleans, in the touching beauty of its influence, in its permanent
union with the destinies of the city, a monument which speaks more
than any words. Whether Orleans was reached, as formerly, by ascending
the Loire by steamboat, or whether, as now, by descending upon it on
the railway, the first objects which attract observation are the
spires and towers of Sainte-Croix. They have changed in form and
aspect, and have been by turns ogival, romanesque, perhaps
Byzantine――splendid always. In the full Middle Ages they were called
by a historian ‘the eighth wonder of the world,’ and still, at the
present time, whoever has seen them once loves to see them again, and
whithersoever our studies, our reveries, or business take us, we never
fail to return to them with pleasure or to salute them with emotion.
Place near to this grand basilica, like two satellites, St. Euverte on
the one side, with the tombs of its ancient bishops and its triple
cemetery, Gallo-Roman and Christian, and on the other St. Aignan, with
its precious relics, borne at times on the shoulders of kings, and its
crypt, visited by all Christendom, and you will have some idea of what
Christianity has been at Orleans, or, if you like it better, what
would have been wanting to this city had not Christianity been there
with its mysterious beauty and its touching influence. Throughout the
whole of this edifice, constructed at a period when men no longer knew
how to build anything similar, in this cathedral, which must have cost
efforts so prodigious, and which has been so justly called ‘the last
of the Gothic cathedrals,’ appear engraven in indelible characters the
two qualities which make the glory of Orleans, _Fidelity and
Courage_.”
I do not talk to you about the sermons, not having been able to go and
hear any at present. We have all had severe colds on the chest. My
life is quite changed since I no longer have Marcella and Picciola.
Perhaps I have been wrong to give up my heart in this manner. Oh! but
then it is because the heart is so vast. Happy they who have asked God
alone to fill it! This is what I say in my sadness, and it is wrong,
since God’s goodness and mercy to me have indeed been marvellous. O
dear Kate! if separation from a friend is so painful to me, what,
then, would it be if Heaven were to deprive me of the sweet and strong
support which it has bestowed? How much I hold to this world! Scold
me, dearest, but love me.
MARCH 10, 1869.
You have _wound me up_ again, dear sister; a thousand thanks. Oh! how
cowardly I was; I was afraid of suffering――that friend of the
Christian, that visitor from God, that messenger from eternity!
Four letters: first, Marcella, who blesses Providence for the
improvement of her child――the fever has disappeared; second, Picciola,
my delicious flower, who says to me the prettiest things in the world;
third, Margaret, who is counting the days by the side of Emmanuel’s
cradle; fourth, Edith, who feels herself stronger. By the way, the
fiery Edward is becoming reasonable; his professors entertain the best
hopes in his regard. Marianne wrote to me yesterday. She is not yet
reassured respecting our sick child. You may imagine what precautions
are taken to be careful about her without her knowledge. Dear, sweet
little soul! she spends all that her purse contains for the benefit of
the indigent. The amiable colony writes to us _en masse_. Nothing can
be prettier than these _gazettes_. I had thought of sending them to
you, but my mother makes them her daily reading. Edouard herborizes,
composes music, sings, occupies himself with history, _rocks the
babies_――that is to say, he amuses and plays with the children.
Marcella organizes parties of poor people, gives lessons to two young
girls without fortune who have been recommended to her by the doctor.
Lucy is at the head of the household affairs; arranges and regulates
everything with her graceful vivacity, and heartily enjoys this
pleasant life. Anna and Picciola (according to the same chronicle)
study a little and amuse themselves much. Gaston is becoming a man.
Then we have details, incidents, stories about birds, flowers, lambs,
children. Edouard, the _editor_, assures us that our presence alone is
wanting to complete the charms of the South.
Gertrude has entered the Third Order of St. Francis. The days are not
long enough for the duties she has created for herself; there is not a
single pious work with which she is not in some way connected; she
writes and receives innumerable letters, and spends, without
reckoning, her gold, her time, and her heart. With all this, she is
always serene; never is there a shadow on her beautiful brow, never a
sorrowful glance towards the past. Adrien is even more ardent than
she, if that could be possible; there is no kind of sacrifice which
they do not both make for the good of souls. A few days ago, on
entering Gertrude’s room, I observed that her time-piece, which is a
valuable work of art, had disappeared, and remarked upon it to her.
She blushed, and turned my attention to other things. I have since
learnt from René that this time-piece has been sold to a rich
Englishman, and its price sent to the missions. No more expensive
toilets, no more amusements, no more frivolous expenses. Gertrude does
not even see any more the things of which she once was fond. I suspect
that Adrien also has joined the Third Order.
The name of Johanna does not often occur in my letters, nor yet that
of Paul. This is unjust, for both of them love my Kate. You will be so
good as to pray especially for this sister of your sister on the 15th
and the 20th. Marguérite, Alix, and Thérèse, the tall and serious
Thérèse, scarcely ever leave me. And how pretty also is Jeanne when
she sends kisses to Madame Kate! O youth! how sweet a thing thou art,
with one’s family and country.
I wept with you for the Prince Royal of Belgium. The thought of
Picciola makes me forgetful of many subjects when I write to you. “By
as many languages as a person knows,” said Charles V., “so many times
he is a man.” “By so many times as any one is a father,” adds some one
else, “so many times over does he live.” In reading the account of
this death, I thought of all the hearts who are weeping or who have
wept by a cradle from whence a life has fled.
The beatification of Madame Elizabeth is under consideration. The
Cathedral of Orleans possesses a treasure which may soon become a
precious relic, an alb in _guipure_ which was formerly a
_robe-de-fête_ worn by the pious princess. At Notre Dame des Doms at
Avignon is preserved a chasuble made out of the last dress worn at the
Conciergerie by Marie Antoinette. Paul and Johanna have seen this
chasuble.
Could you have fifty Masses asked for at Notre Dame des Victoires,
dear Kate, on behalf of my mother? We are getting some said almost
everywhere.
May the blessings of Jesus and Mary be with you!
MARCH 15, 1869.
René is writing to you, and, quick! here I am, dearest. Good news from
everywhere. My correspondence is inexhaustible. I attended yesterday
upon a worthy man, somewhat peevish, who declared to me that I was
_clumsy_. I begged his pardon for it. The fact is he suffers fearfully
from a cancer in the leg. And he is poor, with a family! It was my
good angel who led me thither; no one visits them, and they are so
embittered by misfortune that pity is, to them, insupportable. I took
Marguérite and Alix with me this morning, and they were so sweet and
amiable that I obtained permission from the peevish man to do whatever
I like. And plenty there is to be done! The most indispensable things
have been sold. Pray for these unfortunates, dear Kate, and receive my
tenderest affection.
MARCH 19, 1869.
Communion at St. Paterne, where there was a multitude. Beautiful
singing. The organ, and a little exhortation by the Père de Chazournes
for the closing of the Paschal retreat. On returning, great joy; a
little child is born to us, and to us a son is given. Johanna is doing
well. Paul is in transports. The house is upside down.
Jeanne is asking to see the angel who brought her brother. At eleven
o’clock, to do honor to Saint Joseph, I took the young ones to
Sainte-Croix, then to the Calvaire and Recouvrance. There was in the
two latter churches exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. A profusion
of flowers and lights, and an unwonted splendor, which delighted me, I
had so much to ask, so much to pray for. Pray with us, dear Kate, for
this pretty innocent who is just arrived, that he too may become a
saint!
Gertrude’s forgetfulness of self is admirable. Berthe and Johanna
wonder unceasingly at her disinterestedness and detachment from this
world. Little by little she despoils herself of all worldly
superfluities; sells her jewels one after another, her collections
also, of which, some time ago, she was _fanatically_ fond. Kate, in
her place I think I should be dead. I should never console myself, if
I were a mother without children. And what a mother she is! If you
could only see her by the cradle of the little new-born babe, or when
she is teaching anything to the other children! What sweetness of
language! What tenderness of expression! Ah! poor broken heart which
has twice given up its universe. God is with her!
My cross man has consented to change his lodging; and now they are
installed, eight in number, in a healthy and airy street, where I have
furnished three small rooms. The new abode is bright in its
cleanliness; the mother wept for joy on entering it. The poor man, who
still shows some repugnance to my attentions, was carried thither. His
wound is frightful. I have found work for the young daughters, and the
little ones go to the Christian Brothers. The mother, worn down by
grief and privations, with her sight weakened by weeping, is incapable
of any employment. Thérèse helped me to install them, and we shall go
and see them frequently. That which I am most anxious about is to draw
them nearer to God.
Picciola is no better; Anna is very well. Let us continue to pray! All
that I do, thoughts, prayers, actions, go to one end――these two cures.
Shall I be heard?
Found in the _Annals_ a good article on “Eugénie de Guérin.” The
flower of it is this: “There is an interior and private literature;
this is as superior to the other as the soul is to the body; it is
that of Eugénie de Guérin. This literature of the heart has pages
which no other can ever equal. It [the _Journal_] is an attractive
book, and one of the best which could be offered to the human soul. It
bears a double character of mystery and of intimacy which centuples
its value. What pleasure the reader finds in believing himself also
regarded in the light of a confidant! To have this intimate secret is
to live alone with the writer; it is to have a species of love which
is charmed with what is whispered into the ear, and with what it
confidentially answers itself. The soul of Eugénie de Guérin truly
resembled the first created by God, a _living soul_, taking from and
giving to all things around her that life whose divine fire she
possessed in the highest degree. It was a soul open to heaven, a
_winged soul_, which rested a moment upon all things in succession,
but always to rise again towards heaven, singing like the lark, or
else moaning like the dove.”
“The faith which penetrated all the faculties of Eugénie de Guérin,”
says M. Nicolas, “had in it nothing romantic, nothing dreamy, nor even
ideal; it was a clearly defined and positive faith, the faith of a
good woman in a nature of the highest distinction; it was the nature
of a child and of a bird, springing and warbling, gathering all the
happiness it met with, and carrying it home to be enjoyed in its nest.
The sorrow in which she was plunged by the death of Maurice was
extreme. This sorrow arose, as it were, from its bed and beat upon her
faith as the sea beats upon its shores. But her _Journal_ was
eminently secret; she there freely poured out, in the bosom of God
alone, the grief which she restrained within herself before men. This
_Journal_ was to her a Garden of Olives, where she went apart to
faint.”
Kate dearest, I will no longer disturb your solitude but with a joyful
_Alleluia_. All here love you dearly, beloved sister of my life.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[157] When one is pure as at her age
The last day is the fairest.
[158] “_There_ never stirs a sound which inspires thought.
One can carry on a reverie to its end, and over again.
_There_, near the dead, Peace and Melancholy make their
abode, and the meditative soul, amid the waves of life,
believes itself close upon the shore.”
[159] “Even as a lamb, seeking the wild-thyme on which he
browses, leaves a little of his wool on the bushes along his
way, so, on the pathway of life, is there a wayfarer who
leaves not as he passes some fragment of his
heart?”――Violeau.
MODERN MELODISTS.
SCHUBERT.
In the present day, when all musicians, from the purveyor of the
_opéra bouffe_ to the composer of sacred music, rival each other in
attempting the style which has immortalized Schubert, the time appears
opportune for studying the works of the principal melodists. In
default of other merit, we may at least lay claim to that of
novelty――if, indeed, novelty can have any value when every one is
making it his boast. Even Scudo,[160] the only writer who has devoted
a few pages to Romance music, has contrived not to say a word about
Schubert and the German masters, although, on the other hand, he has
thought well to enumerate productions that have fallen into permanent
oblivion.
Every people has its popular songs, its religious hymns and canticles,
its ballads and romances; but of all these, three principal streams
are easily distinguishable――three great melodic currents, from which
flow all the rest. These are, firstly, the German _Lied_, to which
belong all the Scandinavian, Hungarian, and Sclavonic ballads; then
the Italian _canzona_, the primitive type of the music of Southern
Europe, and which has apparently some affinity with the _seguidilla_,
the _bolero_, the _jota_, and _malagueña_ of Spain――picturesque
romances, on which is perceptible, in some indescribable manner, an
Arabic impress; and, lastly, as the centre of the intermediate
current, the French _chanson_, which, though less profound than the
German _Lied_, is nevertheless more true and more emotional than the
brilliant vocalizations of Italy and Spain.
How different have the destinies of these three currents proved!
Whilst the German stream has flowed on from age to age, enriched in
its course by genius and learning, in Italy and France the melodic
current, being isolated, has been gradually dwindling to a mere
thread, at last disappearing altogether. Not that the French _chanson_
was by any means without its characteristic merit; a charming
simplicity, a gentle melancholy, marked its earliest beginnings, and
it preserved these characters from the old melodies of Thibaut de
Champagne and the _noëls_ of the middle ages to the _chansons_ of
eighteenth century. But after this development of a too prolonged
infancy it found an inglorious end at the hands of the vulgar
songmakers of the nineteenth century. The simplicity of the past now
became insipidity, and the _Amédée_ of Beauplan and the productions of
Loïsa Puget obtained a success at which future times will stand
amazed.
The destiny of the Italian _canzona_ was the same. Its palmy days were
those of its infancy, and the innumerable romances which are now to be
heard, from the Gulf of Genoa to the Lido, and from the Alps to the
Bay of Naples, weary the ear of the wondering traveller. Fertile in
its barcarolles of _Viva la Francia_, _Viva Garibaldi_, _Santa Lucia_,
Italy has no need to envy France her Beauplan and Mlle. L. Puget.
But whilst the _romance_ and the _canzona_ were thus dwindling away,
the _Lied_ was mounting to a marvellous height. “The combined work of
the greatest poets――of Klopstock, Schiller, and Goethe――and of the
greatest musicians――Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, Weber,
etc.”[161]――it followed, step by step, the progress of the art, and,
assimilating to itself each fresh conquest of musical science, it
acquired, as years went on, increasing richness of harmony and power
of rhythm.
It is this style only which merits a careful study. Leaving,
therefore, to the learned the care of drawing from oblivion those rare
French and Italian songs which are worthy to be rescued, we proceed at
once to the consideration of the German _Lied_, and, without seeking
into its beginnings or following its development, we will take it at
its apogee――namely, when it attained, with Schubert, that perfection
of beauty which cannot be surpassed.
Schubert is essentially a lyric genius. Great developments are foreign
to his nature; with a few touches he traces the ideal which has
appeared to him, but these few strokes suffice to produce a work of
imperishable beauty.
Venturing little into public, Schubert, whose timidity was equal to
his extreme sensibility, led a quiet and uneventful existence; but,
like the Æolian harp, the soul of the lyric poet vibrates to the
slightest breath. Needing no inspiration from outward events, it is
moved from within by every variety of feeling. It was in the heart of
Schubert that the tempests raged which make us tremble; there breathed
the sighs of love, and thence arose the wailings of despair. There
also he found the sweet sunbeams, the fresh wind, and all the
fragrance of the spring. Accustomed to live within himself, he took
pleasure in analyzing his own impressions, which he confided to a
journal, the greater part of which is unfortunately lost, but the few
fragments that remain abound in deep thoughts.
We will quote a few of these confidential lines, which will form the
best introduction to the immortal songs which he has left us, as well
as the best commentary upon them:
“Sorrow,” he writes, “quickens the understanding and strengthens the
soul; joy, on the contrary, renders it frivolous and selfish.”
“My works,” he says elsewhere, “are the offspring of my intellect and
my grief. The world appears to prefer those which my grief alone has
created.”
If we would know what were his thoughts upon faith, we find him
writing as follows: “Man comes into the world with faith. It precedes
by a long distance either reason or knowledge. _To understand, we must
first believe._ Faith is the ground into which we must drive our first
stake――the base for every other foundation.”
He one day wrote to his father: “My ‘Hymn to the Blessed Virgin’ has
moved the hearts of all: every one seemed to think my piety something
wonderful. This, I think, is because I never force my devotion, nor
ever write hymns and prayers unless I feel a real inspiration to do
so; for then only is it true devotion.”
On another occasion he comes home greatly impressed by a magnificent
quintette of Mozart’s he had just been hearing, and on a stray piece
of paper writes these words: “The enchanting notes of Mozart’s music
are still resounding in me. Thus do those beautiful productions, which
time cannot efface, remain engraven in the depth of our souls. They
show us, on beyond the darkness of this life, the certainty of a
future full of glory and of love. O immortal Mozart! what imperishable
instincts of a better life dost thou implant within us.”
O immortal Schubert! we in our turn may ask, Who shall express the
emotions evoked by thee in our hearts?
That which chiefly characterizes the melodies of Schubert, taken as a
whole, is their depth of feeling. He is never at a loss to find
accents which go at once to our hearts. He makes us weep with
Rosemonde and love with Marguérite; “The Erl King” (_Le Roi des
Aulnes_) freezes us with terror, and hurries us on, in spite of
ourselves, towards the mysterious abyss of the legend; in “The Young
Nun” (_La Jeune Religieuse_) we are made in turn to experience the
sufferings of the struggle and the final transports of the soul’s
victory over sense.
To know Schubert well, we must see how he has expressed the different
sentiments of the human heart――not love and terror simply, but
infinite varieties of intermediate and moderate feeling; and in these
we shall find, as his common characteristics, grace and brilliancy.
“Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.”
Who shall sing of love unless he knows its pains? Schubert has felt it
all――its timid tenderness, its ardent passion, and it may be its
despair. In his “Pensées d’Amour” are not these six bars the
unfolding, as it were, of a heart which is opening for the first time,
like a bud in the sunshine of a spring morning?――when
“Eden revives in the first kiss of love”
(thus sings yron). A happy dream; a tenderness as shy as it is
deep――were these ever rendered with a more delicate charm?
After this sweet and tranquil reverie follows impassioned devotion.
The “Serenade” is too well known to require that we should linger over
it. Who does not recall the appeals of that supplicating voice, and
the plaintive answers of the accompaniment?
How immensely inferior for the most part are the serenades to which
public favor has given a celebrity! All the masters of the modern
Italian school have sung under a balcony; and without going so far
back as Stradella, whose lovely romance in D minor has nothing in
common with the modern _Lied_, we will say a few words on the
serenades of _Le Barbier_ and _Don Pasquale_, which appear to be the
most extensively known.
The one addressed by Almaviva to Rosina――or, to speak more accurately,
to the public――seems to us unworthy of Rossini’s reputation. A phrase,
rather wanting in fulness, some passages for the voice, a few organ
touches――this is all; the whole, however, very well written for giving
relief to the fine notes of a tenor. But this is not enough to
constitute a _chef d’œuvre_; and probably Rossini was thinking of this
kind of music when he boasted before Bellini that he wrote from his
mind rather than from his heart, at the same time assuring the young
man’s simplicity that this was “_quite sufficient for the worthy
public_.”
The serenade in _Don Pasquale_ is graceful and coquettish. If
Donizetti intended this declaration of love to be taken merely as a
jest, he has perfectly succeeded.
M. Gounod has written several serenades, without including his
“Aubades.” To speak of the former only, the serenade of Mephistopheles
“Vous qui faites l’endormie,”[162] in _Faust_, is not wanting in
charm, though something more incisive would be better suited to an
infernal singer. The famous serenade, “_Quand tu dors_,”[163] has less
originality than the foregoing, although agreeably written for the
voice. It is an excellent vocalization, which, more than once,
Bordogni must have regarded with a jealous eye. It is not until the
_andante amoroso_ that it expresses anything like passion. As to the
serenade of the page in _Romeo and Juliet_, it is inferior again to
its two elders.
To find a serenade comparable to those of Schubert, we must address
ourselves to Mozart. Who that has heard _Don Juan_ does not remember
the marvellous contrast, long since remarked by critics, between the
melodious phrase, full of character and tenderness, and the light
accompaniment which falsifies every word uttered by Don Juan? Love is
on his lips, while mocking indifference is in his heart.
In the expression of suffering, desolation, and despair we shall find
that Schubert is greater still; and mention as examples “Rosemonde,”
“Marguérite,” and “Les Plaintes de la Jeune Fille.” The artist,
following his inspiration, renders the same thought under very
different forms; he finds in his soul deep and varying shades which
escape the vulgar and are the marks of true genius. In all these three
works Schubert has to express the grief of a forsaken maiden, but with
what consummate art, and yet what truth, he has known how to vary his
accents! In reading these melodies in the order already named the
emotion goes on increasing up to the end.
In “Rosemonde” we hear the complaint of a soul which knows the
sufferings of abandonment, but not the pangs of despair. After an
introduction in F major full of sweetness and tenderness, the opening
of the melody in F minor impresses us painfully; but about the middle
of each of these strophes the young girl, recovering, with the A
natural, the original key, lets us plainly see that she still has
hope.
Marguérite hopes no more. From the very opening we feel troubled by
the agitated movement of the accompaniment: it is like the sorrowful
murmur of the soul preceding sobs of anguish, and is prolonged still
for a moment after the unhappy girl has said for the last time, “_C’en
est fait; il m’oublie――l’ingrat que j’aimais!_”[164] What accents of
abandonment have we here! On the words, _Mes jours sont flétris_,[165]
grief swells almost to madness. But Marguérite, presently recovering
herself, retraces the past, and seems to see again her lover. Again
she cries:
“Pour moi tout va finir.
Un seul moment reviens encore,
Un seul moment te revoir et mourir!”[166]
Her suffering has become almost insupportable. She stops, and the
agitation continues only in her heart. After a few bars she resumes in
a low voice: “_C’en est fait, il m’oublie_,” etc., and the melody ends
on the fifth, then a very new effect, though now frequently employed.
If, after a short pause, we read the “Plaintes de la Jeune Fille,” we
are soon under the influence of an entirely different emotion. The
agitation of the preceding melody is changed for a more self-contained
but even more poignant pain. The maiden, ripened by long suffering,
confides to the tossing waves the woe which consumes her. A solemn and
lugubrious phrase escapes her; her words are slow, her sorrow
fearfully calm. Ten years of tears and contemplation were needed to
change Marguérite to this.
To find repose from violent emotions we need not have recourse to any
other than Schubert, among whose eminent characteristics are those of
sweetness, gracefulness, and contrasting brilliancy and splendor. From
among a multitude of admirable melodies we will mention only “La
Truite,” “Le Nautonnier,” and “Le Départ” (“The Trout,” “The Sailor,”
and “The Departure”).
In “La Truite” Schubert unexpectedly finds himself met by a great
difficulty. If it be true that people are soon tired of descriptive
poetry, it is still more incontestable that the descriptive style is
ill suited to music.
We must make an exception for certain powerful physical effects, such
as tempest under all its forms; and yet here again what we are most
sensible of in the storms of Gluck, Beethoven, and Weber is the
troubled state of the human mind in presence of the disturbance of
nature.
One day, when the genius of the great and good Haydn was taking a nap,
it came into his head to attempt to express in his _Creation_ the
roaring of lions and tigers, the swiftness of the stag, together with
other equally unmusical ideas; he consequently fell into the
grotesque. Schubert had to describe the joyous sportings of the trout
“in its limped crystal.” He had the good taste to trouble himself very
little about it. To find a melodic phrase full of charm and feeling
was his first care; and need we say that he succeeded? The light and
graceful design of the accompaniment may perhaps remind us of the
trout――“His graceful dartings and his rapid course” (“_Ses élans
gracieux, sa course volage_”)――but it is nothing more than a detail of
the description which comes merely as an addition to the dominant
sentiment.
“Le Nautonnier” is the triumphal song of the mariner who, after
braving the violence of the tempest, returns safely into port. Rapid
as the wind which fills the sails of his bark, agitated as the waves
which threaten to engulf him――such is the rhythm of the two first
phrases; but soon, with the major and the E flat of the treble, the
song of victory bursts forth: man has conquered the force of the
elements. This is undeniably one of the most vigorous melodies ever
written by Schubert.
“Le Départ” is a no less powerful production. It is not a little
surprising to read, as the title of a song by the melancholy Schubert:
“Le Départ: Chant de Joie.” It is, in fact, the song of one carried
away by a love of change and a thirst for new pleasures――one who can
say with Byron that
“I, who am of lighter mood,
Will laugh to flee away.”[167]
This song is remarkable for the proud loftiness of its melodious
march, and for the ardor which impregnates its rhythm. It is a
wonderful intermingling of carelessness and eagerness, the more
observable because it was so rarely that Schubert was called upon to
express feelings too exterior and noisy for his timid and concentrated
nature.
Beethoven, who had made deep acquaintance with human suffering, and in
whose wondrous pages it is expressed with so much power, would
nevertheless at times sing also his notes of gladness. He built the
immensely grand finale of the “Symphony and Chorus” upon Schiller’s
“Hymn of Joy.”
It is a wondrous hymn! After a splendid opening by the orchestra alone
follows the phrase in D major, of antique nobleness and simplicity;
but, alas! this moment of interior calm is cruelly expiated. The grand
phrase is made to undergo successive tortures; after changing into a
plaint of sorrow, it becomes a cry of despair, almost of madness.
Elsewhere again, in the incomparable finale of the Symphony in A,
Beethoven has sung of joy――joy carried to its utmost limits of
enthusiasm and ecstasy. To follow Beethoven in his impetuous course
produces an indescribable emotion, less akin to pleasure than to pain,
since violent feeling, from whatever cause it may arise, is invariably
attended by suffering. Excess, whether of joy or love, is pain, very
pure but very penetrating; for it is one of the conditions of our
human nature to be unable to rise on high without suffering here below.
“Jamais entière allégresse:
L’âme y souffre de ses plaisirs,
Les cris de joie ont leur tristesse,
Et les voluptés leurs soupirs.”[168]
Besides, after the mysterious nuptial march of the Symphony in A can
we be surprised that the joy of Beethoven is only a delusion of the
heart, and beneath this feverish ardor must not some great moral
suffering be hidden?
But we must return from the digression into which we have been led by
the consideration of the “Chant de Joie,” whose great author, however,
would not reproach us for it, being himself a profound admirer of
Beethoven. We have now to see how Schubert has rendered the sentiment
of terror.
Only to name “The Erl King” and “The Young Nun” is a sufficient
reminder of the greatness of this composer in the expression of
dramatic feeling. These two _Lieder_ are known all over the world;
“The Erl King,” more especially, popularized by Mme. Viardot, is one
of those few melodies of Schubert which have crossed the Alps and
become favorites in Italy.
Criticism has for so long past awarded its admiration to the strangely
fascinating song of the black spectre and the terrified cries of the
child that it would be superfluous to do more than allude to them; but
it will be well to devote a few lines to the consideration of “The
Young Nun,” which has been very little studied.
In the first part what an intermingling there is of terror and wild
love! Listen to this fragment of two bars, thrice interrupted, more by
the storm within the heart than the outward fury of the elements, and
thrice resumed with a chromatic scale.[169] After the triple
reiteration of ascendants, three new fragments descend, also
chromatically, with a bass accompaniment of a lugubrious character,
and a harmonic sequence expressive of acute distress:
“Partout l’ombre,
Et la nuit sombre;
――Deuil et terreur.”[170]
From the depths of this abyss, with the words _souvenir de douleur_
(remembered pain), which evoke a whole past, there springs up a new
thought of exquisite tenderness; and here we have a glimpse of the key
of F major, but only for a moment, the melody falling back into F
minor.
“_L’orage grondait ainsi en mon cœur_” (Thus rolled the storm within
my heart). Here, for the moment, passion carries the day; the three
cries of terror, interrupted at the opening, are uttered again, more
hurriedly, at the remembrance of this distracting love “which agitated
her by day and night,” then a fresh burst of despair recurs in the
chromatic descent which takes us back to F minor.
“Ainsi flétrie, ma triste vie se consumait.”[171]
In this line we hear once more, but for the last time and very softly,
the gloomy burden of the bass, immediately after which reappears the A
natural, which victoriously restores the key of F major. Light has
banished darkness, and life has vanquished death.
“_La paix est rentrée à jamais dans mon cœur_” (Peace has returned to
dwell for ever in my heart), sings the young nun in an inspired voice.
This time the triumph is complete. At the words, “Descend, my Saviour,
from the eternal home,” the musical phrase mounts like a thanksgiving
hymn. The effect is marvellous, and what is not less so is the fact
that Schubert has recourse only to the most natural means to produce
it. A simple change of key, the passage in the major――a form so
frequently insipid――is, in his hands, invested with a surprising
power.
Among the other _Lieder_ of the sombre kind is one deserving especial
attention――namely, “The Young Girl and Death” (_La Jeune Fille et la
Mort_). In this we are attracted not so much by the beauty of the
melody as by the musical problem which it may help us to solve. How
ought music to speak of supernatural beings? How is it to be made
suitable to the utterances of the Divinity, of demons, or of Death? We
have here a serious difficulty. Is it fitting that the musician should
put a melody into the mouths of abstract beings? Whatever may be the
beauty of the phrase that is _sung_, the effect does not meet the
requirements of the case or answer our expectations. Is it, then,
needful to have recourse to recitative? But recitative has not the
depth demanded by the subject. What, then, must be done? Let us refer
to Gluck; this great master has more than one secret to reveal to
those who thoroughly study him.
Gluck was the first to discover the most suitable form in which to
represent spiritual voices, and so well has he succeeded that no one
has been able to ignore his influence. At the risk of being otherwise
either cold or ridiculous, it has been necessary for all to adopt, in
this particular, his manner.
“_Tremble, ton supplice s’apprête_” (Thy doom is even now prepared),
says a mysterious voice to Thoas (_Iphigenia in Tauris_). The phrase,
given slowly and softly by voices and trombones in unison, on _re_
penetrates us with a mysterious fear.
In _Alcestis_, listen to the lugubrious effect of the voice of the
oracle, saying on a sustained note: “The king to-day must die, if in
his stead none other offers up his life.”[172] It is full of a sombre
beauty, and the terrible persistency of the rhythm is very expressive
of the antique fatalism.
Must it be added that Gluck has proved by his own example the
inevitable absurdity of a melodic phrase in the mouth of a divinity
who is made to intervene in human events?
Diana appears in order to save Iphigenia and her brother; the goddess
sings her _aria_, and we see with pain one of the most admirable
_chefs-d’œuvre_ of dramatic music finish as miserably as the utterly
forgotten _Iphigenia_ of Piccini.
Again, Mozart wishes to evoke the shade of the Commander; the statue
becomes animated and speaks:
“Before the dawning thou wilt cease to smile.”[173]
This phrase, by its harmonies and rhythm, reminds us of the voice of
the oracle:
“Le roi doit mourir aujourd’hui.”
Here an objection will probably be made that the statue lays aside
this uniform tone, and that Mozart ventures to entrust it with a more
melodic phrase. The answer is simple: the form created by Gluck is
necessary when the supernatural being preserves its mysterious
character, and issues not from the cloud that conceals it from our
eyes. But if the statue descends from its pedestal and again becomes
the Commander, if the oracle or the god takes a body, if you allow him
human feelings, there can be no reason against his expressing them. It
is no longer the hidden divinity who dictates an inevitable decree,
but one who, having taken the form of a man, speaks in man’s language.
In the same way Wagner, when making gods and genii the personages of
his dramas, gives them the accents of the human voice. Mingling among
men, they too may well love and suffer, weep and sing.
After Gluck and Mozart,[174] Schubert also makes Death speak; he also
accepts as necessary the form given by Gluck. To the young girl’s
supplication Death answers by a phrase the rhythm and harmonies of
which perhaps too much recall the voice of the oracle in _Alcestis_.
If we may venture to say so, Schubert seems to have found himself in
one of those exceptional cases in which the Gluckist form was not
suitable. Why this sombre coloring, when Death was doing his utmost to
_charm_ the young girl?
“Give me thy hand, nor tremble thus,
Enfolded in my arms, thou’lt sink
Into a sleep more sweet than life.”[175]
Here a more melodic phrase would appear to us more suitable.
Having no intention of giving a catalogue of the works of
Schubert,[176] we will not group together his _Lieder_, but merely
observe that all his melodies belong to one of three divisions, which
express either love, or splendor, joy, and triumph, or, lastly,
terror. Many combine two of these divisions. In “Marguérite” the
principal idea is that of love, and the secondary one the drama; on
the contrary, in “La Jeune Religieuse” the drama occupies the first
place, and the earthly love is subordinate.
Our notice would be too incomplete without at least a rapid survey of
the other works of Schubert besides the _Lied_, in which he is
unequalled, but he has also tried symphonies, operas, and oratorios.
Of his operas, which are numerous, two only have obtained some
reputation――namely, _Alfonso and Estrella_, chiefly famous for its
reverses, and _La Guerre Domestique_ (The Domestic War), known in
France by the name of _La Croisade des Dames_. This charming opera in
one act was played with success a few years ago at the Théâtre des
Fantaisies in Paris, and in every page could be recognized with
pleasure the author of the _Lieder_. Its distinguishing qualities are
the touching tenderness of the melody, the brilliancy and delicacy of
the organ accompaniment, and the perfection in the manner of writing
for the voices.
Schubert undertook also some more extensive works, many of which,
unfortunately, were never completed, while the rest are lost in
consequence of that absence of care and order which has probably cost
us the loss of more than one valuable composition. Ought we to regret
that Schubert has not left one great opera in which he might have
displayed all his faculties? We think so, although we do not say that
he would have proved himself to be a musician like Mozart, a master of
tragedy like Gluck or gifted with Weber’s power of fantastic coloring,
capable of the sustained passion of Meyerbeer or the powerful
developments of Wagner. But tenderness and sweetness would have flowed
in streams from his heart, and the work would have been so full of
poetry and so rich in characteristic beauties that his place would
still have been a glorious one. Who can deny that M. Gounod is a great
composer? And yet it would be difficult to name a really powerful
page, unless it be the church scene in _Faust_, and the finale in
_Sappho_. Posterity will say of him that he was deficient in force,
but that Marguérite is very enchanting, _Romeo and Juliet_ full of
tenderness, and _Mireille_ of poetry; and doubtless as much as this
would have been said of Schubert.
In his symphonies and drawing-room music Schubert, no longer carried
on by feeling, frequently fails. The subscribers to the popular
concerts of the _Cirque d’hiver_ in Paris have not forgotten the
fragments of his symphonies which were at various times executed under
the able direction of M. Pasdeloup. These selections were taken from
the best, and there was certainly here and there a page which breathed
inspiration. But praise like this is no small blame, and it is a
severe criticism on a symphony to detach merely an isolated portion
from it, and condemn the remainder to oblivion.
What was the reason of this inferiority in Schubert’s symphonic music?
One of the most serious appears to be the fact that he had not made a
very deep or advanced study of music. He was preparing to study the
fugue when carried off by death. Now, it is precisely symphonic
composition that demands the most extensive and thorough knowledge of
the science of music. Grétry and Montigny, who were but ordinary
contrapuntists, have written admirable operas, but we might seek in
vain for a great symphonist who had not at the same time a deep
knowledge of music as a science.
Besides, Schubert, whose inspirations, as we have already remarked,
were essentially lyric, was not in the habit of working out his
thoughts, and lacked the capacity for giving them the powerful
developments required by the symphony. Spoiled also by his
extraordinary facility, he wrote too fast. In a lyric composition like
the _Lied_ the facility of the hand is no hindrance to the
inspiration, which should be ardent and rapid, but the formation and
unfolding, as it were, of a symphony require a powerful inspiration
joined to the patient reflection and incessant labor which twenty
times over modifies its work before giving its definitive form.
The symphonic music of Schubert will pass away, but he will find a
place in the hearts of posterity as the inspired singer of the
_Lieder_, the beautiful completeness of which, as a whole, is the
result of his having known how to enshrine in these short poems rapid
and living dramas, full by turns of joy and sorrow, love and triumph,
or despair He was one of those men whose greatness is rather of the
heart than the intellect; and if to others great conceptions are due,
few like him have given expression to the deepest feelings of the
heart, and the most refined and elevated accents of the soul.
[160] _Critique et Littérature Musicales_, vol. i. p. 322.
[161] _Franz Schubert: sa Vie et les Œuvres._ Par Mme.
Audley. Paris: Didier.
[162] Thou who seemest to be sleeping.
[163] When thou sleepest.
[164] All is over; he forgets me――the ungrateful one whom I
have loved.
[165] My days are withered.
[166] “All soon will end for me. Return again, return one
moment more, that I once more may see thy face and die.” In
the _Faust_ of M. Gounod we have Marguérite at the wheel.
The French composer has treated this scene in a very
touching and striking manner, especially on the words, “_Il
ne revient pas_.” It is a beautiful page, but not so deep as
Schubert.
[167] _Childe Harold._
[168] REBOUL. Not here is perfect joy:
Suffering attends the soul’s delights,
Our notes of gladness have their sadness,
And every pleasure has its sighs.
[169] M. Gounod, in the duo of the first act of _Romeo and
Juliet_, has found a chromatic ascendant which has some
analogy with that of Schubert, but which, in the hands of
the French composer, takes quite a different coloring.
Sombre in _La Jeune Religieuse_, it is in _Roméo et
Juliette_ sparkling with light. In the line “_Vois ces
rayons jaloux dont l’orient se dore_” (“Behold these envious
beams which gild the east”) the brilliant ground-work added
by M. Gounod contributes not a little to render the effect
of light.
[170] Gloom over all
And the dark night;
――Terror and woe.
[171] Thus withered, my sad life consumed away.
[172] Le roi doit mourir aujourd’hui,
Si quelqu’autre au trépas ne se livre pour lui.
[173] _Tu cesseras de rire avant l’aurore._
[174] Not having space to multiply examples, we say nothing
of the Oracle of Spontini, which, moreover, has the form of
Gluck.
[175] “_Donne ta main. Ne tremble pas.
Tu vas dormir entre mes bras.
D’un sommeil plus doux que la vie._”
[176] Schubert is known to have composed more than five
hundred melodies, most of which are admirable. Those we
mention are merely taken as examples from among numerous
others of equal beauty.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
THEOLOGIA MORALIS NOVISSIMI ECCLESIæ DOCTORIS S. ALPHONSI. Auctore
A. Konings, C.S.S.R. Editio Altera, Aucta et Emendata. Benziger
Fratres, 1876.
We have already noticed the first edition of this work, which is
certainly a valuable and excellent one in many respects. It has
received the approbation of his Eminence the Cardinal, and of many
others of the prelates of this country, has apparently been well
received by the clergy in general, and it will not be at all
surprising if it becomes the standard text-book of moral theology in
the seminaries of the United States. This success it goes far to
deserve. It supplies a great want in the treatises previously used, by
bringing in many points relating to the laws and customs existing
among us; and this alone might seem a sufficient reason for its
adoption. It has also many other advantages, partly due to the ability
of the author, partly to the works which he has taken (as all writers
on this subject must at the present day) for his basis. Among these he
has principally followed Gury, adhering more, perhaps, to his language
than to that of St. Alphonsus.
But, in spite of the many advantages and excellences of the book, we
must enter a protest against its use, at least as the sole authority
on which the minds of theological students are to be formed. And this
protest is on account of the system of equi-probabilism taught in it,
which we should be very sorry to have prevail, both on the ground of
its unreasonableness, and on that of its bad practical effects.
We should have no space in a notice of this kind to discuss fully this
very important and much vexed question. But the point of our criticism
can be sufficiently made by simply referring to the author’s
definitions of the grades of probability in opinions (p. 27).
The obvious objection to these definitions, which are made the basis
of his system, and which must, indeed, be made the basis of any system
of equi-probabilism, is that, according to them, an opinion cannot be
notably or decidedly more probable than its contradictory without
making that contradictory “not solidly probable,” to use the author’s
words, which are the usual technical ones.
Now, we venture to think that such a statement as this with regard to
probability would hardly be made in treating of any other subject than
that at present in hand. Suppose, for instance, the question to be one
of physical science,――that, for example, of the solar parallax. Now,
we think we are not wrong in saying that it is decidedly more probable
that this parallax is greater than 8-8/10 seconds of arc than that it
is less than this amount. Be that as it may, it is certain that there
is some value, perfectly ascertainable by methods of computation on
which astronomers would agree, for which, in the present state of
science, we could say that the probability of the parallax exceeding
this value is once and a half times as great as that of its falling
short of it. Certainly in this case it would be decidedly more
probable that it does exceed this value than that it does not. Yet who
would say that the probability of its not exceeding that value was
destitute of any solidity?
We may take a case in which probability is susceptible of exact
numerical computation. Suppose two balls, one white and one black, to
be together in a box, and that we draw twice from this box, putting
back the ball drawn the first time. The probability that we shall not
draw the white ball twice is three times as great as that we shall;
yet would any one say that there was no solid probability of so
drawing it? If it was a question of drawing it five times, then the
probability of this, being only 1/31 of that of the contradictory,
might, indeed, not be “solid.”
The whole case can, as it would seem, be put in the following form: It
is agreed, by equi-probabilists, as well as by probabilists, that a
solidly probable opinion against the law can be followed. If the
former choose to call an opinion only slightly less probable than its
contradictory, till its probability becomes so small that it really,
in the common judgment of men, ceases to be solid, they depart from
the common use of language, but the controversy between them and the
latter is merely one of the use of words.
But if the equi-probabilists refuse to call an opinion solidly
probable as soon as its probability becomes what men would generally
call decidedly less than that of its contradictory (two-thirds of it,
for instance), they depart, as seems evident from the above cases,
again from the common use of words, and the statement――the complement
of the former one, and on which also both parties agree――that an
opinion against the law not solidly probable cannot be followed, has,
in their mouths, a new meaning, which the judgment of mankind will, it
seems to us, hardly accept, and which will lead to perpetual and most
embarrassing changes of doctrine and practice. The author undoubtedly
believes that he is following St. Alphonsus in his system; it seems to
us that he has, with other equi-probabilists, not rightly apprehended
the meaning of certain passages in the works of that illustrious
Doctor, which seem certainly at first sight to have such a sense. But
to discuss this matter would lead us too far.
THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS: Being a Plain Exposition and Vindication
of the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. By Rt. Rev. James
Gibbons, D.D., Bishop of Richmond and Administrator-Apostolic of
North Carolina. Baltimore: Murphy & Co.; London: Washbourne. 1877.
We have rarely met with a book which pleased us so thoroughly as this
little volume of the Bishop of Richmond. It is popular, and is
therefore not addressed to the few who are interested in the
philosophical and scientific controversies of the age, but to the
people, to the multitude, as were the words of Christ. It is a
thoroughly honest book, written by a man who loves the church and his
country and who is deeply interested in whatever concerns the welfare
of mankind. From the start we are convinced of his perfect sincerity.
Not to make a book has he written; but he believes, and therefore
speaks. It is this that gives value to literature――the human life, the
human experience, which it contains. Bishop Gibbons has labored for
several years with great zeal in North Carolina and Virginia, where
there are few Catholics, where the opportunities of dispelling
Protestant prejudice are rare, but where the people are generally not
unwilling to be enlightened. Learned arguments are less needed than
clear and accurate statements of the doctrines, practices, and aims of
the church. Catholic truth is its own best evidence: is more
persuasive than any logic with which the human mind is able to
reinforce it.
To the right mind and pure heart it appeals with irresistible force;
and therefore the great work of those who labor for God is to put away
the mental and moral obstructions which shut out the view of the truth
as it is in Christ. In setting forth in clear and simple style “the
faith of our fathers” Bishop Gibbons is careful to meet all the
objections which are likely to be made to the church. He is thoroughly
acquainted with the American people; is himself an American; and his
book is another proof that the purest devotion to the church is
compatible with the deepest love for the freest and most democratic of
governments. Sympathy gives him insight, reveals the matter and the
manner that suit his purpose best. The skill with which he has
compressed into a small volume such a variety of topics, giving to
each satisfactory treatment, is truly admirable. He seems to have
forgotten nothing, and has consequently produced a complete popular
explanation and vindication of Catholic doctrine. We cannot praise too
highly the tone and temper of this book.
The author is not aggressive; is never bitter, never sneers nor deals
in sarcasm or ridicule; does not treat his reader as a foe to be
beaten, but as a brother to be persuaded. His sense of religion is too
deep to allow him to make light of any honest faith. We perceive on
every page the reverend and Christian bishop who knows that charity
and not hate is the divine power of the church; the fire that sets the
world ablaze. It is not necessary that we should say more in
commendation of this treatise. It will most certainly have a wide
circulation, and its merits will be advertised by every reader. Bishop
Gibbons has written chiefly for Protestants, but we hope his book will
find entrance into every Catholic family in the land.
DEIRDRE. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
The poet who ventures on an epic in these days deserves well of
literature. To turn from the puling, weak, or nauseous themes which
form the subjects of most of the contemporary English poetry is in
itself a sign of a strong and healthy temperament. Nevertheless, the
venture is a bold one. Pretty and graceful lyric verse may pass easily
enough and win a transient popularity without challenging any strong
comparison, lost as it is in the crowd of its fellows. But when an
epic is mentioned, Homer towers up with Virgil in his train; Dante
sweeps along; the shade of Milton oppresses us; we are in the company
of giants and breathe reverently. The men who grasp epochs of history
and human life, and string them into numbers that resound through all
the ages, are few indeed. So we say he is a bold man who would follow
in their track; but, at least, his ambition is great, whatever be its
execution.
The author of _Deirdrè_ is not a Homer or a Virgil; he is not even
equal to those fine English echoes of the great masters――Dryden and
Pope; and although we do not know him, and are not sure as to who he
is, we have little doubt that no man would be readier to concede what
we here state than the author of _Deirdrè_ himself. At least, he will
consider it no dishonor that his song should wake the memory of those
great singers in our mind.
_Deirdrè_ is an Irish story of pre-Christian times. Like the _Iliad_,
it has its Helen, who gives her name to the poem, and around her the
story centres. The beauty of Deirdrè, like that of Helen, is her
curse. Wherever she goes she is a brand of discord. Heroes fight for
her, wars are waged for possession of her, great deeds are done in her
name, and the end is disaster for all. She is unlike her Greek
prototype only in her Irish chastity, pagan though she was. There have
been Irish Helens, and the disaster of her race is to be traced to one
of them; but they are only remembered to be cursed. Still, the author
was at liberty, if he chose, to follow the prevailing taste of the
day, and add a spurious interest to his poem by making its heroine
unfaithful to her spouse. He has done the contrary. It is the very
fidelity of Deirdrè that adds its chief interest to the poem. From the
day when first the squirrel cried to her from the tree in the garden
where she had been enclosed by the king:
“Come up! come up! Come up, and see the world!”
and she obeyed the promptings of her nature and went up, and for the
first time looked over the garden wall and saw “the great world spread
out,” she lost her heart, for here is what she saw:
“Three youthful knights in all their martial pride,
With red cloaks fluttering in the summer breeze,
And gay gems flashing on their harnesses,
And on the helm that guarded each proud head,
And on each shield where shone the Branch of Red.
And, as they passed, the eldest of the three,
With great black, wistful eyes looked up at me;
For he did mark this yellow head of mine
Amid the green tree’s branches glint and shine.
And oh! the look――the fond, bright look――he gave!…”
These were the three heroic sons of Usna, and the eldest of the three
is Naisi, who finds his way into the charmed forest where Deirdrè is
kept by the king until she should grow to an age ripe enough to fit
her to be made his queen. The young lady objects――as young ladies will
do sometimes――to be disposed of in this manner, and Naisi, having
first stolen her heart, completes his theft by stealing herself. They
fly from Eman, and Clan Usna accompanies them. The rest of the poem is
made up of their wanderings and final luring back to Eman, when the
king wreaks his vengeance upon them. With the fate of the sons of Usna
and Deirdrè the poem closes.
There is much that is admirable in the whole work. The scenes are
wonderfully well localized. One never strays into to-day. The author
has completely mastered the difficult geographical terminology, and
makes it sweet and pleasant to the ear. The men are cast in heroic
mould, and a tinge of chivalry added to them that beautifies and
ennobles them. Deirdrè is a sweet, pure, and loving woman; her early
youth in the garden of the king is in itself an idyllic gem. The
battle scenes are strong and vigorous, and not too long drawn out; a
sea-fight in particular is wonderfully well described. The glimpses of
natural scenery given here and there are varied and picturesque.
Indeed, there is everything that is good in the poem, but nothing that
can be called _great_; and greatness is the standard and measure of an
epic.
We think the author, too, has been careless in the construction of his
verse. It is unequal. Half-rhymes abound: “bird” and “stirred,”
“house” and “carouse,” “restored” and “board,” “hum” and “room,”
“jollity” and “company,” “heath” and “breath,” cannot be considered
good rhymes, yet they are all found within the first three pages. They
are to too great an extent characteristic of the whole. Then there is
an abundance of weak and commonplace couplets, such as the following:
“The earth’s dark places, felt himself full sad,
He knew not why, and sent, to make him glad.”
* * * * *
“From the bright palace straightway to his house,
That they might hold therein a gay carouse.”
* * * * *
“Yet higher rose the joy and jollity
Of the Great King and all that company.”
* * * * *
“Till morn’s gay star rose o’er the golden sea,
And sent to slumber all that company.”
* * * * *
Now, such lines should never have passed the censorship of one who can
give such other lines as these:
“Whose fierce eye o’er the margin of his shield
Had gazed from war’s first ridge on many a field.”
“Many a field” is weak, but the picture is very good. Strange to say,
the two lines immediately following are these:
“Unblinking at the foe that on him glared,
And might be ten to one for all he cared.”
The epic spirit contained in the last line needs no comment.
Again, here is a strong picture:
“Since Mananan, the Sea-God, first upthrew
_The wild isle’s stony ribs unto the blue_.”
And here a sweet one:
“… Then from her forehead fair
She brushed a silken ripple of bright hair
That from the flood of her rich tresses stole,
_And looked with wordless love into his soul_.”
Sometimes we fall upon lines that we fancy we have heard before――as
these, for instance, which anybody might claim and not be proud of:
“The merry village with its sheltering trees,
The peaceful cattle browsing o’er the leas,
The hardy shepherd whistling on the plain
With his white flock, by fields of ripened grain,” etc., etc.
And here are lines which we fancy Mr. Tennyson might with justice
claim:
“… And velvet catkins on the willow shone
By lowland streams, _and on the hills the larch
Scented with odorous buds the winds of March_.”
One more objection we must make, and that is to the tiresomely
frequent use of the word “full.” It occurs everywhere, sometimes twice
or thrice in one page. Feilimid feels himself “full sad” (p. 1). In p.
46 Caffa shakes his head “full dolefully.” In p. 49 “The east and
north a strong Wind blew _full keen_.” In p. 55 Deirdrè grows “full
pale”; in p. 58 she goes “to and fro” “full secretly”; in p. 59 she
has thoughts “full sad”; while Naisi (p. 62) laughs to himself “full
low,” his heart with love’s ardor grows “full warm” (p. 65). Maini
watches Naisi “full treacherously” (p. 69), and three lines lower on
the same page he is still watching him “full warily.” The loyal wife
grasps her babe “full firm” (p. 164)――an expression that, allowing
even for poetic license, is very doubtful grammar; “full soon” adorns
p. 165; “full stern” shall be the fight (p. 166); “full many” a mile
(p. 166); “full many” a festal fire (p. 167); even the very babe crows
“full lustily” (p. 131).
Of course repetition is allowable and, if rightly used, a beauty. In
Homer Juno is always “white-armed,” Venus “ox-eyed,” Apollo
“far-darting,” Agamemnon a “king of men,” Achilles “swift-footed,” the
dawn “rosy-fingered,” the sea “hoarse-resounding,” and so on. But we
need not dwell on the point that this is a very different kind of
repetition from that in _Deirdrè_, which is faulty and tiresome in the
extreme.
The defects we have pointed out are such as might have been easily
avoided by care in the supervision. As it is, they seriously mar a
work of real power, much promise, and undeniable beauty.
RELIGION AND EDUCATION. By the very Rev. Thomas S. Preston, V.G. New
York: Robert Coddington. 1876.
There is much matter for thought and reflection in this pamphlet of
forty-six pages. It treats of what is now an old subject, yet a
subject about which new issues are constantly being raised, not only
in this country but all the world over. And as the subject is far from
being settled, and is likely so to remain for some time to come, one
cannot but welcome the observations and pronounced expression of such
a mind as that of the distinguished author regarding a vital question
of this and all countries and of all time. The question of education
has been treated time and again in these pages. Indeed, many of the
articles which have appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD have been collected
and published in book-form (_Catholics and Education_), and combined
make an excellent treatise in defence of Catholic education as opposed
to the popular objections of non-Catholics. Father Preston necessarily
travels over old ground here, but with a freshness, vigor, and
clearness of statement and exposition that will amply repay the
reader. His lecture――for such it was――bears all the marks of a strong
and trained mind, fully alive to the difficulties that beset the vexed
question of which he treats, yet of one who knows exactly where
strength ends and extravagance begins. There is, perhaps, no question
to-day more open to extravagant demands and declamation on both sides
than this of education. The tendency of the times regarding it is in a
radically wrong direction. Hot words will not mend matters, but calm
reason, such as this pamphlet affords, will in the long run tell. To
sincere and rightly-instructed Catholics there is no question at all
in the matter. Education is as much a subject of religious discipline
as is the guiding of a man’s life, and to banish God from the school
is no more justifiable than to banish him from the church or the home.
No Catholic dare say to God: We will admit you here, but not there. At
the same time we must take into serious account the opinions of men
who, having practically lost faith, cannot be expected to look upon
everything in the same light as ourselves. More especially is this the
case in a country like our own, where all things are still more or
less in a state of formation. It is very certain that the Fathers of
this Republic, to whom in our emergencies we often vaguely appeal,
never dreamed that the whole machinery of a republic which, in its
present vastness, power, and future import, could scarcely have
flashed even on their happiest dreams, would be perfectly adjusted in
a century. We must make the best of things as they exist, work
earnestly, untiringly, and hopefully to make them still better, but
not slap the whole world in the face for the poor satisfaction of the
slap. Father Preston is an excellent guide in this matter. There is
not a waste word in all that he says. He has a reason, and gives it,
for every statement, and he strengthens his position by the testimony
of honored men among those opposed to him. It is strange that this
country should be behind every other civilized nation in the fair
adjustment of the educational question. They do the best they can for
all denominations; we seem to have one predominating idea――to wit,
that Catholic children, so far as the States can prevent it without
absolute force, shall not have the right of Catholic education.
Education is not and never can be a purely abstract affair as regards
religion. It must have some informing moral principle, which will be
right or wrong according to circumstances. Catholics refuse, on their
conscience, to have any doubt about the matter. Others may do as they
think fit under a government which professes to respect absolute
freedom of conscience. _Their_ freedom of conscience recognizes and
claims education for their children in the spirit of their faith. To
deny this is coercion. To make them contribute to a system of
education based on its denial is coercion and extortion. To see how
fully enlightened Protestants and enlightened governments uphold this
view, we can recommend nothing better in a brief form than the pages
of this admirable pamphlet.
WIT, HUMOR, AND SHAKSPEARE. Twelve Essays. By John Weiss. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1876.
There could be no better proof of the large tolerance of literary
charlatanism by the American public than that a shrewd Boston firm
should in such times as the present consent to publish a book like
this. Mr. Weiss evidently has nothing to say which can be of interest
to a sensible man, and his style is as bad as his thought. His chief
aim, it would appear, is to be odd, unnatural, and barbarous. Like the
clown in the circus, he hopes to amuse us by his antics, if not by his
wit. But fantastic and affected phraseology cannot hide poverty or
barrenness of thought. If a man has nothing to say, grimaces only make
him ridiculous in the eyes of the judicious. It would seem, too, that
the author is under the delusion that he may succeed in making us
believe that he means something by striving to render it as difficult
as possible to find out what he means. Here are specimens of his
style: “The life-breaths of joy and grief tend primitively to the
lungs, and they voice the mother-tongue of all emotions.” “What a wide
range of nature’s curious _freakery_ a forest has!” “Only those who
are capable of annihilating capricious distinctions by feelings of
common humanness are capable of enjoying the union of heterogeneous
ideas.”
It is Mr. Weiss’ great misfortune to believe that he is witty; and the
attempts which reveal this deep conviction might indeed make us laugh,
if they did not make us grieve.
“What mutual impression do a dog and a duck make? He runs around with
frolic transpiring in his tail, and barks to announce a wish to
fraternize; or perhaps it is a short and nervous bark, and indicates
unsettled views about ducks. Meantime, the duck waddles off with an
inane quack, so remote from a bark that it must convince any
well-informed dog of the hopelessness of proposing either business or
pleasure to such a doting and toothless pate.” “But as yet no cosey
couples of clever apes have been discovered in paroxysms of laughter
over the last sylvan equivoque; nor have elephants been seen silently
shaking at a joke too ponderous for their trunks to carry.” “We cannot
imagine that a turtle’s head gets tired lying around decapitated for a
week or more.”
We cannot pardon Mr. Emerson for having made such men as Mr. Weiss
possible. He is a morbid product――one of the sick multitude whose
disease he has himself diagnosed. “Multitudes of our American brains
are badly drained in consequence of a settling of the wastage of
house-grubbing and street-work into moral morasses which generate many
a chimera.” This is on the twelfth page, and to this point we followed
the author with a kind of interest; for it was still possible to hope
that he might not be an American. The English critics, however, may
find his humor capital, since they think Walt Whitman our greatest
poet; and Mr. Weiss finds examples of wit and humor in this country
truly Shaksperean:
“There was a man who stood on his head under a pile-driver to have a
pair of tight boots driven on. He found himself shortly after in
China, perfectly naked and without a cent in his pocket.” “There is a
man in the West so bow-legged that his pantaloons have to be cut out
with a circular saw.” “Some of the Texan cows have been lately
described as so thin that it takes two men to see one of them. The men
stand back to back, so that one says, ‘Here she comes!’ and the other
cries, ‘There she goes!’ Thus between them both the cow is seen.”
“All these American instances”――we quote the thoughtful and profound
observation of Mr. Weiss――“are conceived in the pure Shakesperean
blending of the understanding and the imagination.” But one more of
them, perhaps the most artistically perfect of all, must suffice. “A
coachman, driving up some mountains in Vermont, was asked by an
outside passenger if they were as steep on the other side also.
‘Steep! Chain lightnin’ couldn’t go down ’em witheout the breechin’
on!’”
Nothing could be finer than the epigrammatic style in which Mr. Weiss
throws some of Shakspere’s characters into a crisp Emersonian
sentence: “Pistol is the raw article of poltroonery done in fustian
instead of a gayly-slashed doublet. Bardolph is the capaciousness for
sherry, without the capacity to make it apprehensive and forgetive; it
goes to his head, but, finding no brain there, is provoked to the
nose, where it lights a cautionary signal. Nym is the brag stripped of
resource, shivering on prosiness.” We are quite prepared, after all
this, to find that Mr. Weiss belongs to the class of enlightened men
who, in the name of science, sneer at religion. It is hardly worth
while to attempt his conversion.
POEMS: DEVOTIONAL AND OCCASIONAL. By Benjamin Dionysius Hill, C.S.P.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
In his last sermon on “Subjects of the Day” (“The Parting of
Friends”), Dr. Newman exclaims: “O my mother, whence is this unto
thee, that thou hast good things poured upon thee and canst not keep
them, and bearest children, yet darest not own them? Why hast thou not
the skill to use their services, nor the heart to rejoice in their
love? How is it that whatever is generous in purpose, and tender or
deep in devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls from thy bosom and
finds no home within thine arms?” The author of these poems gives to
his Mother the whole――not a part――of a delicate poetic talent that
would have found a warm welcome in the world which knows her not. The
art in the poems is unaffected and genuine; there is no pretence of
artistic ambition, nor any provoking involution of the thought in
order to display the tricks and pretty devices of metre which would
have come easily to one whose sense of poetic tune is so true. The
verse, although by no means monotonous, is uniformly simple; the
rhymes are never weak and are always sweet――qualities rarely
combined――and the infallible poetic instinct fills the lines with
melody, which, at first so subtle and fine that it almost eludes, is
soon discovered to be exquisitely and permanently sweet.
The dominant thought is religious rapture. Father Hill was not always
under the benign influence which has brought this guerdon to his
gifts. He was outside the only church which offers man’s heart an
ideal of absolute perfection.
“A barren creed had starved me.”
God called him
“to fill the place of some
Ingrate who had thrown his childhood’s faith away,”
and within the consecrated precincts of the priesthood he discovered a
gracious light upon his imagination――the light of Our Lady. So he has
proved her poet; and the tributes that he lays at her feet are rich
and warm with the full beating ardor of manhood’s love. The pure
sensuousness which gives strikingly what the painters would call “fine
flesh-tint” to the poems will prove a strong attraction to the fervent
hearts of thousands who, like Father Hill, love the Mother of our Lord
with an uncontrollable intensity of human affection, but who, unlike
him, are unable fittingly to express that affection to her, or even to
define it to themselves or to others. Father Hill is literally the
knight of Mary, and he does more than the obligations of knighthood
required; for, in addition to loving, fighting for, and seeking his
reward from her, he sings her praise. He gives her at once his sword
and his lyre. The beauty of this chivalry of the soul is not easily to
be understood by the shallow or the thoughtless; yet even the
irreverent will acknowledge its holiness, and the commonest mind will
be unable to resist its singular charms. Who can be insensible to such
loyalty to the religious ideal as this?
“TO BE FORGIVEN.
“I call thee ‘Love’――‘my sweet, my dearest Love’
Nor feel it bold, nor fear it a deceit.
Yet I forget not that, in realms above,
The thrones of Seraphs are beneath thy feet.
“If Queen of angels thou, of hearts no less:
And so of mine――a poet’s, which must needs
Adore to all melodious excess
What cannot sate the rapture that it feeds.
“And then thou art my Mother――God’s, yet mine!
Of mothers, as of virgins, first and best:
And I as tenderly, intimately thine
As He, my Brother, carried at the breast.
“My Mother! ’tis enough. If mine the right
To call thee this, much more to muse and sigh
All other honeyed names. A slave I might――
A son, I must. And both of these am I.”
This exquisite piety is entitled “Love’s Prisoner”:
* * * * *
“But is He lonely? Bend not here
Adoring angels as on high?
Ah yes: but yet, when we appear,
A softer glory floods His eye.
’Tis earth’s frail child He longs to see;
And thus He is alone――for me!
* * * * *
“Then, best of lovers, I’ll draw near
Each day to minister relief.
For tho’ the thought of year on year
Of sin should make me die of grief,
Yet day by day my God I see
‘Sick and in prison’――all for me!”
Those whose imagination is without devotion, or whose devotion lacks
imagination, will look upon the author of these poems as one indeed
“set apart.” Yet even Dr. Newman, the giant intellect of modern
thought, looked upon Keble, as he tells us himself, with awe, simply
because Keble was a true religious poet; and these two came to love
each other with a tenderness that did not expire, but was rather
increased, when the one passed within the gates of Mother Rome, and
the other, faltering in tears, sadly loitered, then suffered himself
to be led away. So many a lesser Newman will learn to love this lesser
and more melodious poet within the sanctuary, and his glowing soul
will distribute some of its own warmth into the hospitable recesses in
which this little book will find nooks the hosts never thought of.
LIFE OF MOTHER MARIA TERESA, FOUNDRESS OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE
ADORATION OF REPARATION. By the Abbé Hulst. Translated by Lady
Herbert. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
To many people there is no reading so pleasant as a biography; but
when, as in the life of a great servant of God, solid instruction and
sweet devotion are found united in the details of personal history,
the work becomes a hand-book in a Christian’s library. Of this kind is
the present work, which, although only a small volume, contains a
great deal of matter, and is written with all that ease and _naïveté_
which are so often found in French biographies. It is translated into
English by Lady Herbert, who is thoroughly competent for the task.
Theodolind Dubouché was born at Montauban, in France, on the 2d of
May, 1809; but her mother was of Italian origin, and it is a little
singular that the daughter’s portrait prefixed to this _Life_ bears a
remarkable resemblance to that of Dante. Neither of her parents was
more than a nominal Catholic, and Theodolind grew up in a cold and
formal atmosphere of morality which would have chilled for ever the
heart of one less naturally generous, pure-minded, and energetic, and
over whom God had not extended a particular protection. Her path to
perfection was long and beset with many dangers――although not at any
time of the grosser sort――but the Lord was her shepherd, and she was
led on, step by step, to the crowning-point of her career, which was
the establishment of an Order for women whose special object should be
the perpetual adoration of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, and the
continual reparation to his divine Majesty. Theodolind assumed the
name in religion of Maria Teresa, and her congregation, which was
originally engrafted on the vigorous and venerable stem of Carmel, was
begun at Paris on the 6th of August, 1848. In the year 1853 it
received a _Laudatine Brief_ from the Holy See. This was the first
step towards the full official approbation of the Sovereign Pontiff,
which was given only three years after the death of the foundress. Her
death occurred at Paris on Sunday, 30th of August, 1863. The
congregation or Institute of “L’Adoration Réparatrice” has already
four houses in France, in each of which adorers in large numbers,
consecrated by religious profession, succeed one another day and night
before the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and in a spirit of deep
recollection make the adoration of reparation the principle of a
special vocation and the occupation of a whole life.
The Order will certainly continue to spread, and we hope to see it
introduced into this country, where devotion to the Blessed Sacrament
is comparatively cold and scattered. We recommend the present work to
all the holy spouses of Christ and true lovers of Jesus in the Holy
Eucharist.
GITHA OF THE FOREST; OR, THE BURNING OF CROYLAND. A Romance of early
English History. By the author of _Lord Dacre of Gilsland_,
_Royalists and Roundheads_, etc., etc. London: D. Stewart, 1876.
(For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is just one of those books that are in every way to be commended.
It illustrates an early and most interesting period of English and
Catholic history with remarkable power and vividness. It is a constant
wonder to us that Catholics who have a taste for the writing of
fiction do not more frequently take up such epochs as this, which are
full of heroic deeds and romantic episodes, instead of vainly
attempting to weave a romantic interest about the commonplace subjects
and persons of the day. The history of the world for the last eighteen
centuries is theirs to choose from, all its interest centres around
Christianity; and we are not quite so much in love with to-day that we
cannot thoroughly enjoy a trip back into the past when led by so
skilful and true a hand as that of the author of _Githa_.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 144.――MARCH, 1877.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
THE RUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[177]
The attention of the world is at present fixed upon Russia and upon
the aged yet still active statesman who has directed her foreign
policy for twenty years with an ability certainly very considerable,
though it yet remains to be seen how far it will prove itself
consummate and successful. It will help to an understanding of the
career of this eminent Russian Minister of State, and of the present
attitude of Russia, if we premise a condensed sketch of certain of the
most prominent events in the civil and ecclesiastical history of this
great and singular empire. It is difficult to find out the certain
truth in regard to some of these important facts, and we therefore
profess to claim for such statements as we may make, unless they
relate to matters of known and undisputed history, only that
probability which they receive from the authority of some one or more
of the writers whose names we have mentioned in the foot-note annexed
to the title of this article. This remark applies especially to facts
relating to the schism of the Russian Church. We have never yet met
with any professedly complete and minute ecclesiastical history of
Russia. Mouravieff’s work is a professed history of the Russian
Church, but it is compendious, and too partial to deserve entire
confidence. It is much to be desired that some ecclesiastic of
profound erudition in Russian literature, such as Father Gagarin or
Father Tondini, would furnish us with a thorough and trustworthy
narrative of all the facts which can be known in this obscure and
interesting department of ecclesiastical history. In fact, we suspect
that very much which passes current in the civil history of Russia as
written by foreigners needs a critical sifting, and that a perfectly
impartial and trustworthy history of that empire is yet to be written.
The Russian Empire embraces one-seventh of the land-surface of the
earth, or more than double the area of Europe, and European Russia is
thirty times larger than England. The aggregate population is at least
75,000,000, including a hundred distinct tribes, among which more than
forty languages are spoken. The ancestors of the dominant race were
Scythians and Sarmatians, among whom the beginnings of civilization
were to be found during the earliest part of the Christian epoch. It
is a curious fact that a republic existed at Novgorod before the
arrival of Rurik. The Russian dominant race is Sclavonian――that is, as
ethnologists suppose, of Sarmatian origin. The present name of the
country and people is not, however, indigenous. The Russian tribe was
a branch of the Varangians, who were Scandinavians, and migrated into
the country to which they have given their name in the ninth century.
The name Russian is derived by some from Rurik, and by others from
some one of various Scandinavian words signifying foreigner, wanderer,
or scattered, in which case it would denote the migration of the
Varangian horde from its former seat and its settlement in a foreign
country.[178]
Rurik was the principal chief of these Varangians, the founder of a
principality which was the germ of the future empire, and the father
of the first line of the tsars. Other chiefs of the same tribe founded
minor principalities, which formed together a sort of confederation,
the successor of Rurik being recognized as Grand Prince. The city of
Moscow was founded in the twelfth century. It was not until after
centuries had passed that one united kingdom was formed and increased
by degrees to the vast magnitude of its modern proportions. The
absolute, autocratic authority of the tsar was likewise a later
development of the primitive form of government.
The reign of Rurik continued from A.D. 861 to 879, and that of his
direct line of successors until 1598, when it became extinct by the
death of Feodor I., who left no issue, and is said to have had no
near, surviving relatives. After fifteen years of disputed successions
and bloody civil conflicts, caused by the usurpation of Boris
Godounoff, which began with the accession of the imbecile Feodor, the
Romanoff family was placed on the throne, which it has kept in
possession to the present day.
The first Romanoff tsar was a son of Feodor Romanoff, a nobleman who
had retired into a monastery and become metropolitan of Rostoff, which
dignity he afterwards exchanged for the higher office of patriarch of
Moscow. He was first cousin to the Tsar Feodor through an
intermarriage of the Romanoffs with the reigning family. The son of
Feodor who was elected tsar was a youth named Michael Feodorovitch. To
him succeeded his son Alexis, then Feodor II., then Peter the Great.
To Peter succeeded his widow, Catharine I., who was by birth a
peasant, followed by Peter II., the grandson of Peter the Great, who
died in his childhood, and was succeeded by Anne, Duchess of Courland,
a niece of Peter I. After Anne, her grandnephew, Ivan VII., an infant,
was proclaimed, but soon displaced by Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter
I. and Catharine. Peter III., son of Anne――who was a daughter of Peter
and Catharine――and of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, succeeded
Elizabeth, but was dethroned by his own wife, Catharine II. Her son,
Paul I., was assassinated by his nobles, and to him succeeded his son,
the justly-celebrated Alexander I., who reigned from 1801 to 1825. The
Emperor Nicholas, whose reign terminated in 1856, was the brother of
Alexander,[179] and his son, Alexander II., is the present reigning
emperor.
For more than two centuries, dating from A.D. 1238, the Russians were
subject or tributary to the Mongolians, who had overrun and conquered
the country. Ivan the Great shook off their yoke during the latter
half of the fifteenth century. Poland was a frequent and often
victorious antagonist in war of Russia until internal dissensions
broke her power and left her a prey to the enemy who had once regarded
her with dread. Turkey, Hungary, Persia, Sweden, and other minor
powers were also frequently engaged with her in conflicts of varying
success before the period in which she took part in the great European
struggles. Having slowly and gradually grown to a gigantic stature and
attained to solidity and strength by the long operation of various
internal and external causes, this empire of the North founded by
Rurik suddenly, under the powerful direction of Peter the Great, took
its place among the great nations of Western Christendom. What it is
yet to become we may know better than we can now vaticinate in the
year 1900, when, to use Prince Bismarck’s strong figure, some more of
“the iron dice of destiny falling from the hands of God” shall have
made the eternal decrees manifest which are now hidden in the
obscurity of the future.
It is probable that Christianity was first preached in Russia by St.
Andrew the Apostle, and had some partial success during the period
intervening between the apostolic age and the second mission sent from
Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries. At this epoch some
Christian communities were founded, and the way was opened for greater
successes at a later period. The Princess Olga was baptized at
Constantinople in 955, and in 988 her grandson, Vladimir the Great,
who married the Greek emperor’s sister, became a Christian, with all
his subjects. It is true that the conversion of the mass of the people
was very superficial, and that it was a long time before they ceased
to hanker after their ancient superstitions. Yet the foundations were
laid for a future superstructure, and there is evidence that even
before the Mongolian invasion sacred science flourished at Kieff. At
this period, which lay between the schism of Photius and that of
Michael Cerularius――whose revolt occurred in the middle of the
eleventh century――Constantinople and the other Eastern patriarchates
were in the communion of the Roman Church. The Russian Church was
therefore Catholic at its original foundation. The higher clergy were
all Byzantines, especially in Muscovy, and were under the influence of
the prevailing ideas of the clergy of the Greek Empire. The
imperfectly-instructed clergy and people of Russia were therefore
naturally left to drift into a condition of alienation from the Roman
Church and Western Christendom, when their immediate patriarch
revolted from his allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff. The irruption
of the Mongols buried them in a sea of ignorance, misery, and
barbarism for ages. Nevertheless, their faith and their liturgical
books were always Catholic. Every now and then we meet with signs of
some intercommunion with the Roman Church, especially on the part of
those who were immediately subject to the see of Kieff. We can
scarcely, therefore, consider that an act of overt rebellion and
complete schism of the national church was committed until the
rejection of the Act of Union of Florence, and the erection of the
independent patriarchate of Moscow at the close of the fifteenth
century.
At the opening of the Council of Florence, in 1439, Vasili III. sent
Isidore, Metropolitan of Kieff and Primate of Russia, a learned Greek,
as the representative of the national church, to effect a complete
reconciliation with Rome. Isidore fulfilled this commission, and
returned with the dignity of cardinal and legatine powers. He was well
received by the tsar, who nevertheless dared not publicly ratify and
proclaim his action without the consent of the Muscovite clergy and
boyars. This was violently and obstinately refused. Cardinal Isidore
returned to Kieff, and within the provinces immediately subject to his
jurisdiction as metropolitan the Act of Union was accepted. He was
afterwards banished from Russia, and after the storming of
Constantinople, which he witnessed, he, like the more celebrated
Cardinal Bessarion, went to reside at Rome. Vasili’s motives for
seeking to place his bishops under the supremacy of the Roman pontiff
were chiefly political. He wished to free himself from the
ecclesiastical and political interference of Constantinople. Thwarted
in his first plan, he tried another. On the pretext that the patriarch
of Constantinople had separated himself from the communion of the
other Eastern patriarchs, he persuaded the Muscovite clergy to abjure
his authority. On the same pretext he deprived the see of Kieff of its
pre-eminence, and made the metropolitan of Moscow the primate of all
Russia. Thus, by flattering the ambition of the Muscovite clergy, he
placed them in a position more favorable for the exercise and increase
of his own authority over the church. His successor, Ivan the Great,
the same who freed his dominions from the Mongolian supremacy,
completed and more fully carried out these plans, and made himself the
real governing head of the schismatical Russian Church. After the fall
of the Greek Empire the tsars ceased to have any reason to fear the
oppressed church of Constantinople, and became friendly to it in an
altered relation as its protectors and as claimants of the rights of
the Greek emperors. Ivan married Sophia, a Greek princess, adopted the
double-headed eagle as his escutcheon, assumed the state and splendor
of an emperor, and arrogated to himself the prerogatives of the
secular head of the so-called Orthodox Church. Under Feodor I. the
erection of a new patriarchate at Moscow was effected by Boris
Goudonoff, who ruled, in fact, during the life-time of the last of the
Rurik dynasty, and gained the throne, left vacant at his death, by his
cunning intrigues. Under Alexis, the second Romanoff, the great
patriarch Nicon, whose name is highly venerated in Russia, came into a
collision with the tsars which resulted in his own downfall and in
that of all spiritual independence of the Russian hierarchy. At last
Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchal office, substituting for it
the Holy Synod, and reducing the Russian Church to the condition of
enslavement in which it has ever since languished. Notwithstanding the
rigorous ecclesiastical despotism exercised by the Russian emperors, a
large Catholic communion has continued to exist in the empire, a
separate Episcopal Church, including several millions of adherents,
has steadily maintained its independence of the state church, and
great numbers of irregular dissenters are also scattered through the
tsar’s dominions.
Within the state church opposite tendencies towards Rome on the one
side, and Protestant or rationalistic liberalism on the other, have
been continually manifesting the want of a real, internal unity in
what is misnamed the orthodox religion. Ivan the Terrible appealed to
the pope’s mediation in his political troubles, and received the
celebrated Jesuit Possevin as the envoy of the Holy See. During the
reign of Feodor II., and the regency of the Princess Sophia while
Peter I. was kept under her tutelage as a minor, several prelates and
nobles of the court manifested strong Roman proclivities. On the
accession of Peter all these adherents of the Princess Sophia shared
in her disgrace and punishment. Yet even Peter himself at one time
showed a disposition toward reconciliation with the Pope. Under Peter
II. the same movement was renewed, but followed by a violent reaction
and persecution of the orthodox party, under Anne and her favorite,
Biren. The metropolitan of Kieff was degraded, the bishop of Voronége
degraded and publicly knouted, the archbishop of Rostoff and the
bishop of Kolomna were expelled from the Holy Synod, the archbishop of
Kazan was degraded, the bishop of Tchernigoff was confined in a
monastery, and the archbishop of Tver, after being beaten with rods,
tortured, and kept three years in solitary confinement, was stripped
of his episcopal dignity and monastic habit, and imprisoned in a
fortress, where he languished until the reign of Elizabeth. Prince
Vasili Dolgoroucky was executed, with several members of his family.
Catharine II. and Alexander I. both gave a temporary shelter and
protection to the Jesuits. This last prince, although he dallied for a
time with evangelical Protestantism, sent his submission to the pope,
asking for a prelate to visit, instruct, and reconcile him to the Holy
See, and died a Catholic in faith and intention, although the sudden
termination of his mortal career took place before there was time for
the arrival of the prelate to whom the Holy Father had confided this
mission. The numerous conversions of illustrious Russians to the
Catholic Church are well-known facts. That heresy and infidelity are
rife among many nominal members of the Russian Church is also equally
indisputable and notorious.
The whole history of the empire of Rurik has a close association with
Constantinople. While the Russians were still pagans the project of
subduing the Greek Empire seems to have been constantly in view. Oleg,
Rurik’s immediate successor; Igor, Rurik’s son, who succeeded Oleg,
and was the husband of Olga; and their son Sviatoslaf, the father of
Vladimir the Great, made invasions into the Greek Empire at the head
of armies ranging from eighty to four hundred thousand in number. They
were either bought off from conquest by vast ransoms or defeated by
Greek craft and their own disorderly conduct. After the conversion of
Vladimir, Constantinople was to Russia what Rome has always been to
Occidental Christendom; and when the Greek Empire fell, the Turk
became in their eyes what the Moslem was to the Catholic Spaniards.
The queen city of the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas, the New Rome of
Constantine, with the rich provinces of Turkey in Europe depending
upon it, has ever been present to the view of the emperors and the
people of Russia as the objective point of perpetual crusades, as a
prize to be won by their warlike valor, as the natural and destined
capital whose possession is necessary to bring their empire to its
acme of power and glory.[180] Always mysteriously baffled and thrown
back, the colossal power of the northern empire has been incessantly
pressing against this resistance, even since the power of combined
Europe has backed the weakening Ottoman Empire. The Emperor Nicholas
was more completely possessed by this hereditary idea than any of his
predecessors since Peter the Great; he undertook and sacrificed more
for it than any one of them, and seems really to have caused Russia to
make a great stride towards the ulterior object. By the war of 1828
and ’29 Turkey was extremely humiliated and weakened, and immense
advantages were gained by Russia. Her arms were completely and
brilliantly successful from beginning to end of the campaign, and
surprise has often been expressed that the Russian army did not march
directly on Constantinople after Adrianople had been captured. It may
be that the military strength of the empire was exhausted by its
costly victories, and that Nicholas was afraid of exciting a league of
the great powers against him. Whatever his reasons may have been, he
concluded a peace at Adrianople, and postponed further action to a
future time.
When the treaty of Adrianople was concluded (1829), the present
chancellor of Russia was thirty-one years of age and employed in a
subordinate position under the ministry. Prince Alexander
Mikhäilovitch Gortchakoff was born in 1798, and claims descent from
Rurik. He first gained the favor of the Emperor Nicholas by
negotiating the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Olga, with the
crown-prince of Würtemberg. He had already passed four years at the
little court of Stuttgart as resident minister, and he earned the
gratitude of the imperial family by remaining willingly eight years
longer, in order to aid the Princess Olga as her guide and counsellor.
His residence at Stuttgart fell between the years 1842 and 1854, and
he was therefore fifty-six years of age before attaining anything
above a minor position in the diplomatic service. After the
re-establishment of the Diet at Frankfort, in 1850, he was appointed
to represent Russia at its sessions, and henceforth divided his time
between Stuttgart and Frankfort, and employed his abundant leisure in
studying the politics of Europe. It was at this time that he first met
with M. Bismarck, then a lieutenant in the Prussian Landwehr, a novice
in diplomacy and his colleague at the Diet. Here also he became
intimate with two remarkable and singular characters whose history and
ideas illustrate the peculiar national spirit by which the genuine
Russian people, which remains true to its ancient traditions without
any foreign mixture, is animated.
The first of these singular personages was Vassili Joukofski, who had
been in early life a poet of considerable renown, not remarkably
original, but possessed of a great talent for facile versification and
ingenious translation, and sufficiently cultivated as a scholar to
have been selected as the private tutor of the Grand Dukes Alexander
and Constantine, the present emperor and his brother. Although he had
voluntarily selected a German lady as his wife and a German town as
his permanent abode, he remained, nevertheless, confirmed in his
belief of the hopeless corruption of Western Europe, and the destiny
reserved for Russia to complete the work of the Crusades, drive “the
impure beast” from Byzantium, liberate the Holy Land, and regenerate
the world by “a new eruption of Christianity.” The other individual of
this remarkable pair was Nicholas Gogol, a man of original and
powerful genius, full of a sombre and extravagant religious
enthusiasm, who haunted the drawing-rooms of Joukofski, and startled
the elegant, cultivated guests of his more worldly friend like a
fantastic apparition from the spiritual world. Gogol was a terrible
satirist of the vices of Russian society, a prophet of wrath and
judgment, in despair of civilization and of his own salvation,
wandering the earth in a restless search after some relief for his
disturbed soul, and reappearing at intervals among his friends at
Frankfort to deliver impassioned exhortations to prayer and penance.
The only remedy for modern evils, in his view, was a return to the
primitive state of barbarian Muscovy, and a crusade of despotism
joined with the undefiled faith of old Russia against “the heathens of
the Occident.” It is an old saying in Russia that “heaven can only be
reduced by famine.” Gogol acted on this maxim to such an extent by his
long fasts and prayers that he was one day found dead of inanition in
an attitude of prayer, prostrate before his holy images.
Prince Gortchakoff is a cultivated sceptic, intent on the
aggrandizement of Russia from motives which are earthly and confined
within the sphere of that materialistic philosophy which dominates in
diplomatic circles. Nevertheless, mystic enthusiasm, the most
enlightened and noble aspirations of religion and patriotism, great
designs for a lofty end, and the lower qualities of cleverness in
worldly wisdom, talent for managing the affairs of administration, and
ambition to fulfil a great personal career by serving as an instrument
of some grand social or political power, are often found combined
together to pursue the same object from different motives. The
Emperor Nicholas was undoubtedly thoroughly sincere in his adherence
to the religious and political doctrines which he professed, really
influenced by the mystical ideas of the “crusaders,” and convinced of
the justice of his cause. His chief minister, Nesselrode, certainly
did not share these ideas, yet he served his master with all the
resources and ability which he possessed. So also did Gortchakoff,
although personally he is of the same stamp with his predecessor. The
emperor, as the whole world knows, and a great part of it well
remembers, reopened the Turkish question and engaged in the memorable,
for the time being to Russia unsuccessful, even disastrous, war of the
Crimea. In 1855 Prince Gortchakoff was sent as resident ambassador to
Vienna; there he labored strenuously, both before and after the death
of Nicholas, first to detach Austria from the cause of the allies and
win her cooperation with Russia, and then to gain terms which would
permit his government to conclude an honorable peace on the least
disadvantageous terms. Russia has been profoundly irritated against
Austria ever since the latter power refused to take her part against
the protectors of the Ottoman Porte; accusing her of ingratitude for
the great service which Nicholas rendered to Francis Joseph in
suppressing by military force and gratuitously the Hungarian
rebellion. Prince Gortchakoff shared this feeling; it has always
affected his diplomatic policy, and it may have yet most important
results, if hostilities are renewed on a large scale. At the Congress
of Paris, which settled the conditions of peace, Prince Gortchakoff
was the Russian plenipotentiary. Immediately afterwards Count
Nesselrode retired from the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and in April, 1856, the successor upon whom the eyes of the court and
the empire had been long turned with favor and hope was elevated to
the office, which he has filled for twenty years, and which has become
essentially more important in his person than it ever was during
preceding administrations. Prince Gortchakoff is the first who has
filled at the Russian court the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs
in the Western acceptation of the powers and responsibilities of that
position. Heretofore the emperor had personally directed the state
policy, using his minister as a mere counsellor and chief secretary.
Alexander II. has devolved the actual direction upon his chief
minister. The most marked feature of his administration has been the
close personal and official amity and concord which has subsisted
since their first meeting at Frankfort between himself and Bismarck.
The delineation of the common policy of the two chancellors would
require that we should take up M. Klaczko’s exposition of the career
of the Prussian chancellor――a task which we cannot fulfil at present.
Of course each one has had in view the aggrandizement of his own
state, and given his concurrence to the designs of the other in the
expectation of forwarding thereby his own plans. Bismarck cares
nothing for Russia, and, after his residence at St. Petersburg as
Prussian ambassador, he expressed his opinion of her by the motto
which he pasted inside his watch-case: “Russia is nothingness.”[181]
Gortchakoff undoubtedly cares as little for Prussia and the German
Empire. Each one looks out for his own ship; for those men whose ideas
are catholic are of a different class from mere clever diplomatists,
and, unhappily, are rarely to be found among either kings or ministers
of state.
Bismarck has always made his special accomplices in ruining the
antagonist of the moment the next victims of his undermining schemes.
What he has in prospect for Russia is as yet undisclosed. Nor is it
certain that he will succeed in playing out his game, making
Gortchakoff a mere card in his hand. The Russian is doubtless too
astute and farseeing to rely on the disinterested friendship of the
Prussian, or on his fidelity to any secret engagements, except so far
as self-interest or fear may hold him to his word. Thus far, however,
the contract of _facio ut facias_ has been well kept between the two,
to their mutual advantage. Prussia has gained a great deal by it, and
Russia something, although the decisive crisis is just now coming on,
and still undecided, which will solve the problem how much she has
gained or will gain. Nicholas died, baffled and disappointed.
Alexander came to the throne sad and disheartened. Russia was crippled
and exhausted by the terrible disasters of the Crimean war, her
prestige and influence in Europe were diminished, and she was placed
under humiliating and hampering restrictions by the treaty of Paris.
Under Prince Gortchakoff’s administration she has recuperated and
increased her strength by the mere force of her immense vitality. By
skilful management she has regained a place in European politics
almost equal to that of Germany. She has thrown off the trammels of
the treaty of Paris. France, England, and Turkey have lost all they
had gained by their costly victories. The allies of Turkey have been
overcome by superior diplomacy together with adverse fortune, and made
to play into the hands of their old antagonist; and Turkey has been
driven into worse straits than any which have beset her in the most
dangerous epochs of her former history. The initiative in the
extraordinary political movements of this epoch has been taken by
Bismarck, whom Gortchakoff has merely connived at or seconded. This
secondary and mostly negative support has been, nevertheless, most
important, probably even necessary, to the success of Bismarck’s
schemes. It has involved, moreover, great changes in Russia’s
traditional policy and considerable sacrifices. This is especially the
case in regard to the minor states of Germany and Denmark, so closely
allied by intermarriages with Russia, formerly so decidedly supported
and aided by her influence, yet of late abandoned without remonstrance
to Prussian spoliation. Russia has been avenged on France, on Austria,
and to a certain extent on England, and she has had the opportunity of
reviving the question of the East with a view toward ulterior results.
Thus far Bismarck has seemed to act toward Gortchakoff in the same way
that the latter acted towards him in reference to the war on the
French Empire. Certainly, much more must be expected from him, and it
does not yet appear that he can dupe and outwit his copartner in
politics as he did the weak, dreamy Louis Napoleon, or make use of him
as a mere subservient agent, to be discarded when his services become
unnecessary. Prince Gortchakoff appears to have managed matters thus
far for the advantage of Russia with consummate adroitness. Moreover,
whatever may have been the influences at work within the imperial
family compelling the chancellor to yield his personal opinions or
wishes, it is evident that in point of fact Russian policy has not
been of late subservient to Bismarck’s designs, but, on the contrary,
has forced him to modify them considerably in respect to France.
In the event of war between Russia and Turkey alone it is plain that
Russia will not find it an easy task to effect the conquest of Turkey
and to expel the Turks from Europe. It seems probable, however, that
the Ottoman power must succumb after one desperate struggle, if left
unaided by all the European powers. It does not seem likely, however,
that Europe will stand idly aloof; on the contrary, there is reason to
apprehend that when the conflict threatens to become decisive of the
fate of Turkey, all the great powers will become involved in a general
war, which will make an epoch in history and determine the destinies
of the world for the next ensuing age. We may conjecture, on grounds
which are at least plausible, that if Russia is actively supported by
any other powers, it will be Germany and Italy which will ally
themselves with her, against Austria, England, and France. We can
scarcely expect that a war of this kind would terminate in complete
success to either of the belligerent parties. In the end all the great
nations must come to some mutual agreement in a congress which shall
settle the balance of power on a new basis, guarding against an
absolute and dangerous preponderance of any one of the chief powers.
What is to become of Constantinople we will not venture to predict.
But let us suppose that Russia obtains this object of her long,
patient, and persevering efforts and ardent aspirations. Must we
suppose that this will necessarily be an event disastrous to the
interests of the Catholic Church and civilization and to the
religious, political, and social welfare of Europe and the world? The
language of many most intelligent and religious men, particularly of
Englishmen, and of many others, not particularly religious, who look
at the matter purely in view of the temporal interests of nations,
proves that a very strong and general conviction exists in the sense
of the affirmative answer to this question. We think, however, that
there is something to be said on the other side. As the Catholic
aspect of the question is the one most important in itself, and really
involving all the others, we consider this aspect alone. It is the
schismatical position of the Russian Church, and its complete
subjection to the autocratic power of the ruler of the state, which
furnishes the only reason for regarding the Turkish dominion in the
Levant as a lesser and more tolerable evil than the transfer of the
capital of Russia from St. Petersburg to Constantinople. All reasons,
therefore, which encourage the hope and expectation of the
reconciliation of Russia with the Holy See diminish, in proportion to
their weight, the dread which the prospect of such an event may
awaken.
We will here quote a remarkable passage from Dr. Mivart’s late essay
on _Contemporary Evolution_ having a bearing on this subject. Those
who have read this work, or the review of it in our number of last
December, will understand the value of the quotation we are about to
make, as coming from a man who anticipates such a very different
course of events from that whose possibility he here sets forth. It
proves his cautious, scientific method of reasoning. He does not
advance his own theory with absolute assertion as certain, and his
acuteness, combined with candor, causes him to discern and bring into
notice a contingency in the direction of Russia which, if it should
turn out to be a future actuality, would alter most essentially the
“evolution” whose probable course causes so much curious and anxious
questioning of the signs of the times.
“Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a reversal
will at length ensue, and some modification of the old
theocracy be again generally established. At present the
only power which seems to contain enough of the old material
is Russia. It _may_ be that, instead of politically
assimilating itself to Western Europe (like the manners of
its highest class), it may come to exercise a powerfully
reactionary tendency. It does not seem impossible that,
availing itself of the mutually enfeebling wars and
revolutionary disintegration of Western powers, it may
hereafter come to play that part in Europe which was played
of old by Macedon in Greece. Such a Western expansion might
be greatly aided if, carrying out the idea of a former
sovereign, it united itself to the Roman Church, and made
itself the agent of the most powerful religious feelings and
of all the theocratic reactionary tendencies latent in
Western Europe. It does not even seem impossible that a
Roman pontiff effectively restored to his civil princedom by
such Russian agency might inaugurate, by a papal
consecration in the Eternal City, yet a fresh dynasty of
‘Holy Roman emperors,’ a Sclavonic series succeeding to the
suppressed German line, as the Germans succeeded in the
person of Charlemagne to the first line of Cæsars.”[182]
What seems to the distinguished writer just quoted barely possible
appears to us quite probable. It does not follow, however, that his
hypothesis, proposed as possible, expresses precisely the necessary
alternative to the opposite term of a complete revolution in Russia by
pagan liberalism. The medium between Nicholas Gogol’s fanatical ideas
of a reformation by Muscovite barbarism and despotism and their
absolute contrary――the uttermost development and sway through the
whole extent of the civilized world of Western heathenism――need not be
placed exactly at the point marked out by Dr. Mivart. We can suppose
that the Russian Empire may reach its ultimatum by attaining a degree
of power and grandeur beyond that which it now possesses, without
acquiring domination over the rest of Europe. We can suppose that its
influence may be exerted successfully to arrest and turn back the tide
of pagan revolution, in co-operation with the other powers acting on a
more Christian policy, without being absolutely reactionary. Russia
may receive as well as impart influence, undergo in herself
modification as well as cause modification to be undergone by Western
Europe, through mutual contact at Constantinople. It would seem that
such must be the result of her coming down to the Mediterranean and
emerging from her old ice-bound and land-locked isolation. She will
come in contact with America as well as Europe; and, in fact, the
visits of her naval squadrons and of three of her grand dukes to our
shores show that the imperial court of St. Petersburg does not fear
communication with the great republic of the West.
The method of administering government in Russia has actually been
undergoing a great modification, in the sense of substituting regular
procedures of law and definite codes for personal and arbitrary
authority under the initiative and direction of the emperors
themselves and their immediate ministers. The local communal
government, by the system of free assemblies and elections of the
people in districts and villages, exists throughout Russia. The
Emperor Nicholas prosecuted actively the work of ameliorating and
improving the condition of the common people, which Alexander has
carried still further by the abolition of serfdom. The mitigation and
attempering to the demands of an improved civilization of the
autocratic principle in the empire seems to be an inevitable and
certain process which must go on, and which finds its greatest
impediment in the nefarious plots and insurrections of secret
societies and revolutionists. It is to be hoped that when a stable
equilibrium is once restored in Europe, when a solid peace succeeds to
the impending storm of war, and Russia is in harmony with other
Christian nations, her power, combined with theirs, will be seriously
and successfully applied to the suppression of these secret societies,
thus giving the hydra-head of revolution a stunning, disabling blow;
though we cannot expect that any human power will be able to kill and
bury the monster.
Russia cannot fulfil the mission her religious and patriotic children
ascribe to her, cannot take a principal part in the redintegration of
Christendom, or even attain her complete political growth and strength
either in Europe or Asia, without abandoning her schismatical
position, reuniting herself to the Pope, and liberating the church
from its constricting thraldom to obsolete Byzantine prejudices and
secular tyranny. The question of the conversion of Russia has already
been treated of in our pages by the learned and zealous Father
Tondini, and a number of works bearing on the whole subject are
accessible to English readers. We have not space to go into this
matter as it deserves. We are merely indicating what a Catholic
Russian Empire, in possession of Constantinople, might accomplish for
the triumph of Christianity. The long catalogue of crimes, cruelties,
persecutions, internal abuses, disorders, heresies, fanatical
extravagances, ravages of infidel and revolutionary opinions――in which
too much that is true, we are induced by the argument from analogy, as
well as in part by counter-statements worthy of credit, to believe, is
mixed with some falsehood and much exaggeration――on which a wholesale
denunciation of Russia is founded, proves nothing at all or too much.
All great nations of Christendom can be subjected to the same
oriminating process. What can an advocate say in the cause of England,
France, Germany, or mediæval Europe? The same can be applied to
Russia. If it is a legitimate plea, the facts cited in the indictment
on sufficient evidence are true, but irrelevant. To attempt a
white-washing process is in all cases foolish as well as immoral. The
crimes recorded in the pages of Russian history, whether personal or
political, are not to be denied or excused. Existing evils in church
and state are not to be disguised. All mankind are born in original
sin, and the great majority have committed actual sins. What then? Has
Christ not redeemed the world? will he not triumph over sin and death,
and crowd the kingdom of heaven with his elect? In none of the
kingdoms of this world, in no age of human history, can we find the
ideal kingdom of God and Christ, of justice, peace, and happiness,
otherwise than imperfectly brought into actual existence. Does not the
heavenly kingdom gradually form itself out of this confused mass of
material, growing up through the ages of time to that perfection which
it will attain in eternity? Let us look at Russia in a general view,
as we look on the past ages of Christendom, neglecting those small
particular objects which disappear or become insignificant in an
extended and philosophical survey. Let us drop our petty national
prejudices, and clear our minds of everything inconsistent with
impartial justice to all mankind and Catholic charity. We shall find
much that is admirable and hopeful in the great Russian Empire and her
people, and be convinced that Russians, even after they have become
Catholics and suffered expatriation, are justified in their ardent
love for, and pride in, their unique and wonderful country.
The Russian people resembles a belated army, like that of Blücher at
Waterloo, coming on the field to decide a doubtful battle. They are of
the past, and have but just emerged from their childhood. The old
patriarchal spirit lives in them; they are simple, hardy, traditional,
loyal, full of reverence for parental, sacerdotal, and imperial
authority, industrious and easily contented. The Russian peasantry are
warmly clothed and housed; they have enough of the simple food which
suffices for their wants; and pauperism scarcely exists. They are a
most religious people, and religion is recognized as the basis and
foundation of the entire political and social fabric of the nation, as
well by the government as by the mass of the people. They only need to
be vivified by the current of life from the heart, and energized by
the vital force from the head, of Catholic unity, to become what the
Western nations were in the times of their pristine Christian vigor.
The schism in which they are involved is an unhappy legacy inherited
from the corrupt Lower Empire of Byzantium and its ambitious,
perfidious clergy. Christianity lacked the full amount of power
necessary to accomplish a perfect work in Russia, because the source
whence it was derived could not give it. The Russian Church has never
had its golden age. There are many reasons why it seems fitting and
probable that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit should be
imparted to it at this late day in much greater fulness than they were
in the beginning, making it flourish suddenly and beautifully, like
its own artificial gardens, out of the long, bleak winter. The body of
the Russian nation cannot be regarded as apostate, or compared with
those who followed Photius, Luther, Jansenius, or Döllinger into
wilful rebellion and secession. The authors of the schism were the
prelates and higher clergy from Constantinople, and the boyars of
Moscow, who were completely under their influence. Most of these,
even, were probably, to a great extent, misled by ignorance and
prejudice. We have already shown how the schism has become intertwined
with state policy, so as to transform the great, severed limb of the
Catholic Church into a national institution with an outward form of
hierarchical organization, yet really only a department of the
imperial autocracy. Nevertheless, this national Russian Church is in a
condition essentially different from that of the Anglican
establishment or any other Protestant communion. It retains all that
is necessary to the constitution of a catholic church, and needs only
to submit to the supremacy of the Pope in order to be redintegrated in
unity. The body of the priests and people of Russia are undoubtedly
not in formal, but merely in material, schism. They are therefore
truly in their own persons members of the Catholic Church. They have
the faith and the sacraments, and there is no obstacle to the grace of
God in the inculpable state of external separation from the Holy See
in which they have been unfortunately placed by their ecclesiastical
and civil rulers. The misfortune of such a vast number of the true and
pious children of the Holy Mother Church must cry to God for
deliverance and restoration to the true fold. Their numerous oblations
of the unbloody Sacrifice, their communions, their perpetual prayers
to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, some of whom belonged in this
world to their nation, the sacrifices and prayers of the noble
converts from the Russian schism to Catholicity, the mercy of God,
which is extended over all men, especially the baptized, must surely
effect their reconciliation to their Catholic brethren and the Holy
Father of all Christendom. The sufferings and the blood of the victims
of Russian persecution will conduce more powerfully to this result
than any other human cause. The pagan Russians slaughtered the priests
and faithful of the Byzantine Empire but a short time before they fell
down before the cross and submitted to the spiritual authority of the
Christian patriarch. Vladimir dragged ignominiously to the river the
idol he had formerly worshipped. It cannot, therefore, be impossible
that God should bring his successor to the feet of the Pope in humble
submission, to place himself and his empire under the gentle sway of
the Vicar of Christ. Russia once reconciled with Catholic Christendom,
the conversion of all the Sclavonians would undoubtedly follow. The
Eastern schism would become extinct or reduced to insignificance; and
to Russia would naturally fall the great work of Christianizing Asia,
when the paralysis of schism was removed. Who can tell if the kingdom
of Poland may not be restored to its autonomy, renovated by the severe
chastisements which it has not only suffered but deserved, and
purified from the foul mixture of infidel revolutionism which has been
more fatal to it than any of its external disasters? The designs of
God defy all human scrutiny, and the changes awaiting Europe, whose
complicated, mysterious evolutions have always baffled the most
sagacious foresight or previous planning of rulers or statesmen, are
as much beyond philosophical calculation as the movements of three
bodies are beyond the computation of mathematics. Some indications,
however, precede the full disclosures of events. An eminent Catholic
of Germany has recently said: “I see the finger of God, which pushes
the Russians forwards and Romewards.”[183] We do not think there can
be any object more worthy of the united prayers of all Catholics, next
after the deliverance and triumph of the Holy See, than the
reconciliation of Russia to the Catholic Church.
[177] _Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakoff and Prince
Bismarck._ By Julian Klaczko. Translated from the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ by Frank P. Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
1876.
Various works on Russia by Palmer, Gagarin, Tondini, De
Custine, De Maistre, Pitzipios, Tyrrell, Gurowski, Romanoff,
Rabbe and Duncan, etc. The histories of Mouravieff, Leo,
Rohrbacher, Darras, and Alzog.
[178] Still another derivation is from Roxolani, the name of
a Scythian tribe.
[179] The older brother, Constantine, resigned his right of
succession.
[180] Alexander I. said to Caulaincourt: “I must have the
key which opens the gate of my house.”
[181] La Russie c’est le rien.
[182] _Contemporary Evolution_, by St. George Mivart, pp.
66, 67.
[183] Reinhold Baumstarck in the _Hist. Polit. Blätter_ for
Dec. 1, 1876.
UP THE NILE.
II.
Like giant walls the Libyan and Arabian mountains bound the valley on
either side, at one point close to the river bank, at another receding
inland five or six miles. From Cairo to Wady Halfa, eight hundred
miles, they stretch in an unbroken line. Beautiful groves of palm-trees
line the banks, among which we wander for hours as the boat is tracked
up the stream. This mode of progression is slow indeed, and is used
when the wind fails us. A stout rope is made fast to the bow, and
eight or ten men, taking hold of the other end, walk along the bank,
dragging the boat after them, scarcely ever making more than five or
six miles a day. We go ashore at this time. There are numbers of fine
birds to shoot――over two hundred and fifty different kinds: vultures,
rosy pelicans, golden orioles, pink flamingos, many geese and ducks,
and innumerable flocks of aboulgerdans, the _ardetta russata_, or
buff-back heron, the constant friend and companion of the buffalo. For
hours we wander through palm-groves, cotton and sugar fields, and
occasionally pass through a small village, to the intense amusement of
the elders and the terror of the juveniles. Near midnight of the 24th
of December we reached Ekhmeem, a small town on the east bank. We had
been anxious to spend Christmas morning here; for there is a reunited
Coptic church, and we all wished to attend Mass. The church was not
very handsome nor elaborately finished. The floor was composed of
bricks, with a few straw mats scattered here and there. The roof was
made of rough, unfinished boards, two openings in which served to
admit light and air, thus dispensing with the necessity for windows.
There were a few pews. On the walls were painted pictures of saints
and holy men and women. They were executed by native artists, and to
the untutored eye of these simple natives seemed beautiful no doubt.
They reminded us of those pictures we were wont to draw on our slates
when schoolboys. After they were finished, painful doubts would arise
as to whether any one would be able to tell for what they were
intended; so to remove all apprehension we wrote underneath: “This is
a man,” “This is a cow.” If many Western Christians are to visit this
church, it would be well for them to do the same, so that we may not
mistake a picture of the Blessed Virgin for a shadoof, or St. Joseph
for a portion of an obelisk. There were about forty Arabs, men and
boys, in the body of the church, and some women behind the
lattice-work screens at the rear which separated them from the men.
This separation of sex is carried on even in the Christian churches of
Egypt. Father H―――― officiated, and we had the honor to be the first
Latins who had ever heard Mass in the Coptic church of Ekhmeem.
Afterwards we were hospitably entertained by the Coptic priest. He
invited us to his reception-room on the second story; the congregation
crowded in, and each one in turn shook hands with us, and then kissed
their own hands in token of respect. Innumerable cups of coffee and
cigarettes were forced upon us. I like coffee, and am particularly
fond of a cigarette, but both in moderation. One soon tires, however,
of converting himself into a movable coffee-pot and perambulating
smoke-stack to afford these natives a means of showing that they are
pleased with his visit. I have never seen smoking carried on to such
an extent as in this country. While dressing in the morning and
undressing at night they puff their cigarettes. During the day the
smoke is constantly issuing from their lips.
Pococke speaks of some convents near here, one of which is called “Of
the Martyrs,” and is mentioned by the Arab historian Macrizi, and
another about two miles further in a wild valley, which is composed of
grottoes in the rock and a brick chapel covered with Coptic
inscriptions. Near this is a rude beaten path leading to what appears
to have been the abode of a hermit. Ekhmeem, down to the advent of the
Moslems, was considered the oldest city of all Egypt. It was supposed
to have been founded by Ekhmeem, the great-grandson of Ham. This was
after the Deluge; and if the generally-received date of that event be
correct, then the supposition was false. Modern Egyptologists, unless
wrong in their chronology, show that many cities existed at least
three thousand years before Christ.
A few hours’ sail brought us to Girgeh, a small town on the left bank.
Here is the oldest Roman Catholic establishment in Egypt. Girgis, or
George, is the patron saint of all the Egyptian Christians, and after
him the town was named. Leo Africanus says that Girgeh was formerly
the largest and most opulent monastery of Christians in Egypt, called
after St. George, and inhabited by upwards of two hundred monks, who
possessed much land in the neighborhood. They supplied food to all
travellers, and sent annually a large sum to the patriarch at Cairo to
be distributed among the Christian poor. About one hundred years ago a
dreadful plague afflicted Egypt and carried off all the monks of the
convent. There is a small congregation now of some four hundred
reunited Copts, with a few Coptic priests, presided over by a
Franciscan missionary. We called on him and paid a very pleasant
visit. He accepted our invitation to dinner. As it was Christmas day,
and this our first dinner-party, Ahmud spared no trouble to have
everything as nice as possible. The table was laid with very pretty
pink and white china. Ibrahim appeared in a full suit of the purest
white. The principal dish was a turkey; and such turkeys as they have
in this upper country are to be found nowhere else in the world.
Unfortunately, the priest could only speak Arabic and Italian; and as
our knowledge of those languages was very limited, the conversation
was not animated. One of our party spoke Spanish fluently; with this
assistance, and what remained of the Latin of our college days, we
made some progress, and were able to exchange a little information and
a few ideas. The Father was an Italian of good family, and had been at
Girgeh for eight years. His congregation were very much attached to
him, but, being very poor, he found it difficult to get along. The
only outside aid he received was from the missionary society of Lyons,
who send to each mission along the Nile one napoleon (about four
dollars) per month.
Further up, at Negadeh, we paid a very interesting visit to an old
priest, Père Samuel, who had been thirty-seven years in Egypt,
thirty-four of which he had spent at Negadeh. At first he did not seem
to understand the purport of our visit. We were probably the first
Catholics who had ever called on him. In the course of thirty-four
years he had made but twenty converts from Moslemism. This is owing to
the severe penalties prescribed by the Koran for apostasy, which but
few dare brave. There are about four thousand schismatical Copts and
two hundred reunited ones, mostly his own converts. It is an edifying
sight to see these small but devoted bands of Christians practising
their religion in the midst of fanatical enemies who ridicule and
annoy them in every possible way.
On we sail, and soon the white minarets of Girgeh fade away in the
distance. On the tops of the houses in almost every town pigeon-towers
have been built for the shelter and accommodation of the myriads of
semi-domesticated pigeons that abound here. I am informed that this
care is taken of them for the sake of obtaining their manure. One
would think that the owners would resist any attempts to destroy them.
On the contrary, they would call to us from a distance, and, after we
had trodden down their standing grain to reach them, they would point
out a flock of pigeons, tell us to shoot them, and then, seemingly in
great glee, run, pick them up, and bring them to us. On the 27th of
December the wind was so strong that we furled the sails and were
blown up-stream under bare poles at the rate of three miles an hour.
The raised cabin, presenting such a broad surface to the wind, acted
as a sail and enabled them to steer the boat. As we were seated at
dinner that evening, Ahmud entered, appearing very nervous, and told
us the sailors were about to stop to make their peace-offering to
Sheik Selim. “And pray who is Sheik Selim?” we asked. “He is a very
holy man,” said Ahmud――“the guardian spirit of the Nile. He is one
hundred and twenty years of age, and for the last eighteen years he
has not changed his position, but, seated on the bank, he rules the
elements. If we passed without making an offering to him, he would
send adverse winds; may be he would set fire to the boat or cause
other dire calamities to befall us.” “Does he not tire of sitting
there so long?” I venture to inquire. “Oh! no; when no one is with him
he calls to the crocodiles, and they come out of the water and play
with him. At the approach of any human being he orders them to retire,
and is instantly obeyed.” “And do the sailors really believe this?”
“Yes, and I do also,” replied Ahmud indignantly. “I tell you again
that any one who passes without making an offering to this holy man is
sure to meet with some misfortune. Some years ago, Said Pasha, the
then Viceroy of Egypt, was passing here in his steamer. The sailors
asked permission to stop, but the Viceroy would not permit it, and
sneered at their credulity. Immediately the wheels revolved without
moving the steamer, and it was not until peace-offerings had been
given and accepted that the saint would allow the boat to proceed.”
After such conclusive proof of this holy man’s power we did not dare
to interfere, but some suggested that we would call upon the saintly
Moslem with the delegation appointed by the crew. Ali was very nervous
and seemed almost afraid to go; but his childlike curiosity got the
better of him, and he accompanied us. We walked up the bank in solemn
procession, not a word being spoken. We found the saint seated on the
top, in the centre of a circle made of the stalks of the sugar-cane. A
low fire was burning before him. He must always be approached on his
right hand. Reis Mohammed was the first of our party, and, saluting
him most respectfully, laid at his feet a small basket filled with
bread, oranges, tobacco, and money. Sheik Selim was a very old man,
entirely nude, and seated on his haunches, long, matted hair flowing
to his shoulders. Around him a group of his retainers watched us with
eager curiosity. Our sailors, with awe-stricken countenances, gazed
upon the holy monk with expressions betokening those feelings which
would fill our breasts at looking upon some phantom from the
spirit-world. Above us the moon was riding high in the clear blue of
an Egyptian sky, lighting up the scene with an almost weird effect. It
was a picture never to be forgotten. The fruitful soil of this land
gives back to the industrious farmer three and four crops a year. Had
Sheik Selim’s body, as it then was, been properly planted and cared
for, no less than six crops could easily be realized. If cleanliness
be next to godliness, infinite distance must have separated him from
the Deity. Each one in turn shook hands with him. He thanked them for
the presents and asked for some meat. “I will bring you some from the
howadji’s table,” said Ahmud. “No, I will touch nothing which has been
handled by the Christian dogs. Reis Mohammed, in return for your
offering you will find a pigeon on the boat when you return. I have
ordered it to go there and wait until you come to take it; I present
it to you.” “He must get a number of good things from the many
different boats passing,” I remarked in a side tone to Ahmud. “Yes,
but he never eats anything at all; he gives all he receives to his
retainers. He is not like other men: he has not eaten anything for
eighteen years past.” “He must be on very bad terms with his stomach,”
thought I; but, being somewhat incredulous, I concealed myself for a
few moments behind a palm-tree. As soon as the party had retired he
seized an orange, and, from the avidity with which he devoured it, I
concluded that perhaps Ahmud’s story was partly true. When we returned
to the boat, Ali told us that Reis Mohammed found a live pigeon on the
deck, which suffered itself to be captured, being the one presented by
the saint. Not only Ali but all the crew insisted upon the truth of
this fact. Something must have displeased the old gentleman, possibly
our incredulity, for immediately afterwards we ran aground and
remained so for some hours.
On the 29th of December we reached Keneh, on the east bank, and the
next morning crossed the river, mounted our little donkeys, and rode
to the great temple of Dendera. This temple was dedicated to the
goddess Athor, or Aphrodite, the name Dendera or Tentyra being taken
from Tei-n-Athor, the abode of Athor. To my mind none of the temples
of Egypt can be called beautiful, or even graceful. Compared with the
architectural gems of Greece, or the more recent fairy-like structures
of the Moguls, they are heavy, coarse, and ungainly. But their
interest is derived from their solidity, their antiquity, and the
records of events sculptured on them, making each temple wall a page
of that immortal book which tells of the manners and customs of the
mighty people who ruled the known world six thousand years ago. On the
ceiling of this temple was the Zodiac, so long the subject of such
earnest controversy, by some assigned to an antediluvian age, but more
probably belonging to the Ptolemaic or Roman epochs. The most
interesting sculpture on the walls of Dendera is the contemporary
representation of the great Cleopatra. It is generally believed to
resemble her somewhat, allowance being made for the conventional mode
of drawing then in vogue. It is not what would now be thought a very
handsome face――full, thick lips, a nose somewhat Roman in shape, large
eyes, and rather a sharp profile. But many think that Cleopatra was
not so very beautiful, her charm lying more in her abilities and her
power to please. She spoke to ambassadors from six or seven different
nations, each in his own tongue. She sang charmingly, and was said to
be the only sovereign of Egypt who understood the language of all her
subjects――Greek, Ethiopic, Egyptian, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and
Syriac.
We shot a trochilus, or spur-winged plover. We had been very anxious
to obtain a specimen of this bird, called by the Arabs tic-tac, but so
far had been unsuccessful. True that almost every bird we brought on
board was determined to be a tic-tac by some of the sailors, but, on
comparing each with the description given in Smith’s admirable work on
the Nile voyage, we found it was not the veritable trochilus. Why were
we so anxious to obtain this bird? Because Herodotus tells about its
strange doings, its acting as a self-propelling tooth-pick for the
crocodile. Says that ancient traveller: When the crocodile gets out of
the water on land, and then opens its jaws, which it most commonly
does towards the west, the trochilus enters its mouth and swallows the
leeches. The crocodile is so well pleased with this service that it
never hurts the trochilus. It is called spur-winged plover on account
of the large spur which it has on the carpal joint of each wing,
rendering it a formidable adversary to the crow, three times its size.
These Tentyrites were professed enemies of the crocodile. They hunted
them with great energy and feasted off them when captured. This
persecution of a being considered god-like by the Kom-Ombites people,
living further up the river, was resented by them with all the
fanatical rage and hatred of the most bitter sectarian feud. “Those
who considered the crocodiles as sacred trained them up and taught
them to be quite tame. They put crystal and gold earrings into their
ears, and bracelets on their forepaws, and they gave them appointed
and sacred food, and treated them as well as possible while alive, and
when dead they embalmed them and buried them in sacred vaults”
(Herodotus, _Euterpe_). The latter part of this strange narrative I
can vouch for, as I have now in my possession three young mummied
crocodiles taken from the crocodile mummy-pits of Moabdeh, near the
southern extremity of the rocks of Gebel Aboo Faydah. One afternoon,
while reclining on our luxurious divan, not a cloud obscuring the sky,
as the light winds bore us slowly onward, I dreamed in pleasant
reveries of the lands we were about to visit. Suddenly loud cries of
“Folk! folk!” are heard, and Ali rushes up on deck. “Warrene! warrene!
Shoot him! kill him!” My gun hung above me, loaded with light
bird-shot. In a moment I was on the forecastle, gun in hand, but
without the faintest idea as to what or where a warrene was. Still,
all the sailors cried “Folk! folk!” and, running along the bank, I saw
what appeared to be a crocodile, about four feet long. The frightened
reptile ran rapidly along, at times about to plunge into the water,
but immediately the cry of “Folk!” was raised, and it ran up on the
bank again. The whole charge of bird-shot entering its head cut short
its career, and it was soon a captive on the deck. “Why did you cry
folk?” we asked the sailors. “Why, it means ‘Go up,’ and it prevents
the warrene from entering the water.” “So, then, it understands what
you say, and obeys?” “Yes; and besides, if you call out ‘Folk!’ to a
crocodile, it will raise its forepaw, and thus expose the only part
through which a bullet can penetrate its body.” No more said, but
considerable doubt raised in the minds of the howadjii, and
resolutions formed to experiment upon the first crocodile met with.
The warrene is a species of crocodile, brought forth, according to the
sailors’ story, in this way: The crocodile lays a number of eggs on
land. When these are hatched, from some come forth crocodiles, from
others warrenes; but what law of nature operates to produce this
change they do not understand.
Here is how we pass our time on board: We rise between six and seven,
and each one, as soon as ready, takes what the Hindoos call the
_Chotee Hazree_, or little breakfast――coffee, eggs, bread, and butter:
canned butter brought from England, very sweet; bread baked on board
which would do credit to the best _café_ in Europe; coffee far better
than all Paris could make; and eggs of a correspondingly excellent
quality. After this Mr. S―――― and I generally go ashore and shoot. If
the wind be not strong, and the men track or pole, we can easily walk
ahead of the boat. Madam reads, sews, and sometimes walks with us.
Father H―――― spends several hours writing in his room, and about ten
o’clock shows his bright, cheerful face on deck, ready for a walk,
talk, or almost anything else. At noon we breakfast together, and the
afternoons are generally spent in practising taxidermy. Many
travellers complain that the long Nile voyage is somewhat tiresome.
Assuredly it is to one who has no other resources than looking upon
the scenes around. The scenery is monotonous, the general features of
river, plain, and mountain being almost precisely alike from Cairo to
Wady Haifa. To us time was short; day glided into day, week into
week――no marked transition, no jarring, scarce anything to note the
change, to show that to-day is not yesterday. Nor, in sooth, do we
care what day, what week, what month it is. We have left the world and
its regulations of time behind us, and we will have naught of the
world until we return to civilization. Pleasant occupation of the mind
is one of the highest worldly happinesses one can hope to attain. We
were constantly employed in pleasing occupations. Add to this the
cloudless sky, the sweet, delicious atmosphere, the soft calm
and stillness, unknown in our own harsher clime, and one seems
lifted above the dull realities of this hard world, and to live
in the brightest dream-land. Truly, this is the very acme of
pleasure-travelling.
We learned in an empiric manner the art of taxidermy. At first we knew
nothing about it――had no books upon the subject. The first birds we
prepared were sorry specimens. Each day we made new discoveries, and
finally we preserved over one hundred birds in perfect order and
condition. In this interesting occupation the afternoon hours glided
swiftly by. At six we dined. Then one would read aloud for an hour or
more. After that we played dominos or engaged in conversation until
ten o’clock, when we retired.
At half-past six of the afternoon of December 30, amid the waving of
flags and the firing of pistol-shots, we cast anchor off the town of
Luxor. Ali Murad, our worthy consul, appeared on his house-top, and
saluted us with a battery in the shape of a pair of antiquated
horse-pistols, the firing of which seemed to afford him much
amusement. Ali is a fine fellow, it is said. He called and spent half
an hour with us. He did not talk――in fact, he could not talk much
intelligibly; in short, he could not talk at all so that we could
understand him. He represents the majesty and power of the great
republic of the western ocean, and is not able to speak the first word
of English. But he can shake hands, and tell us through Ahmud that he
is glad to see us; so we stop his mouth with a nargileh, and supply
him with coffee, and he squats on the divan and is happy.
That night we visited majestic Karnak. The soft light of the moon
playing here and there among its ruined halls and fallen obelisks made
the picture so rich and beautiful that we lingered on till late in the
night. Luxor, Karnak, and the temples on the western shore mark the
site of hundred-gated Thebes. The western division of the city was, in
ages long since passed away, under the particular protection of Athor.
For, taught the learned priests, beneath yon western mountain our holy
goddess receives each evening the setting sun in her outstretched
arms. We sailed on the next day, dipping our flag as we passed the
_Nubia_ and _Clara_, occupied by a very pleasant party from Boston,
whom we were destined to meet again at the extremity of our voyage.
Passing Erment on the west bank, where there is a sugar-factory, we
saw a long line of camels carrying sugar-cane. There must have been at
least five hundred of these patient animals; but the load that each
one carried could not have weighed fifty pounds. Soon we reach Esne.
We are to stop here seventy-four hours, according to contract, for the
men to bake their bread. They paid three pounds for the doora, or
grain, from which the bread is made; this included the grinding.
Having kneaded and prepared the dough, it was baked in a public oven
at the cost of seventeen shillings. This bread is the staple food of
the crew. The quantity baked on January 3 lasted the men until we
returned to Sioot, the 21st of March following. The bread was then
brought aboard, and for two days the little old cook was busy cutting
it up into small pieces, which were strewn over the deck and exposed
to the sun for a few days, until they became hard as stones. The
preparation of their meals is very simple. A number of these slices of
bread are put into a pot filled with water; to this is added some salt
and lentils, and the whole is then boiled and stirred over a fire.
This meal they have twice a day. Many a time have I joined them in
their humble repast; and it was palatable indeed, this time-honored
mess of red porridge for which the hungry Esau sold his birthright to
his ambitious brother. These fellows, strong and hardy as they were,
eat meat but four times in as many months, on which occasions we
presented them with a sheep. The animal served them for two meals. It
was butchered and skinned by the captain, and the only parts not used
were the entrails. The body was divided into fifteen equal parts, one
for each man. These parts were weighed to ensure a fair distribution,
and the hoofs and head were boiled with the porridge to impart flavor
to it.
Some years ago the authorities at Cairo became suddenly imbued with
high ideas of morality. In a fit of virtuous indignation they banished
thence the ghawázee, or dancing girls of not very reputable character.
Numbers of them ascended the Nile to Esne and settled there. Many
Eastern travellers, filled with those romantic feelings touching
everything Oriental, have raved in wild rhapsodies about the beauty
and grace of these ghawázee. Those that I saw were coarse, corpulent,
and homely. They were attired in bright robes and tawdry finery, their
actions were disgusting, and their movements in dancing a little more
graceful than the frantic struggles of a half-boiled lobster.
What numbers of shadoofs we now see on either bank! Before the voice
of God called his servant Abraham to enter the kingdom of the mighty
Pharaos, these shadoofs――or more properly in the plural,
shawadéef――were the common means employed to supply artificial
irrigation to the parched but fruitful soil. As the Nile recedes it
leaves a rich and heavy alluvial deposit; in this the first crop is
sown and brought forth, but it soon becomes dry, parched, and cracked,
as rain scarcely ever falls in Upper Egypt. The shadoof is then used.
From the top of an upright frame placed on the river bank is swung a
long pole. To one end a rope is attached, from which swings a bucket
made of skin. On the other end of the pole is fastened sufficient
clay, hardened as a rock by the sun, to keep the pole in a horizontal
position when the bucket is filled with water. The operator pulls
downward on the rope until the bucket is immersed and filled. By a
very slight effort it is then raised to the top of the bank, sometimes
eight or ten feet high, and emptied into a trough, from which the
water is conducted through numberless little canals to a distance
often of five or six miles. These canals run in every direction, and
by breaking the banks any part of the soil may be covered with water.
January 5, at six in the evening, we reached Assouan, and moored
alongside the island of Elephantine. Here we are at Syene; for Assouan
is but the Coptic Souan or Syene with the Arabic initial Alef added,
together Assouan――to the Romans the frontier of the world, as all
beyond was savage barbarism and unproductive soil. Domitian could
think of no more horrible place to which he might banish the great
satirist, and while here Juvenal amused himself by satirizing equally
the Roman and Egyptian soldiers. Under the Ptolemies Syene was thought
to lie immediately beneath the tropic of Cancer; but, as is now well
known, this was a mistake, as it is situated in latitude 24° 5´ 25´´,
seven hundred and thirty miles from the Mediterranean. In the early
ages of Christianity Syene was the seat of a bishopric, and at one
time more than twenty thousand of the inhabitants were destroyed by a
fearful pest. The present town is large and well built. Merchandise
from the Soodan and Central Africa is here taken from the camel’s back
and shipped by water to Cairo. Here for the first time we see those
different specimens of the African race――Nubians, Ababdeh, Bisharee,
Bedoween, and many others from the still far-off interior. We are
pestered and besieged by itinerant venders with every description of
wares to be sold. They squat on the bank, waiting for some of the
howadjii to come out. As soon as any of us appear we are surrounded by
this motley crew, spears brandished in our faces――spears that have
seen actual usage in the barbarous wars of the natives of the
interior――ostrich eggs are poked under our noses, and the beautiful
ostrich feathers waved above our heads. Strings of beads, elephants’
tusks are offered to us. I wish to buy a chibouk. I select one――a fine
bowl of red clay beautifully polished, and a stem six feet long and
straight as an arrow. “Well, you miserable, sordid, grovelling,
lucre-loving, half-naked wretch” (this in English), “How much?” (this
in Arabic).
A shrug of the shoulders, and eyes cast upon the ground.
“Well, how much?”
In a low, moaning voice: “Ten piastres”――only five times the proper
value.
“I will give you one piastre.”
“Oh! no, by no means.” This is not spoken with the mouth, but by a
more expressive movement of the head and shoulders. In the course of
time the bargain is concluded for two piastres. I give him a piece of
ten and hold out the hand for change. A bag is produced, filled with
copper coins, of which it takes an indefinite quantity to equal a
silver piece of any given value. Slowly and deliberately he counts
into my hand a score or two of them, stops, and looks up into my face.
More! Again they are reluctantly doled out one by one. Another
stoppage, another demand for more; and so it goes, until one party
cries enough, or the other knows that he has given the proper change.
This is carried so far that on one occasion, where silver change was
to be given for a napoleon, I observed the seller count out from his
money-bag the proper amount of change, conceal it in his hand, and
then go through the operation above described. But the regular
shop-keeper does not bother you to buy――only the outside board, as it
were. The merchant is a most dignified man; if it pleases Allah for
you to buy, you will do it, otherwise not――Oriental predestination――so
he is perfectly indifferent.
We wanted to go shopping, and looked around for the rich merchant of
the town, who had fine ostrich eggs and feathers, elephants’ tusks,
and spears. We found him seated on the ground reading a letter,
brought out, no doubt, to impress us with his importance. I half think
the letter was upside down, and doubt very much whether he could read
at all; but it gave him the air of a man engaged in extensive foreign
correspondence. Ali made known what we wanted. Without raising his
head, he sent a boy to open his store, and told Ali he would follow
when he finished his letter. Shortly after he came up, sat down on a
divan, and got at the letter again. When we complained of the price,
he did not deign a reply, and finally, when we rose to leave, he did
not even lift his eyes, but seemed to be still trying to decipher his
correspondence. I am sure it was partly done for effect, for he could
have read a dozen letters while we were in his shop. But then he
wanted to show his indifference.
LONGINGS.
FROM THE FRENCH OF ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.
I said: O heart! what is thy goal――thy end?
As the lambs follow where the mothers lead,
Shall I so tread their footprints who precede,
And life’s brief, death-doomed hour in folly spend?
One chases wealth across the restless wave――
Whelmed in the deep, his bark, his hopes go down;
Another loves the acclaim of vain renown,
And finds in glory’s bosom but a grave.
One makes men’s passions serve as steps to rise,
And mounts a throne――anon behold him fall;
Another dallies where soft accents call,
And reads his destiny in woman’s eyes.
In hunger’s arms I see the idler faint,
The laborer drive his ploughshare through the soil,
The wise man’s books, the warrior’s deadly toil,
The beggar by the wayside making plaint.
All pass; but whither? Whither flits the leaf
Chased by the rough blast, torn by winter rime?
So fade they from their various ways as time
Harvests and sows the generations brief.
They strove ’gainst time――time conquers all at last.
As the light sand-bank wastes down in the stream,
I see them vanish. Was their life a dream?
So quickly are they come, so quickly passed!
For me, I sing the Lord whom I adore,
In crowded cities or in deserts dun,
At rise of day or at the set of sun,
Tossed on the sea or couching on the shore.
Earth cries out: Who is God? That soul divine
Whose presence fills the illimitable place;
Who with one step doth span the realms of space;
Who lends his splendor in the sun to shine;
Who bade from nothing rise creation’s morn;
Who made on nothingness the world to stand;
Who held the sea in check ere yet was land;
Who gazed, and light ineffable was born;
For whom no morrow and no yesterday;
Who through eternity doth self sustain;
To whom revealed the future lieth plain;
Who can recall the past and bid it stay――
God! Let his hundred names of glory wake
For ever in my song! Oh! be my tongue
A golden harp before his altar hung,
Until his hand shall touch me and I break.
SIMILARITIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.[184]
When Macaulay remarked that the Catholic Church owed its success in a
great measure to the far-reaching policy of its organization, he
uttered a truth of vast pregnancy; for the evidences of this
far-sightedness abound on every side, and we find its latest
attestation in the attitude the church holds to the questions which
agitate the scientific world to-day. Had she, at any period of her
existence, so far departed from a well-defined and consistent policy
as to formulate theories touching the nature and course of physical
phenomena, she might stand to-day condemned and branded in the light
of recent scientific discoveries; but apart from the opinions of
individual writers, lay and ecclesiastical, to whom she accorded full
license to hold what they pleased in such matters, provided they did
not contradict revealed truth, and who accordingly often touched on
the border-land of the ridiculous and extravagant, not one
authoritative expression of hers can be found at variance with a
single scientific truth even of yesterday’s discovery. Of course she
condemns materialism, because it runs counter to the belief in the
immortality of the soul, which is a truth as readily demonstrable as
the most undoubted fact in science; and she disbelieves in the
eternity of matter, because such a monstrosity involves a violation of
reason; but neither materialism nor the belief that matter is eternal
is science, nor do any but the blatant fuglemen of scientism hold to
them. What we insist upon is that no expression recorded in any
council or authoritatively uttered by the Holy See can be adduced
which is in conflict with any truth of physical science now
established. This may sound strange to those whose prejudices against
the church have been fanned and fostered by the terrible things told
concerning Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno; but it is as true
as it stands printed, and it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the
day that writers are tolerated who still retail trash in opposition to
overwhelming historical evidence.
As in the past, the church to-day benignantly encourages all who
devote themselves to the prosecution of the natural sciences, and
welcomes their discoveries with delight. She wishes merely that
scientific investigators confine themselves to their legitimate
labors, and do not wildly rush to impious conclusions from
insufficient data. She is ever willing to accept whatever conclusions
premises really justify, and no more. Surely this attitude of the
church towards science is eminently rational, and no right-thinking
man can condemn it. Yet it is not alone such men as Spencer, Huxley,
Tyndall, St. Hilaire, and Figuier who charge the church with being
steadily reactionary and actively antagonistic to science, but the
whole sectarian world has taken up the cry. We are sorry to number
among these the author of the volume which affords subject-matter for
this article, and which contains much that is novel, ingenious, and
true, as we hope to be able to show when considering the chapter on
the “Faiths of Science.”
But we will first learn from Mr. Bixby what manner of religion it is
to which science is not opposed, so that we may ascertain the scope
and purpose of his work. “In its most general significance,” he says,
“it is _the expression of man’s spiritual nature awakening to
spiritual things_” (italics by the author). After developing this
definition at some length, he considers it more restrictedly as
embracing the following elements:
“1. Belief in a soul within man.
“2. Belief in a sovereign soul without.
“3. Belief in actual or possible relations between them.”
This, then, is religion according to Mr. Bixby, and it is to the
rather easy task of reconciling a few modern scientific theories to
this attenuated abstraction of religious sentiment, this evanescent
aroma of an emotion, that he addresses himself. The statement of those
three fully sufficient conditions of religion clearly involves
pantheism; and not one of the wildest scientific conjectures of the
day is there which may not be made to harmonize with pantheism. The
task, therefore, of reducing science and religion to a harmonious
plane is quite supererogatory, since on a bare statement of religion
it is reconcilable with anything. Pantheism, as taught by its most
eminent exponents in Germany――Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte――consists
in a sovereign soul without the τὸ non ἐγώ, from which the soul of
man, the τὸ ἐγώ, is an emanation――_i.e._, a fragmentary expression of
its consciousness. Beyond this these distinguished philosophers admit
and recognize nothing. Do we not clearly find the same thing in the
religion of Mr. Bixby?――viz., 1, soul within man; 2, sovereign soul
without man; 3, actual or possible relations between the two. Now,
taking the term soul as univocal in the first and second statements,
is it not evident that the latter contains the former, and are we not
landed high and dry on the absolute pantheism of Schelling? Or rather,
going back to the parent source of pantheism, does not Mr. Bixby’s
definition of religion strongly recall these words of the Vedas: “Thus
the man who in his own soul recognizes the soul supreme present
throughout all creation obtains the happiest lot of all――to be
absorbed into Brahma”?
If this be Mr. Bixby’s meaning――or rather, whether meant or not, if
this be the legitimate resultant of his views on religion――we see no
way of escaping from the conclusion that matter is eternal, since his
religion by no means includes the dogma of creation――indeed, it is his
custom to scout dogmas――but is strictly limited to the recognition of
an inner and an outer soul. It is true Mr. Bixby admits no such
consequence, but he cannot help himself; he speaks most devoutly of
God, condemns a “bald materialism that would make matter the sum and
substance of all things, self-existent, and alone immortal, etc.,” all
which is true enough, but by no means bound up in Mr. Bixby’s concept
of religion. Our author consequently deprecates a conflict with a
shadow, points out to scientific men the possibility of a complete
reconciliation between their theories and a Bixbian fugitive tenuity,
and devoutly implores them not to use language which might delay “the
awakening of our spiritual nature.” Mr. Bixby says that metaphysics
must not obtrude themselves on the realm of physical science; that the
missions of both constantly diverge. We would, however, remind him
that without metaphysics――and we mean the metaphysics he so much
abhors, viz., those of the scholastics――we could find no argument as
supplied by reason against the eternity of matter. It is wonderful
that a man of Mr. Bixby’s respectable attainments should not perceive
into what a complete _petitio principii_ he has fallen when he
postulates the non-eternity of matter. He does not admit the
correctness of the Mosaic cosmic genesis, and as he employs no
reasoning to substantiate his postulate, we must regard it as a
_petitio principii_ and nothing more.
How differently do the theologians and philosophers of the Catholic
Church comport themselves in presence of this old philosophical
heresy, revived to-day in full force by Draper, Tyndall, and Huxley,
and which may be regarded as the arch sin of modern scientific
theories! They do not beg the question as Mr. Bixby does, but,
grappling it with an iron logic, dispose of it as effectually as when
St. Thomas overthrew the crude systems of Leucippus and Averroës by
the aid of a few well-established metaphysical principles. Mr. Bixby
says: “Mediæval scholasticism especially grievously sinned in these
respects. It delighted in hair-splitting disputations over frivolous
puzzles, and in endless speculations about things not only
transcending the possibility of human knowledge, but destitute of any
practical moment. Its only criterion was the deliverances of the
church on the almost equally venerated Aristotle.” Alas! we fear that
the _Summa_ of St. Thomas is a sealed book for Mr. Bixby, that he has
not tempted the page of Suarez with well-trimmed lamp, and that his
stock of mediæval lore is borrowed from Hallam or the latest edition
of the encyclopædia. To prove how immeasurably superior the
“hair-splitters” are to beggars of the question we will show in what
way the former hold their own against the modern eternists. Prof.
Draper says that as there will be an unending succession in the
future, so there has been an unbeginning series in the past; species
succeed species, and genera succeed genera, in a never-beginning and a
never-to-end chain; Tyndall repeats the words of Draper, whom he so
much admires; and Mr. Bixby says, “Gentlemen, it may not be so”; while
the scholastic clearly proves that it cannot be so. At the outset a
little “hair-splitting” is necessary. We distinguish what is called an
actual series, each link of which has had an actual existence, from a
potential series, in which the links have not as yet been projected
into existence, but will be. Now, an actual series has an end――viz.,
the link marking the point of transition from the actual to the
potential――and is susceptible of increase, since, indeed, it
constantly receives fresh accessions from the potential. If, however,
it can thus acquire increase, that increase is representable by
numbers, so many fresh links added to the series. But a number cannot
be added except to another number; consequently, the series to which
fresh increase is added must be numerical――_i.e._, representable by
figures. Now, whatever can be represented by figures must have had a
beginning; for there can be no number without a first unit, which is
the first element of number. Moreover, the supposition that there
stretches back into eternity a non-beginning succession of events
contradicts the principle of causality; for it would give us one more
effect than cause. Viewed in its descending aspect, every link in the
chain is cause of the event which follows, till the last link is
reached, the which is not cause, since it has as yet preceded no other
event. But it is effect, since it depends on the previous event.
Viewed now in its ascending aspect, the chain consists of a series of
links which are all effects――effects more numerous than the causes by
the addition of the latest link, which is effect but not cause. We
must have, then, one effect without a cause, which is absurd. The same
maybe said about consequent and antecedent terms in such a series; for
the last term in the series being merely consequent, the chain or
series which, by hypothesis, has no beginning contains more consequent
than antecedent terms, which is equally absurd. We have here given but
an outline of the argument. The scholastics have summed it up more
fully, though far more tersely and concisely, in these words: There
can be no infinite series _a parte ante_, but there can be _a parte
post_. This reasoning not only conclusively disproves, but renders
ridiculous, the arguments of Draper, Tyndall, and the rest. Yet from
this philosophical armory Mr. Bixby would disdain to draw a single
weapon in defence of his thesis, but prefers rather that the church be
considered essentially inimical to the progress of true science, and
constantly jealous of its encroachments.
“Mutato nomine de te
Fabula narratur.”
Mr. Bixby entertains a special dislike to theology as being apt to
interfere with his pet scheme of reconciling science with――shall we
call it Bixbyism? Certainly we cannot consistently call it religion.
He says:
“Again, theological dogmas and science have been, and still
are, opposed. Theologians have formulated their dim guesses
about God’s character and ways into creeds, and imagined
them finalities. They have speculated upon matters of purely
physical knowledge――such as the antiquity of the earth and
the age of man, the condition of the primitive globe and its
inhabitants, the manner and method of their appearing――and
have made these speculations into dogmas held as essential
to religion.”
Here we must take sharp issue with Mr. Bixby. In the first place, have
not the theologians as good right to speculate on such matters as
Messrs. Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall? And if they have fallen into
error, it is no more than the latter gentlemen have frequently done.
Surely Mr. Bixby must allow the fact that St. George Mivart is no less
a sound _savant_ because he is read in theology; or would he maintain
that Father Secchi is liable to additional chromatic aberration
because he believes in the decrees of the Vatican Council? In the next
place, no theologian deserving the name deems himself competent to
erect into a religious dogma demanding the reverence and belief of his
fellows his individual scientific opinions. The absurdity of such an
idea is apparent to any one who has read a Catholic theological
treatise, which breathes a spirit of submissiveness in every line
where the author’s own views are expounded――a spirit strikingly in
contrast with the arrogant dogmatism of our scientific philosophers.
Moreover, the church, the only competent authority to promulgate
dogmas of faith, has never yet attempted to impose on the minds of her
children a purely scientific truth as an article of belief. From this
it is evident that Mr. Bixby occasionally palters, and merely wishes
to pave the way for an easier adaptation of his religious views to the
so-called advanced scientific tendencies of the day.
He says that all theologies stand in the way of science, but that two
dogmas especially exhibit this perversity――viz., 1, the assumed
infallibility of the Bible; 2, the assumed intervention of God. “In
consequence of the first of these dogmas,” he says, “there has been a
struggle by theologians to limit modern science to the contracted
circle of the ancient Hebrew knowledge of the universe, and any
variation of statement from the letter of Moses or Job, David or Paul,
is regarded as a dangerous loosening of another screw in the bonds of
righteousness and the evidences of immortality.” Mr. Bixby is not
himself a believer in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, and
evidently thinks that whoever does not agree with him stands on the
extreme opposite line and believes the very shaping of the letters to
have been divinely commanded. This is wrong. The Scriptures were never
intended as a manual of science. They merely state the great facts of
human and cosmic genesis in a general way, so far as those two
momentous facts affect the interests of the race. It has been proved
time and again that the Mosaic books, fairly interpreted, contain
nothing adverse to scientific truth. Why, then, will writers be ever
harping on this well-worn theme? It is not honest to advance a
statement without proof, and try to clinch it with a sneer.
“In consequence of the second dogma,” he writes,
“theologians have been jealous of any attempt at a natural
explanation of the mysteries of the world, and have looked
upon every extension of the realm of unbroken order and
second causes as an invasion by science of the religious
kingdom. They imagine that one must lose what the other
gains; that, step by step, as the arcana of the Kosmos are
penetrated, and the same laws and substances are found
ruling and constituting these as rule and constitute the
more familiar parts and operations of nature, the action and
presence of the Deity must be denied, and the human mind
landed more and more in the slough of materialism.”
These words bear their refutation with them. The accusation is
serious, and yet not a word of proof to substantiate it. Too often is
Mr. Bixby guilty of this illogical procedure of substituting
statements for proven facts and captious deliverances for argument.
When Dr. Draper denies the possibility of miracles, he does so at
least logically; for he believes in the eternity, immutability, and
necessity of law. With him there is no lawgiver, but with Mr. Bixby it
is different. He speaks of God “pouring his will through the channels
of unvaried law.” Now, it is an axiom in law that the framers thereof
may derogate from it from time to time, if so it should seem good to
them. Why not, therefore, God? Mr. Bixby cannot, then, deny the utter
impossibility of a miracle, and yet he argues against it just as
strenuously and in the same spirit as Mr. Draper or Mr. Tyndall.
Should he charge that such exceptional deviations from apparently
established laws would argue caprice or shortsightedness on the part
of God, we beg to reply that they occur in consequence of a higher
law, representing the divine will, by which those secondary laws were
established, and which, with far-reaching and clear-eyed gaze, made
provision for those exceptional occurrences, so that they may be said
virtually to come within the scope of the law itself. Should, then,
the testimony in support of a miracle be of an unimpeachable nature,
we see no reason why the possibility of a miraculous event is to be
denied. When Voltaire said he would more readily believe that a whole
citiful of people, separated by prejudices, social position, tastes,
habits of life, and mutual distrust, might conspire to deceive him
than he would that a dead man had arisen from the grave, he confounded
physical with metaphysical impossibility; and this is precisely what
every unbeliever since his time has done. To this charge Mr. Bixby is
more grievously amenable, since he admits the reason for the validity
of the distinction between the two impossibilities mentioned, by
admitting God to be the author of law, and yet he virtually ignores it
by the position he assumes.
But this chapter on the “Causes of Actual Antagonism” is so replete
with reckless assertion and inconsequent reasoning that we have only
to take up a passage at hazard to be confronted by an error. On page
41 he says:
“Neither is religion based on, nor bound up with, any one
book. Had Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob no religion, because
Moses had not yet written? Was there no Christianity in the
lifetime of Jesus, or the first forty years of the apostolic
generation before Matthew put his pen on to parchment? As
well say that chemical affinity is based on Lavoisier’s or
Dalton’s treatises, or that gravitation is ruined if
Newton’s _Principia_ is shown false in a single theorem.”
We assure our readers that we have selected this passage at random,
lest we may be suspected of malice in having singled it out because of
its surpassing fatuity. Who ever dreamt of saying that religion is
bound up in a book? As well say that an author’s thoughts are nowhere
to be found but between the covers of the book which bears his name.
But mark the transparent fallacy of the underlying thought. Mr. Bixby
evidently supposes that because religion had an existence prior to the
books mentioned, we might therefore dispense with these, and still
possess religion just as our predecessors had it before those books
were yet written. But suppose those books happen to contain the
previous body of religious doctrine, together with developments or
disclosures inseparably connected with it; might we then carelessly
reject them, as Mr. Bixby implies we might? Or does it follow that,
because a “spiritual awakening” is defined to be of a special sort in
one instance, it can never be so in another? Yet such is the
irresistible inference to be drawn from the introductory portion of
the passage just quoted. The same may be said of the reference to the
priority of Christianity over the Gospel of St. Matthew. No one
contends that Christianity did not exist in the lifetime of Jesus, or
that it would not now exist had not St. Matthew written his Gospel;
but it by no means follows that we are free to reject that
evangelist’s history, since it is a compendium of Christian doctrine
such as our Lord had preached it in his lifetime, and in rejecting it
we would thereby reject the latter. The allusion to Lavoisier and
Dalton is just as unhappy; for though it is true the science of
chemistry might exist without them, still we cannot reject their
treatises, since these contain the essential principles of that
science.
Mr. Bixby is sometimes quite happy in stating the objections which
scientists urge against religion, but we regret that he also sometimes
fails to make good his refutation of their views. Thus, on page 149,
he presents the argument of science in these words: “Theologians may
talk glibly of soul and over-soul, Creator and creation, absolute and
Infinite; they may fancy that they understand them; but they are
deceiving themselves, mistaking a familiarity with words for a genuine
understanding of things. Their high-sounding terms are but covers to
their real ignorance.” Indeed, this is a common objection made by
those whose habits of mind have been formed in the laboratory, and who
have never troubled themselves much about metaphysics. Still, the
objection should be met in a patient and painstaking mood, and answer
given according to our lights. Mr. Bixby makes his rejoinder a
_retorqueo argumentum_ by showing that science, too, bristles with
difficulties and is beset with mysteries; that it borrows from
conjecture more even than religion does; and that it can never hope to
level all the hills and fill up all the valleys which lie along its
course. This is very true and very apposite, but it may be asked: Does
it contain an answer to the objection as stated? We rather think not.
Cannot it be proved that we do really possess some knowledge of the
Infinite and the Absolute, and that the apparent unintelligibility of
these terms is to be sought for and found rather in the ignorance of
those who object to them? The Infinite differs for us subjectively
from no other object of thought on the score of adequacy, since we can
have an adequate idea of nothing. Not even of the simplest material
objects that surround us can we have at the best more than an inchoate
and imperfect knowledge. How, then, can we be expected to conceive the
Infinite, except in a very shadowy way, “as in a glass darkly”? Still,
the fact that we speak of the Infinite and assert its attributes, that
we distinguish Infinite Being from finite, and that our hearts fly
towards it in unappeasable longing, is open guarantee that we have
some knowledge of it, which is all that the most exacting can demand.
Therefore those who confound infinite knowledge of the Infinite, which
appertains to the Infinite Being alone, with that subjectively finite
knowledge of it which we all possess, display an unpardonable
ignorance. This is our answer to those who object that Infinite, as
one term, is unintelligible, and we see no necessity for classifying
it with the impenetrable secrets with which science is confronted at
every step. The same may be said of the term absolute; and though we
do not agree with the views of the absolute taken by Mansel, Hamilton,
Kant, and Spencer, we know at least that the term has a meaning, that
it implies total independence, and is based on that divine attribute
which the scholastics denominate Aseity. Mr. Bixby is too timorous in
his utterances. He seems to write under a Damocles’ sword, fearing to
offend those great men who tread in the stately van of science. But if
he hesitates to be dogmatic in one direction, he does not hesitate to
be aggressive in another; and when his mood inclines that way, he sets
up as the target of his shafts the doctrines and definitions of the
Catholic Church.
In order to prove that Bixbyism is the only religion which is at all
reconcilable with science, and to brush aside any pretensions
Catholicity might entertain in the same direction, he quotes the
following:
“Let him be anathema――
“Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a
spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their
assertions even when opposed to revealed doctrines.”
This proposition does not meet the approbation of Mr. Bixby. If it
does not, then its contradictory must be true, which implies that a
scientific utterance _may_ be true in the face of an opposing revealed
truth. It is to be borne in mind that the revealed doctrines in
question are supposed to be revealed, and revealed by God, and the
whole statement is resolvable into this: Notwithstanding that God (in
whom Mr. Bixby is a believer) has positively affirmed that a given
statement is true, Mr. Tyndall or Prof. Huxley may affirm the contrary
with impunity――nay, rather with a better title to our acceptance of
their views――
“At nos virtutes ipsas invertimus.”
or, as Caramuel says, “We thus sweeten poison with sugar, and color
guilt with the appearance of virtue.”
But in order to place himself still more _en rapport_ with his
adversaries, Mr. Bixby, seemingly forgetful that he either surrenders
the gage or else resolves the conflict into a tilt with a windmill,
expresses himself to the following effect: “Religion has no exclusive
source of information, but such sources only as are common to all
branches of human knowledge.” If this be true, there is no necessity
of even the shadow of an attempt to reconcile any differences which,
by a stretch of fancy, might be conceived to exist between two
sciences that travel along the same plane. All along, since this
controversy was begun, it has been understood that the sole possible
cause of conflict between science and religion arose out of the fact
that they claimed each for itself more solid ground on which to stand.
Reason and revelation were always supposed to be the party words of
both, and every collision between them so far has resulted from the
apparent irreconcilableness of these two. Mr. Bixby, in endeavoring to
shift the ground of argument, should have confined himself to just
that effort, and omitted those portions of his work tending to
disprove all antagonism between science and religion, since, in the
estimation of most men, a religion which asserts no claim to the
supernatural is no religion at all. His attempted abatement of the
claims of science, though well presented and sustained, works not an
iota for Mr. Bixby’s point; for in all he says he is arguing for
supernatural religion, which he virtually rejects, against the
untenable assumptions of science.
As if in more strenuous advocacy of this idea, he elsewhere adds: “It
[religion] is not all falsehood and masquerade; nevertheless, there is
much popularly set down as religion which is no more religion than it
is science. Now it has been bound up with one system, now with
another. When Christianity first raised its head, it was told that
polytheism alone was religion.” Continuing in this strain, he condemns
every system of religion which stands opposed to another, and infers
from the fact of such opposition the necessary falsity of them all. He
even goes to the extent of affirming that the doctrines of the
Catholic Church changed age by age, according to the tone of the
prevailing philosophy. He says:
“In Augustine’s day Christianity was made inseparable from
the doctrines of predestination and fatalism. In Abelard’s
time it was bound up with the metaphysics of realism; in
Roger Bacon’s time, with the philosophy of Aristotle; in the
days of Vesalius, with the medical treatises of Galen; in
the lifetime of Galileo, with the astronomy of Ptolemy.
To-day it is the orthodoxy of the Council of Trent or the
Westminster Catechism that is cemented to religion, and any
attack on the one is assumed to be undermining the very
foundations of faith and morals.”
This passage is recklessly false. Any one acquainted with church
history, with the rise and progress of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism,
understands perfectly that in St. Augustine’s time no more stringent
or rigorous views concerning original sin and predestination were held
than tradition and the Scriptures sanctioned and ratified. And the
patient reader of the history of philosophy will also condemn the
assertion that the church proper had anything to do with the
long-drawn disputes between the Nominalists and the Realists. The
church left those wordy disputants severely alone, though the
controversy was revived by the school of the Neo-Platonists for the
very purpose of embroiling the church in the quarrel. We say the
controversy was revived; for in reality the dispute is as old as Plato
and Aristotle.
Still more absurd is what Mr. Bixby says with reference to Vesalius
and Galen. Not a single authoritative passage from father, council, or
historian can be adduced to prove that the church ever committed
herself to the adoption of any views concerning the structure,
functions, and disorders of the human body. Indeed, Vesalius, who led
the way in the great revolution which medical science underwent from
the errors of Galen, was a pious Catholic, and the popular painting of
the first dissection of modern times represents him with eyes piously
upturned to the crucifix before entering on one of the most important
steps of modern scientific inquiry in the teeth of wide-spread and
violent prejudice――viz., the first dissection of the human cadaver
that has led to any valuable results.
But in order to be thoroughly careful that he should allow no element
of what is entitled positive religion to enter into the conception of
his emotional nonentity, he discards all the known and accepted
grounds of religious evidence. He says there can be no infallible
authority in religious matters, since the only one which fostered the
pretence has been repeatedly detected in error. His words are:
“In its unflattering mirror the oracle of Rome is exhibited
as convicted of error in scientific matters again and again;
compelled to retreat from position to position; forced to
correct and recorrect its interpretations. It is shown
vacillating to and fro in regard to the most important
ecclesiastical questions, possessed of no clear or
well-defined principles concerning many essential
theological issues, etc., etc.”
All this rodomontade is in the nature of a negative assertion,
inasmuch as it would require a full review of the history of the
church to refute it. It is the author’s favorite style of logic,
however, and may go for what it is worth. He next rejects the
authority of the Bible on the most frivolous grounds, and coming to
the value of our divine Saviour’s evidence in favor of revelation, he
uses the following extraordinary language:
“I desire not to deny the existence of a divine element in
Jesus. I gladly recognize him as the loftiest spiritual seer
and teacher the world has seen; the best historic embodiment
of spiritual perfection that we have. But we must own, if we
are clear-sighted and frank, that in Christ himself we do
not obtain an oracle exempt from the limitations of humanity
and the conditions of earthly knowledge.”
This is a clear negation of the divinity of Christ, and an implied
avowal that Mr. Bixby ranges himself with Renan and Strauss. As before
stated, Mr. Bixby’s chief aim in the first chapters of his book is to
simplify the conditions of the problem which he has set before him,
and we see that he has striven to do this by stripping religion of all
its positive attributes, and putting in its stead a bloodless and
emasculated spectre. “It is a force,” he says, “anterior to all
churches and hierarchies, the grand spiritual stream flowing from
above through the souls of men, of which ecclesiastical organizations
are but the earthly banks, the clayey reservoirs and wooden dams, by
which men have thought they could better utilize the heavenly forces.”
This is fine and figurative, we confess, but more marked by sound than
sense. Mr. Bixby here brands all churches as purely human
institutions, and yet allows that they possess religion, that they are
its conduits and distributors to men, and that dogmas and codes and
ethical enactments are mere accretions, the work of human minds. These
must consequently be false, and, being such, should retard rather and
operate against the influences of religion pure and undefiled, the
embodiment of truth. How, then, can they be said to be utilizers of
heavenly force and reservoirs of religion, they being false, and it
true?
“Pergis pugnantia secum
Frontibus adversis componere?”
The definition of religion which has passed current for centuries,
making it to consist of a determinate and specified allegiance of man
to his Maker, is contradicted by the views advanced in Mr. Bixby’s
book, and therefore the few only, whose opinions are equally
unsettled, can accept his conclusions. There is something so unreal
and shadowy in his estimate of religion that one is at a loss to see
thoroughly into what he means by it, and consequently incapable of
appreciating all that his conclusions are intended to embody.
“Religious truth,” he says, “(theologians and preachers defending the
old beliefs have maintained) belongs to another realm from ordinary
kinds of truth. It is not to be tried by the understanding. It is not
to be brought to the bar of common sense, but it is to be discerned by
the inner soul, and its evidence found in the soul’s satisfaction in
it.” If this be Mr. Bixby’s estimate of the value of the evidence on
which religious truth reposes, he must have had in view, as the ideal
of all dogmatic religion, the utterances of some strong-lunged
preacher at a camp-meeting. No theologian of the Catholic nor of the
approximating sects ever thought for a moment that religion is not to
be tried by the understanding nor brought to the bar of common sense.
The evidences of revealed religion are based upon reason, which,
closely scrutinizing these, is compelled to admit the claims of the
Scriptures and the church, just as it is obliged to admit the truths
of geometry. It is true that individual dogmas are not the
subject-matter of purely rational investigation, but they appeal to
our reason just as strongly through the evident infallibility of the
authority which submits them to our belief. Mr. Bixby, we fear, either
misapprehends plain things or is given to misrepresenting.
Objectively, all truths resemble each other in that they are
true――_i.e._, eternal, immutable, and necessary; subjectively, for us,
those truths which we can discern with the eye of reason pertain to
the natural order, and to the supernatural order those whose guarantee
depends on the revealed word of God. It is evident that in the logical
order, the natural precedes and underlies the supernatural, and that,
with respect to the evidence on which both repose, it must be tried by
the understanding, and that searchingly, and cannot escape the bar of
common sense. “Truth,” says the author of _An Essay on a Philosophy of
Literature_, “is independent of man. The power is his to discover,
develop, and apply it; but he cannot create it. That belongs to the
Infinite Intelligence alone. He it is who creates it and who creates
the light of our reason by which to perceive it.” Truth, therefore,
must be consistent with itself; and it is the province of every
individual truth to borrow lustre from, and shed radiance on, each
sister truth, and not to detract from and obstruct it. This is the
logic of the schools――nay, it is the logic of Hamilton, Mansel, Baden
Powell, and Faraday, whom Bixby charges with dividing the field of
truth into two separate portions: one the province of knowledge, where
science holds sway; the other the province of belief, where religion
has her throne. Then truth may be divided against itself, and to this
effect must we interpret the writings of the distinguished
philosophers mentioned. We doubt not that, for logic’s sake, these
scholars would all indignantly repudiate this charge which places them
in an absurd and uncourted position. Pity ’tis Mr. Bixby did not
attempt by a citation to substantiate his charge. He does not fail,
however, to draw his accustomed inference. “Now,” he says, “by taking
this mode of defending itself against the incursions of modern
science, the church has aided much in spreading suspicion of the
certainty of its cherished doctrines.” Then modern science does make
incursions against the church, which is perfectly right, but the
church is debarred the right of repelling them. A burglar may break
into our house, and we are not at liberty to resist his ingress by
means of the nearest weapon at hand, but we should preach him a homily
on the impropriety of his conduct.
But he is brave enough in this: that not an inkling or a wrinkle of
his too transparent sophistry disturbs him. Immediately after he says
(p. 72): “Bishops like he [_sic_] of London may exhort the modern
inquirer as eloquently as they please to throw away doubt as they
would a bombshell; but it serves only to make the investigator more
suspicious of the validity of religion.” Then is it not proper, Mr.
Bixby, to throw away doubt? If not so, it must by all means be better
to entertain doubt, so that a state of doubt ought to be our normal
intellectual condition. Just in proportion as we entertain doubt may
we be less suspicious of the validity of religion; but the moment we
think of discarding it suspicions grow up in our minds! Verily, this
kind of logic is perplexing. We admire the devout spirit which Mr.
Bixby everywhere exhibits, but when it is paraded at the expense of
true religion, and in a spirit calculated to lead astray the unwary,
we must enter our protest against it. On page 222 he says:
“And religion needs not only to accept the corrections and
recognize the coadjutorship of science in disclosing the
ways of God, but it should engraft into itself, I believe,
more of the scientific spirit. Instead of aiming to defend
systems already established [!], and to bolster up foregone
conclusions, it should go simply with inquiring mind to the
eternal facts.”
And this passes current for reasoning! We write without bitterness of
heart, but in the spirit which prompted Juvenal to say:
“Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.”
Religion must borrow all from science, accept her criterion from
science, see that she admit nothing but what the scientific plummet is
capable of sounding, and reject all that does not conform to the
square and compass of this arbitrary mistress. “Established systems”
and “foregone conclusions” must be sacrificed at the beck of a
scientific clique, and meek religion must sit awaiting crumbs from
their table. Surely, had the great author of the apology for the
Christian religion anticipated that an apology with such intent would
be subsequently offered, he would have bestowed a different title on
his famous work. But Mr. Bixby goes farther when he actually breaks
down the barriers which have ever been supposed to divide science from
religion. On page 223 he says:
“Thus religion is capable of being made a genuine science,
and it will never, I believe, maintain the purity, attain
the stability and accuracy, reach unto the depth and breadth
of truth which is within the demands of its grand mission
unto mankind, until it thus weds science to itself.”
This might not give offence if viewed as from the pen of a sophomore;
but from a teacher――a philosopher! The passage jumbles science and
religion inextricably together; it virtually identifies them, and yet
pretends to hold them apart. The idea that religion is capable of
being made a genuine science must sound oddly in the ears of those who
have been taught to regard religion as the science of sciences, their
queen, mistress, and guide. But, according to Mr. Bixby, religion is
in the lowly position still of being a handmaiden to her proud
sisters, with the possible prospect at some time of being elevated to
their queenly plane.
In his chapters on the “Faiths of Science” and “The Claim of Science”
Mr. Bixby very adroitly brings into contrast the arrogant
aggressiveness of scientism with its own haltings, weaknesses, and
vacillations, and we deem these two chapters to be really valuable
contributions to the fast-swelling literature concerning the dispute
between religion and scientism. They are inoperative of effect, so far
as Mr. Bixby’s notion of religion is concerned, but they clearly prove
that science is fully amenable to the charge of taking much for
granted, of postulating much, of believing in the mysterious and
inexplicable――the very charges it flippantly prefers against
Christianity. Experience and observation have been the watchwords of
science since the days of Locke, and the whole system of Scotch
philosophy as taught by Reid, Stewart, Brown, and Hamilton in the
past, and Bain to-day, rests on the results of those two procedures.
The supersensible finds no room in this system, and is relegated to
the domain of the unknowable, the unthinkable. Says Büchner: “Those
who talk of a creative power which is said to have produced the world
out of nothing are ignorant of the first and most simple principle
founded upon experience and the contemplation of nature. How could a
power have existed not manifested in material substance, but governing
it arbitrarily according to individual views?” Herbert Spencer calls
supersensible conceptions “pseudo-ideas,” “symbolic conceptions of the
illegitimate order.” Virchow says he “knows only bodies and their
qualities; what is beyond he terms transcendental, and he considers
transcendentalism an aberration of the human mind.” And so with the
majority of the modern school of scientism. They deem nothing
demonstrable but what responds to their tests of truth, to chemical or
physico-chemical modes of investigation. For this reason physiologists
reject the notion of soul as a distinct substance in man, for it
cannot be investigated according to the methods known to physiology;
and yet, with glaring inconsistency, these men admit as the very basis
of experience and observation what outlies the range and limit of the
senses.
The advocates of the germ theory of disease have neither felt, seen,
nor heard one of those minute spores. “We have,” says Prof. Tyndall,
“particles that defy both the microscope and the balance, which do not
darken the air, and which, nevertheless, exist in multitudes sufficient
to reduce to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole, the sands upon
the sea-shore.” So, also, Mr. Lewes, in his _Philosophy of Aristotle_,
writes: “The fundamental ideas of modern science are as transcendental
as any of the axioms in ancient philosophy.” With such admissions from
the leading men of the modern school, how can scientists contend that
they limit their acceptance of truth to those facts which experience
proves, and that, using a strict induction, they build their laws and
systems on these alone? It is evident that they make freer use of
hypotheses than did the scholastics. Nor does it avail them to attempt
the distinction suggested by Mr. Lewes between metaphysical and
metempirical knowledge. The aim of this distinction is to relieve
scientism from the charges brought against metaphysical doctrines on
the ground that, as they transcend the senses, they necessarily elude
the grasp of the human mind. Now, the metempirical knowledge of Mr.
Lewes is just as elusive of our grasp, since it does not come within
the scope of the senses; and all the objections, however unfounded,
which these scholars have alleged against metaphysics and the science
of the immaterial, hold good against any knowledge which is not the
direct outcome of the senses. Surely the new doctrine of the
correlation and conservation of force pertains to the supersensible
order fully as much as the doctrine of a spiritual soul. Nay, it deals
in the obscure and transcendental more, a great deal, than the
scholastic doctrine of first matter and substantial form. The
advocates of this theory have adopted a nomenclature which repeats the
very errors on account of which modern scholastics have rejected the
peripatetic doctrine of matter and form. They identify all things
under the title of force, and deem motion, light, heat, and
electricity as so many modes of force constantly interchanging. They
thus confound identity with distinction, and ignore the nature of
change. Every change supposes a term from which, a term into which,
and the subject of both; now, those who identify all force deny the
subject of change, for that from which becomes into which in all its
essentials, so that heat becomes light, and yet does not, according to
the neo-terminologists, lose its identity. We have therefore the
anomaly of a thing remaining the same and becoming something else at
the same time. All this confusion arises from the ignorance of
metaphysics in which modern men of science glory. They declare light
to be a force, and no two of them are agreed as to the meaning of the
word. They declare that all forces are correlated, and nowhere do we
find given by them the meaning of the term relation. Now, the
scholastics give no fewer than six different modes of relation, and
the modern school has not given us even a definition of one. And yet
these are the contemners of metaphysics and scholasticism, the men who
aspire to be leaders of thought. They raise their structure on a basis
of supposition, and declaim against the credulity of those who admit
aught but facts of the sensible order. Their science is confused
because of the vagueness of their speech and its great lack of fixity.
Herbert Spencer discourses with more learning than lucidity concerning
those great problems which the church solved centuries ago, and which
she has so formulated by the aid of a fixed and coherent vocabulary
that mere children can see her meaning. Mr. Spencer defines evolution
to be “a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a
definite coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations
and integrations.” This certainly pertains to the supersensible order,
and in more senses than one. No wonder that such utterances are made
the butt of witticisms. Thus, the Rev. Mr. Kirkman, in his _Philosophy
without Assumption_, amusingly parodies the above definition
of Herbert Spencer: “Evolution is a change from a nohowish untalkaboutable
all-alikeness to a somehowish and in-general-talkaboutable
not-all-alikeness by continuous somethingelseifications and
sticktogetherations.”
And as for mistakes, commend us to science. Every new edition of
Darwin contains corrections of previous errors, and Huxley has quite
recently modified his views on evolution. But this is freedom of
thought, just as a consistent and abiding belief which precludes the
possibility of change or error is denominated by these same neoterists
superstition and reaction. Mr. Bixby has well exhibited the
fluctuations and errors of modern science――which is about all he has
satisfactorily accomplished――in his _Similarities of Physical and
Religious Knowledge_.
[184] _Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge._ By
James Thompson Bixby. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
MARCH 21, 1869.
What a day, dearest! At High Mass the Passion was sung as in the
Sistine Chapel. What memories it awoke within me! It was wonderfully
beautiful, and every word found an echo in my heart. O flowery Easter!
the children’s festival, how I loved formerly to see its return. It
was spring, bright days, verdure and flowers; but this year we have a
sort of recommencement of winter instead of spring; for some days we
have had snow and stormy gales, which have made it sometimes
impossible to go out.
René has been reading us a beautiful fragment of the _Monks of the
West_ on religious vocations; Gertrude had suggested this reading. My
mother wept, and I envied the heavenly calm of the happy Gertrude.
The beautiful new-born has quite the air of a seraph; he is so fair,
rosy, and silent. Adrien will be his godfather, and the honor of
godmother, dear Kate, will devolve upon your Georgina. “This little
last one,” Johanna said to me, “shall be quite your own, dear sister!”
How good they all are! Brothers and sisters so united and happy
together! The baptism is deferred, that it may take place in Brittany,
and we shall have Margaret. How I love this beautiful little soul over
which I shall have sacred rights!
Berthe regrets her Mad, whom Thérèse misses sadly.
22d.――The Père Meillier preaches the retreat――two sermons a day. This
morning upon the retreat itself: “I will lead her into the wilderness,
and there will I speak to her heart. Perfection, according to St.
Bernard, is an ardent zeal always to be advancing. During this retreat
God desires to _soften_, _detach_, and _fix_ our heart. We must be
converted. Conversion is turning again to God. The means of conversion
are time, grace, and will. The time God gives us; he himself says
this: ‘Behold, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of
salvation.’ Grace――this is given to us in superabundance. The will
must come from ourselves; St. Bernard says that this will must be
constant, courageous, and sometimes heroic.” He ended by exhorting us
“not to resist God, who is standing at the door of our heart, who
knocks and waits”; and faithfully to follow this retreat. “I know
neither the day nor the hour, but there will be a moment in which God
will speak to you; and beware, Christian souls, lest Jesus pass by and
return no more!” At three o’clock on tepidity, its causes and its
remedy, the whole very practical and very holy.
The same agreement as last year between René and me. Little Alix
accompanied me on a visit to the worthy _Mr. Crossman_, as the
children call him. Finding him more calm than usual while I was
dressing his leg, I was inwardly congratulating myself, when an
energetic oath, and a sudden movement more energetic still, repulsed
and overthrew me: and a scene of anger followed, which made Alix
tremble like a rose-leaf in a storm, and I tried in vain to appease
the sick man. What is to be done to-morrow? God will help me.
23d.――Letters. Marianne is anxious. Picciola eats nothing and scarcely
sleeps. “It is my belief that she is home-sick.” Anna is constantly
improving in health, and the doctor forbids them to go away. Oh! how I
fear the future. Marcella is radiant: “Dear Georgina, how grateful I
am to this warm sun, and the vivifying breeze which Anna breathes in
with delight! No more fever, no more pallor; not that her cheeks are
rosy――my darling would need rouge for that――but her whiteness is
_living_, and I like her thus. But what should we have done here
without Lucy and Picciola and this kind Edouard? What gratitude my
heart cherishes towards yours for this arrangement!”
Mistress Annah says that Edith will be completely cured when we see
her again. Mary and Ellen are much beloved in the village.
Margaret shudders at the slightest indisposition of her baby. O these
cradles, these dear cradles!
This evening at the piano I thought of Picciola, whom my love has made
mine, and was singing this plaintive entreaty, which Edouard last year
repeated with so much feeling:
“Reploie, enfant, tes ailes de colombe,
Sous ma caresse, ange, ouvre tes beaux yeux;
Si tu savais comme est froide la tombe!
Va, le bonheur n’habite pas qu’aux Cieux!
Pourquoi sitôt vouloir quitter la terre?
Dans le Ciel même est-il rien d’aussi doux
Qué les baisers dont te couvre ta mère
En te berçant, le soir, sur ses genoux?”[185]
Adrien joined me, and, in a voice more thrilling, harmonious, and
touching than ever, he sang the succeeding strophes. I accompanied
without seeing; strange lights passed before my eyes, and when he sang:
“Mais Dieu fut sourd: la fleur était éclose.
… Un ange aux rayons d’or
Un soir, dit on, cueillit la frêle rose,
Puis avec elle au Ciel reprit l’essor!”[186]
I burst into tears with such an explosion of despair that Adrien was
alarmed. Kate, could it be possible that God would not leave us this
child, almost worshipped as she is? “How susceptible you are, dear
little sister!” “Oh! it is nothing”; and I went to my room. I opened a
book, just at these words of M. Landriot: “You suffer; the hand of
Christ alone is sufficiently light and yet powerful to heal the wounds
of your soul.”
Instruction this morning on the besetting sin, which must be
extirpated, and against which we must fight with a firm and determined
will; at three o’clock, first on susceptibility, and then on piety.
“Christian piety is a religious sentiment and a devoted zeal for
everything which regards the glory of God, our own interests, and the
good of our brethren.”
I had prayed so much to ask for some relief to my sick man that my
visit passed off very well. I was alone, for fear of any misadventure.
_Mr. Crossman_ consented to some reading, and his daughters answered
to the recitation of the Rosary. This man is an enigma to me. I have
sent him the doctor.
24th.――Instruction on discouragement, for which the remedies are
mistrust of self and confidence in God. “Do you fear a creature?” said
a saint. “Flee from him. Do you fear God? Throw yourself into his
arms.” This evening, on the Sacrament of Penance――the dispositions
that one ought to bring to it; the conduct requisite with regard to
it: first, a great faith, a sincere humility, a spirit of reparation;
secondly, to know how to pray and reflect, to speak, to listen, to be
silent, to thank, and to remember. These sermons are essentially
practical and such as one is glad to hear at least once in one’s life.
The Père Meillier is truly a discerner of souls; he speaks of them
with wonderful insight.
“Your sick man is half mad, madame!” At this agreeable announcement I
hurried away to the poor man, who appeared to be touched by the
constancy of my visits. I have been so happy as to get him to make his
confession whilst he is still in possession of some gleams of
intelligence. The mother is no longer able to leave her bed. The
eldest child is sixteen years old; everything depends on her, and the
dear soul loves God. My Kate will follow with pleasure the account of
my week; besides, I talk confidentially to none but her. My mother
never leaves Johanna, Gertrude is given to silence, Berthe is gone
out; no news to-day of the exiles.
25th.――Thérèse, Marguerite, and Alix have given themselves up to me
for the day. We have seen fifteen chapels; at dawn we accompanied the
Blessed Sacrament to the poor family, where the two sick people
received the Bread of the valiant and strong, the Bread of angels, the
Bread of wayfarers, the Bread of the children of God. At three
o’clock, sermon on the visit to the Blessed Sacrament. “To make this
visit is a proof of faith, of understanding, and of affection.” This
evening heard the magnificent singing of the _Stabat Mater_ and a
sermon on the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
Letters from Brittany――the _Saint of the coast_: “I believe that my
departure is near, and that you must not delay, dear friends, if you
would give me the consolation of hearing those whom I love pray by my
bedside!” My mother is much impressed. What is to be done? René says
it is for Adrien to decide. “I think it is especially Georgina whom
our saint asks for.” “It is so,” replied my mother. “René and Georgina
shall go on Monday.” As every one approves of this, it will be so, I
suppose. Death again!
Marcella writes――kind and pleasing details. And Picciola? O my God!
thou who on this day didst give to us the greatest pledge of love,
thou who hast loved us even to the end, hear my prayer! What a night
is this, and fraught with what memories! At this hour was that
discourse uttered at the Last Supper, and the Eucharistic Passover
instituted, which will be our strength and consolation even to our
last day!
26th.――“Very strange are often the destinies of men and the decrees of
God. With some the thread of life snaps, even though it be woven of
pure gold and shining silk; with others suffering and sorrow cannot
succeed in breaking the dark thread which they pass through their
cruel hands.” I read this after having heard the unfortunate wife of
my sick man complain that she had been “forgotten by death.”
Twice made the Way of the Cross, was present at the Offices, heard
three sermons: this morning on our Lord’s sufferings; at three o’clock
on the Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross; this evening the Passion,
our Saviour’s sufferings in his mind, his heart, and his body.
27th.――Meditation on contrition and satisfaction; conference on the
love of God. O love! This is the subject above all others which
dilates the soul, illuminates and fills it. Who will grant that I may
love perfectly?
Marianne mentions a slight improvement in the general state of
Picciola, who does not complain, allows herself to be taken care of,
and is as much as ever like an angel. I am alone in the preparation of
_surprises_, or, at least, in their purchase. Berthe and Gertrude have
worked with me. I am impatient for Monday. Supposing _the saint_
should fly away without waiting for us!
28th.――_Alleluia_, dear sister! Oh! what a delicious awaking. The
singing of the _Alleluia_ by René long before the dawn, then all the
greetings after the Mass of Communion, and the joy of the little
girls, and the delight of the good _abbé_, upon whom were showered
_surprises_, and Johanna’s joy at seeing me do honor to the first
_Alleluia_ of my godson! O the beautiful, beautiful day! And our poor,
and Benoni, and High Mass followed by the Papal Benediction, Vespers,
sermon: “He is risen!” “We find proofs of our Saviour’s resurrection
in our faith and in our works.” Benediction ended about six o’clock.
Long and charming _gazette_ from Edouard. The doctor has fixed the
return for the 3d of May. Thus they will be on their way home in a
month. May God bring them back to us! Dearest, I am sending to the
post; pray, pray, pray! Send us your good angel, and have a Mass said
at Notre Dame des Victoires for our saint. It seems to me that I am
going to be present at the death of a sister. How I should like you to
have known her. René joins me in every line I am writing; my mother
sends you her blessing. All, together and individually, send you their
greetings. Christ is risen. _Alleluia!_
APRIL 3, 1869.
Dear Kate, she is here still, living, smiling, always amiable, always
holy, notwithstanding her weakness. “I think that at your prayer God
has renewed the miracle wrought by Elias for the widow of Sarepta; for
the oil of my lamp must have been exhausted long ago.” We speak of God
and of the poor, her two last affections. She has not left to the last
moment the disposal of her goods. Her old castle goes to a distant
relation who bears her name, her whole fortune goes to relieve the
distressed, and she leaves to us her works of art――a curious and
remarkable collection made by her father, and which it was not her
wish should pass into the hands of the indifferent. O Kate! souls like
hers should live always upon earth for its edification.
René is writing to you; I enclose also a letter from Marcella.
God guard you, dearest sister!
APRIL 5, 1869.
It was true, the oil of the lamp was exhausted. What a good life and
what a holy death! “Open the windows, if you please. Oh! what
harmonies. What a beautiful procession! What a splendid crown! Adieu,
and thank you! Jesus! Heaven!” And this was all. It was yesterday.
The day before I entreated our saint to ask of God that he would leave
us Picciola. “Will he do so? There was heaven in the look of that
child on the day of her First Communion! Dear Georgina, love above all
the good pleasure of God!” I write to you from the side of this bed
converted into a chapel. The earthly covering is there. I have shed no
tears; my soul is in a state of joy such as I never before
experienced. The _saint_ had said to me: “If I am happy, I will cause
you to feel it!” We have written to the relative and to the other
friends. I shall not send this letter until the day after to-morrow.
_April 7._――All is over. The burial vault has received the coffin, the
friends are gone away again, the relation, an eccentric personage, is
preparing to do the same, and so also must we. I could have almost
wished to remain again to meditate, in this chapel where our saint has
so often prayed, on the latest teachings which escaped her dying lips.
The relative authorizes us to take away the “gallery” whenever we like
to do so; even adding, with a certain politeness, that we might look
upon this dwelling as our own.
They are waiting for us at home, and I am wishing for news from
Hyeres. Quick! we are going to retraverse our Brittany and return to
our Penates.
Adieu for a little time, dear sister!
APRIL 12, 1869.
What haste we have had to make in order to be here at Orleans in time
for the golden wedding of Pius IX.! Magnificent Mass at St. Pierre du
Martroi. The interior of the ancient church disappeared beneath
hangings of velvet; above the altar shone the triple-crowned tiara.
The Abbé La Grange said the Mass and made a beautiful address:
“Believe in the church, in her divine constitution, in her divine
mission, in her splendid and incontestable immortality.” Admirable and
elevating singing――the _Tu es Petrus_ and some fine strophes for the
occasion; then High Mass at the cathedral, also richly adorned and
resplendent, with a multitude of people. There again was heavenly
singing――a remarkable _Sanctus_, and, after the Mass, the _Te Deum_,
that immortal hymn of thanksgiving. Sermon, procession, benediction.
At six o’clock we came out of Sainte-Croix. What a day! How I love
these splendors of the divine worship, this harmony of souls, these
hymns, the fragrant incense, all this grand and admirable _ensemble_
which Christianity alone can offer!
You may imagine the reception we met with on reaching home, and with
what interest our account was listened to. The news is encouraging
from all directions, I hope, I hope! When I think of the sadnesses of
this world and all the bitternesses of life, I say with St. Stanislaus
Kostka: “I am not born for present things, but future.” How much there
is that is consoling in this thought!
My poor old _Crossman_ is suffering greatly, and his wife is at the
point of death. Tell me, dear Kate, how is it that I see so many dead?
Let us rather speak of life and its expansion; let us speak of Karl,
whose kind and fraternal pages reached me this morning. How he longs
for the priesthood! What a thirst he has for souls! Already in desire
he springs on unknown shores, and even goes so far as to dream of
martyrdom. O holy ecstasies of love! What joy it must be to conquer
the infidel, and to receive these disinherited ones to the table of
the Lord! “The love of one alone sheds itself upon all the beings who
dwell by his side, ennobles them, and gives them understanding and
strength――unrivalled and precious gifts which no other power in the
world would have been able to bestow.”
The Abbé Baunard has written the _Life of the Apostle St. John_. A
large heart, a lively faith, and great talents are needed in order to
write the life of a saint; and as the author of whom I speak has all
these, his work must be admirable. The introduction appeared in the
_Annals_: “It is a book of piety. I address it to Christians and to
priests――the priesthood has no higher personification than this
apostle; to virgins――John was a virgin; to mothers――he merited to be
given as a son to the Mother of God; to the young――he was the youngest
of the disciples; to the aged――this is the appellation he gives
himself in his Epistles; to contemplative souls――he was on Thabor; to
those in affliction――he was on Calvary; to all who desire to love
their brethren in God――charity can have no fairer ideal than the
friend of Jesus.”
Good-night, dearest; my eyes are closing.
APRIL 18, 1869.
Dear Kate, a _requiem_! I have just been to pray by those two
death-beds――for both are dead, piously and tranquilly; he asking my
pardon for his fits of anger, and she praying for her children. I have
promised to take charge of the latter; so behold me the mother of six
children! René always approves. But we cannot abandon these dear young
creatures to take their chance in this great town, and my mother
advises that they should be sent into Brittany, where the Sisters will
find them useful employment. I want your opinion, dear Kate; they
belong in some measure to you also, since it is to your pious lessons
that I owe my love for the blessing of the poor.
Gertrude yesterday showed me a letter from a friend asking prayers:
“My Uncle Amédée is dead from an attack of apoplexy. It is fearful to
say and to think of. Was his soul ready? O these unforeseen strokes of
death! how terrible they are. Extreme Unction was all that could be
given him. My aunt was in a pitiable state, throwing herself upon the
corpse, speaking to it, … finding it impossible to realize that death
had come between her and her happiness, and that he whom she so loved
will answer her no more! I have a feeling of trust that at the last
moment a ray of mercy and love may have illuminated his soul. No, it
is not possible that our God, always good, always a Father, will not
open his heaven to these poor fathers of earth who have given up to
him the best part of themselves, the soul of their soul――the child who
should close their eyes!”
This departed father gave to God his only daughter――entered, like
Hélène, into Carmel. How necessary is faith under trials such as
these! The young wife who wrote these lines is the intimate friend of
Hélène, and it was her marriage that I mentioned to you two years ago.
Can it be? Two years ago already!
Long drive with René into the country.
Dear sister, let us love God!
APRIL 26, 1869.
Adrien has lent me Rusbrock the admirable. Thanks for pointing it out
to me, dear Kate. How beautiful is this loftiness! It is like a Sinai.
I read a few lines, and then close my eyes and let my mind ruminate
upon this teaching. Oh! how favored is France to possess writers so
great. Alas! that so many of these should be on the side of evil, and
that the readers should be so numerous of the myriads of impious works
which fear not to display themselves in the light of day!
What do you say of the enthusiasm of Catholics for the Jubilee of the
incomparable Pius IX.? Is it not of good augury for the Council? I am
thirsting for Rome, but we shall not pass the winter there, as you
hoped we should; my mother could not return thither without
indescribable suffering. It was in the Catholic fatherland that René’s
father felt the first approach of the illness which was prematurely to
carry him off, and he died at Pisa. The violence of my mother’s grief
was such as to make her friends despair of consoling her, or even of
preserving her life. God calmed the anguish of this broken heart, but
it would be imprudent to expose her to fresh emotion. She loves Italy,
and listens when I speak of it, but she never speaks of it herself.
This dear mother, so affectionate and so loved, yesterday made me a
present of a delightful volume: _La Maison_ (“The House”), by M. de
Ségur. It is poetry――charming, Christian poetry――which makes the tears
come into one’s eyes. _The House_――a title full of promise!
“Quel ciel valut jamais le ciel qui nous vit naître?
Ce toit, ce nid chéri, ce paternel foyer,
Qu’on aima, tout petit, avant de rien connaître,
Et que jamais, au loin, rien ne fait oublier?”[187]
There are pages in this book which you would not be able to read
without a certain emotion. It is the history of _Sabine_, a Nun of the
Visitation. Adrien read us this exquisite little poem; my mother and I
wept, Gertrude looked at the crucifix, and René at the portrait of
Hélène. A poignant sorrow seemed to sigh in the voice of Adrien.
My godson is charming. The choice of his name is left to me. As he was
born on the 19th of March, he has a right to the name of Joseph. I
should very much like to call him Guy――a pretty Breton name. Say,
Kate, if this would not be nice: Marie-Joseph-Anne-Adrien-Yves-Guy?
Adieu, beloved sister!
APRIL 30, 1869.
The exiles return to-morrow, dear Kate. What overpowering joy, and yet
what dread! If this winter’s absence should not have cured our
invalids! O my God! I give up my will to thee. I am just come in from
Notre Dame des Miracles: I shall melt away in prayers. Thérèse smiles
like the angels. Alix and Marguérite have bought flowers for their
friends. A hundred times a day I enter Marcella’s room to see that
nothing is wanting there. How worldly I am with my agitations!
Since you approve, my godson will be _Guy_. How beautiful the little
angel is, and how I shall enjoy showing him to-morrow! My mother
continues to spoil me. I have just discovered a mysterious parcel on
my dressing-table; it contains the history of St. John and the life of
Madame Elizabeth, by M. de Beauchesne. What a pleasant surprise!
Do you know Mgr. Dupanloup will make the panegyric? He is going to
Domrémy, there to inspire himself with the memories of Joan of Arc.
Several bishops will be present at the festival of the 8th of May.
Nothing is said at present about our departure, but I am burning to
see you, dear Kate.
My _six children_ will go with us into Brittany. I make them long and
frequent visits.
Edouard’s latest _gazette_ quoted the following fragment from Alphonse
Karr, which is easily to be explained by the frivolity of the times:
“If a very beautiful dress were invented――a dress of fairy-like
splendor, but which might only be worn in going to execution――there
are women to be found who would quarrel with each other to wear this
dress.” Do you believe this, dearest? Raoul declares it to be certain.
Adrien and René have a better opinion of us.
Margaret wishes she were _farsighted_ enough to see as far as
here――the dear, inquisitive one! She has been spending three days with
Edith, and speaks to me warmly of my home――“Georgina’s house.” Ah!
yes, home, home――the terrestrial Paradise, and, as a poet has said,
“The urn into which the heart pours itself.”
_May 1._――It cost me something to end my letter before the arrival:
they are here, dear Kate, all cured, as far as I can perceive. O the
pleasure of expecting them! Then the cries of joy; the questions,
crossing each other; the petulant Lucy bounding up the stairs to
embrace my mother first of all; the emotion of Marcella on showing me
her child well and, the doctor says, “out of danger,” and my tears on
the brow of Picciola! How we had missed them!
The day has passed away like a dream. I hasten to send this to the
post, that you may thank God with us. _Laus Deo_ always and for ever!
Love from all to my Kate.
MAY 4, 1869.
Have returned to my former pleasant way of life with Marcella, my true
sister; but the shadow is still there. The doctor said to Marianne:
“Be very careful of this beautiful child; I do not answer for her
chest!” It is as if I had heard a funeral knell. She is so smiling and
pretty, this “little saint of the good God,” as she was called in the
south. Yesterday, as I watched her playing with Guy, Berthe said
to me: “Don’t you perceive something extraordinary about
Madeleine――something that is not of this world?” I turned pale; had
she also a presentiment? Picciola advanced towards us, and we said no
more; but this morning the dear innocent said: “Would you believe,
mamma, that I have still gone on growing?” “In wisdom, I will answer
for it,” declared Adrien. “O uncle! you are jesting. I mean in
height.” “You are growing too much, darling,” answered Berthe; “you
must let yourself be taken care of, and kiss me.” The poor mother, I
fear, is aware.… Oh! pray with me, Kate. Just listen to this
revelation made to me by Marianne: “For certain, madame, there is
something extraordinary in this; never a complaint, and yet she must
suffer, the dear darling, the doctor assured me. When I questioned her
one day when she was paler than usual, she answered: ‘O Marianne! on
the contrary, it is well, very well!’ and she looked up to heaven.”
What do you think about it, dear Kate? The words of the _Saint of the
sea-shore_ are always sounding in my ears. Oh! that God may spare her
to us, this flower of innocence and purity. She has resumed her
studies. Her memory is marvellous; she is first in every branch of
instruction. I love her more dearly than ever; it is settled that her
hour of manual occupation shall be passed in my room. I have not yet
confided my fears to Marcella; I leave her to her happiness.
“Un malheur partagé ne peut nous secourir.
Car on souffre surtout dans ceux qu’on voit souffrir.”
Hélène has written to her mother. One might be reading St. Teresa.
Gertrude is worthy of such a daughter. I have spoken to you of the way
in which she despoils herself; this self-spoliation is now as complete
as it can be. Her room has the aspect of a cell. I must appear very
worldly to her, with my fondness for beautiful things. I have felt
tempted to ask her this, but have resisted the temptation. Would you
believe that she has made a _vow_ not to see again either her sons or
her daughter? “There is too much for nature in these meetings!” What
energy, and this with a so great tenderness of heart!
Let us love each other, dear Kate!
MAY 10, 1869.
What rejoicings, dearest! On the 7th the magnificent torchlight
procession, the illumination with Bengal lights, which never succeeded
so well; the interior of the city resplendent with lights; the
assembled bishops blessing the multitudes――what a fine spectacle! Mgr.
de Bonnechose, Mgr. de la Tour-d’Auvergne, Mgr. Guibert, Mgr. Meignan,
Mgr. Gignoux, Mgr. Foulon, Mgr. de Las Cases, Mgr. La Carrière, Mgr.
Pie, etc., etc.――it was splendid! On the 8th, the panegyric, which I
send you, in order that you may judge of it better than from my
account. For two hours, Monseigneur held his auditory under the charm
of his words; he showed us the saint in the young girl, in the
warrior-maiden, and in the victim. Then the procession. On the 9th,
grand festival at Sainte-Croix――anniversary of the dedication of this
cathedral. On that memorable day, when the bishop raised his hand to
give the blessing, a mysterious hand appeared, blessing also, since
which time the arms of the chapter have been a cross surmounted by a
hand surrounded by rays. This celestial hand is also painted on the
vaulted roof above the altar, and I had often wondered what it meant.
I am no longer surprised at the attraction I feel towards
Sainte-Croix. God loves to be worshipped there. Mgr. de Bourges
officiated at High Mass, and also at Vespers. He is singularly
majestic. People were crushing each other to see him. The ceremonies
were too magnificent ever to be forgotten; it is impossible to imagine
anything like them. Oh! what joy to be there, all together, mingled in
this assembly of brethren.
What month can be more pleasing to our hearts than this month of May,
gathering into itself, as it does, the most delightful festivals? It
seems to me that with the passing breeze a thousand memories revive
within my soul: my childhood, which devotion to the Blessed Virgin
clothed in so much poetry; this beloved month, when my mother used to
assemble us every evening, with the village girls, to pray and sing;
the flowers which we had valiantly _conquered_ or _begged_, and whose
fragrance filled the oratory; the symbolic tapers; we ourselves quiet
and recollected, but so light-hearted that an unknown word in what we
were singing would make us laugh to ourselves; the sun shedding floods
of gold on this charming scene, playing over the white Madonna, on the
lilacs and roses, on the golden locks and the brown, on the rosaries
and blue ribbons. How far off is that time!
Read with the children the journeys of Captain Hatteras. Truly, there
is something to be gleaned everywhere, if only one knows how to see
it. Only imagine! in the midst of these adventurous men there is a
worthy doctor, Clawbonny, always doing the things which are most
disagreeable to himself. Why was he not a Catholic? Nothing would then
have been wanting to him; while this book is cold――cold as the North
Pole.
Picciola is always pale. I proposed to Berthe to take her to Paris.
“Do you think there may be danger?” and her voice trembled. What was I
to answer? I have a conviction that she is mortally affected, and
nothing can do away with this conviction. My answer was, “I think it
would be as well to consult some one there.” I am to take her with me,
therefore, and you will see this angel before she departs to heaven.
All about her is heavenly. She is a sunbeam, a luminous flower, a
living soul; and this blessing has been lent us for a day!
Margaret will be in Brittany about the 24th of June. My mother speaks
of leaving towards the end of the month. I want to give you a
fortnight; I need a large provision of courage. Anna is charming,
wonderfully stronger: it is like a miracle.
Let us pray, dear Kate――I do so long for her to live!
MAY 19, 1869.
One word only, after nine days, my dear! Get for me fifty Masses said
at Notre Dame des Victoires. The poor have been occupying me during
all this time. René has asked me to be his secretary, in order that
some important business may be the more promptly despatched; and it is
so great a happiness to me to oblige him.
We go to Cléry to-morrow, weather permitting.
Tell me still to hope, dear Kate!
MAY 26, 1869.
Mistress Annah is truly the most devoted soul I know. Mary and Ellen
have had the measles, and she alone has nursed them. Edith has an
attack on the chest――not very serious, happily――caught in the exercise
of charity; and it is again our dear old friend who is at her bedside.
Lizzy writes me word of all this. Little Isa is pretty and good; the
_saint_ Isa is always singing her _Te Deum_.
René gave me a new book yesterday: _Elizabeth Seton, and the
Beginnings of the Catholic Church in the United States_, by Mme. de
Barberey. I have glanced through it, and find it admirable. I shall
speak of it to you again.
We shall be in Paris on the 1st of June――René, Marcella, Picciola,
Anna, and I. Rejoice, dear Kate! Moreover, there is some thought of
our staying in Paris for the winter, and it is possibly an almost
eternal adieu that we are about to bid Orleans. Johanna wishes to be
nearer Arthur. You may well suppose that I make every effort to
incline the balance in this direction; but my mother says sadly:
“Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof: it is useless to plan so
much beforehand.” It is an affection of youth――projects reaching out
of sight, illusions, dreams, as if life were to last for ever!
Picciola is always calm. I often surprise her looking up to heaven,
and lately I heard her say: “How happy it must be on high!” Oh! the
_Saint of the sea-coast_ was right: there is something of heaven in
this child! Hope――hope ever!
Raoul, Berthe, and Thérèse start to-morrow with arms and baggage.
Johanna and her household will follow shortly after. Long live
Brittany! Mme. Swetchine used to say: “What evil can happen to him who
knows that God does everything, and who loves beforehand all that God
does?” When, Kate, shall I attain to this? That noble woman said
again: “Our tears are the beverage which, with the bread of the Word,
suffices to our daily necessities: our tears shed into the bosom of
God. What should we be without them? It is, at the same time, the
baptismal water of sorrow and the regenerating stream. Happy they who
weep; happy when the Lord looks upon them through their streaming
eyes; happy when his hand dries their tears!”
Kate dearest, my soul unites itself to yours, seeking strength to
support this trial, if it is to be imposed upon me. And I shall not be
the only one who suffers. I read yesterday these words, which seem
made for me: “Do not loosen too much the reins from this strong and
yet impassioned little heart; affections are sweet, but you know what
Pascal says: ‘We shall die alone.’” When men fail us, as sooner or
later they surely will, what matter? God remains to us. There is truly
within us a source of mysterious sadness which makes us realize,
perhaps better than any other reason, our condition as exiles. When
life is sad and oppressive, repose uncertain――when happiness appears
impossible――we weep, were it even over the happiness of others, and
love to prostrate ourselves before the cross with this admirable
prayer of Mme. Swetchine on our lips: “My God, I throw myself, body
and soul, blindly at thy feet!”
Dear Kate, may God and the holy angels guide us to you! My mother
would like to see you, but she grows weaker in health; walking
fatigues her. How I love you, my beloved sister! When, then, will
heaven come for us all? How sweet it would be to go thither together!
Death would lose its horror, if there were in it no more separation.
Good-by for the present, soon to embrace you, my Kate!
JUNE 18, 1869.
I am, dear Kate, in all the joy of expectation; only two days, and
Margaret will arrive. O human life, full of separations and of
meetings again! Dearest, I feel you present with me, and you know
whether I have not need of this. The sight of Picciola tortures me.
These words of the medical celebrity are ever resounding in my ears:
“An inexplicable malady, strange, nameless, without remedy!” Oh! let
us supplicate Heaven――so young, so fair, so beloved!
Her increasing weakness has become evident to all, and everybody
attributes it to a too rapid growth. No more study, no more any
exciting occupation. She lets it be so, always smiling, giving herself
to all, but reserving for her mother and for me the depth of her
heart――a treasure which we are never weary of contemplating. Kate, I
have the conviction that in asking the health of this child I am
asking a miracle; but will not the love of Mary grant it me?
The baptism is for the 24th. Unite yourself with us, dearest.
JUNE 21, 1869.
Margaret sends you a most affectionate greeting. What a delight to
possess her! The baby is of dazzling freshness; Lord William is crazy
about him. What a happy household! We shall keep them, I hope, all the
summer. Marcella makes the delight, the joy, and the union of our
interior. “Are you not afraid that she may leave you?” This question
of Margaret’s greatly surprised me. “But why?” I asked. “Well, I do
not know; she might marry, for instance.” What an idea! What do you
say to it, dear Kate? Is this another dark speck on my horizon?
We shall make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the _Saint of the
sea-coast_. Margaret almost worships Brittany. Why does she not settle
here entirely? Our poor received her with rejoicings. Her generous
hand is always open. She has given me fresh news of the _châlet_.
Edith is well; Mistress Annah is in her element, lavish of her time
and strength. Lizzy is expecting a second treasure. The saintly Isa
overflows with happiness, and her pretty little namesake has truly
been given by God as the angel of consolation.
Bossuet has called friendship “A covenant of two souls who unite
together to love God.” What a name, dear Kate, to give to this
sentiment, which binds together all our souls here, and yours with
them, in one and the same affection? Nothing, alas! is more rare than
terrestrial happiness, and thus at each stroke of death I bow my head;
it is an expiation! Nothing could be more pure and sweet and full of
enchantment than our existence, were it not that the mourning of the
heart too frequently came to obscure it.
Picciola is weaving a garland of corn-flowers near my writing-table.
Her waxen whiteness renders her almost transparent. How often I ask
her, “Do you suffer at all?” and her answer is, “Oh! so little, so
little!” We must not speak of it, for fear of alarming my mother. She
does not cough, she has no fever. What has she? Gertrude shares my
fears, and agrees with me that there is some mystery in this. What?
Who will tell it us? Raoul and Berthe take every care of her, caress
her.
Adieu, dear Kate!
JUNE 25, 1869.
A brilliant baptism――something quite fairy-like, and which our Bretons
will long remember. The old _curé_ shed tears when he poured the holy
water on the brow of the new Christian. Ah! my God, may he be thine
for ever.
Margaret was beaming with pleasure at our all being together again.
Her beauty exceeds all description, and eclipses that of all other
women. Happily, our Bretonnes do not know what it is to be jealous.
There was a ball, dearest――a grand ball――and the pretty feet of
Thérèse and Anna still dance at the remembrance of it. Picciola was
also there, whiter than her dress, with her loving gaze upon her
mother. Oh! I do not deceive myself, Kate――death advances! I felt it
yesterday. It was after the dinner; the guests were talking, and Mad
quietly disappeared. I hastened to her room and found her kneeling on
her _prie-Dieu_. “What ails you, dearest?” “Nothing, aunt; the noise
wearies me; I want God.” These words moved the very depths of my soul.
Why, at this tender age, such aspirations towards the infinite, so
many tears at the holy altar, such love of suffering? Blind and
cowardly creature that I am, I do not wish this child to be an angel!
Pray, dear Kate, ask strength for me! I have finished reading
_Elizabeth Seton_. She is the Saint Chantal of America. This work is
at the same time, in my opinion, very superior to that of the Abbé
Bougaud because of the incomparable charm of the heroine. With that,
it is another Alexandrine de la Ferronays. It seems as if I had had a
vision: so much youth, innocence, love, and misfortune; Providence
wonderfully directing this holy soul; these astonishing conversions
and vocations taking place in America; the apostolic and eminent men;
the events, so varied, from the Lazaretto of Leghorn to the valley of
Emmittsburg. Oh! how wonderful is God in his elect. Fancy, dear Kate:
a Protestant lady goes to Leghorn with her husband, who is in a
decline. They are detained for a long time at the Lazaretto. Oh! you
should read these pages. Elizabeth saw her William die in sight of
that land which he had trusted would cure him! And she blessed God for
all! A widow with five children, she quitted Italy after having had a
perception of the _truth_; arrived at New York, she became a Catholic.
Her family abandoned her. She opened a school, and, after many trials
heroically borne, she founded a convent of Daughters of Charity.
Become a religious, two of her children died in her arms. O these
deaths!――the sweet little Rebecca saying: “In heaven I shall offend
God no more! I shall sin no more, mamma――I shall sin no more!” It is
beautiful, all of it――beautiful! Thus will Picciola die, alas!
JULY 2, 1869.
Anniversary of the First Communion of the _Three Graces_. We have
observed it as a solemn festival: general Communion, Benediction,
_largesses_ to the poor.
Write to me often thus, dear Kate. Your letter set me afloat again. I
was nearly stranded. Oh! yes, God is good, a thousand times good, even
in those things which we unjustly call his severities. Well, and what
matters life? I say this, but an hour hence what shall I say? Human
misery! It is the weight of the body which holds us back; we are too
material, we live too much by the senses. _Sursum corda!_ Would, Kate,
that my life were a _sursum corda_ continually!
Besides, can our angelic invalid make us think of anything but heaven?
Her state is really inexplicable. The doctor at Hyères thought that
the chest was affected, but we are assured that this is not the case.
To all her mother’s questions Mad invariably answers: “I am not quite
well――that is all; don’t be uneasy, dearest mother.” But day after day
she grows more transparent, more delicate; and in watching her the
same idea struck Gertrude and myself: she resembles the _Angel
spreading his Wings_ painted by Marcella. To console myself, I read
the most beautiful of books,――the Gospel and the admirable
_Imitation_. Dear Kate, tell me again to look up to heaven!
Madame Bourdon has written some noble pages upon Lamartine. Would you
like to have the flower of them? “Never, perhaps, did any name of man
or any human destiny, pass through more varied phases than the name of
Lamartine, or than the destiny of this poet, who lived long only to
see the better how inconstant is earthly glory, and how quickly fade
the palms awarded by men. Forty years ago the name of Lamartine
expressed an ideal of poetry, purity, and sublime aspirations;
eighteen years later the name of Lamartine personified the
Revolution――moderate, perhaps noble, but always alarming to thoughtful
minds and believing hearts. From the date of this epoch a shadow fell
on the brightness of this name; poverty with its humiliations, old age
with its feebleness, isolation engendered by political enmities,
overwhelmed the poet and the tribune. He drank long draughts from the
cup of bitterness. Now the cloud rises, and over the tomb of
Saint-Point burst forth praises and applause, the regrets so long
denied to the unfortunate man, the genius broken down beneath the
troubles of life. But before man had returned God was there. He had
purified, pardoned, comforted, and lulled to sleep on his divine bosom
that poet’s brow which never should have known affronts.” “From the
past of him who was a traveller, tribune, and statesman, the poet will
remain after all the rest; and when our time shall have become
history, Alphonse de Lamartine will take his place among sad and noble
figures, beneath Homer and Dante, side by side with Tasso and
Camoëns.”
Do you remember the beautiful verses by Elise Moreau on the death of
Julia?
“Moi, je sais la douleur, inconsolable père,
Je suis jeune, et pourtant j’ai déjà bien pleuré.”[188]
How we shall miss this exquisite creature, too perfect for this world!
O Kate! how I love her. She goes to God with so much candor,
simplicity, and boldness――with the _effrontery of love_, as Father
Faber expresses it. O powerlessness of affection! O weakness of that
which ought to be most strong! O nothingness of all that is
ourselves――to be able to do nothing, nothing, but offer barren desires
and longings for those we love!
How right you are to remind me of the old proverb: _Lock the door of
your heart_. I ought to open it to God alone; but this is perfection,
and I am far from that.
Love me, dear Kate!
JULY 12, 1869.
The Prince de Valori has just published the _Letters of a Believer_
(_Lettres d’un Croyant_). It is admirable. The last is on St. Peter’s
at Rome: “This is the sole temple worthy of the Eternal; this is the
marvel of all the marvels of art; this the monumental miracle of the
faith, the miracle of Christian genius, the apotheosis of the
transformation of stone into a _chef-d’œuvre_, into grandeur,
elevation, and harmony, at the breathing of Bramante, of Raphael, of
Michael Angelo, of Carlo Maderno, and of the Bernini. This, this is
St. Peter’s of Rome, Paradise in miniature, the concentration of all
that one can dream of grand and sublime; the incomparable mosaic in
which is found all that is worthy of admiration in the temples and
museums of the universe; the New Jerusalem, made of lapis-lazuli,
jasper, porphyry, gold, silver, and precious stones; a city of altars
and sanctuaries, of domes and canopies; a blessed city, whose streets
are of precious marbles, where streams of holy water flow, where the
air one breathes is myrrh and incense, where is the King enthroned on
the altars, and for his footstool the tomb of the apostles.
“St. Peter’s at Rome!――the greatest work of human architecture, before
which Solomon’s Temple, Saint Sophia, Versailles, the Alhambra,
Westminster, are mere nothings; monument of glory and immensity, in
which there is neither fault nor defect; where Providence has willed
that each of the great artists who wrought there should correct his
predecessor, down to Carlo Maderno, who had the signal honor of
rectifying Michael Angelo.”
Picciola is fading away, gently, gently, without one complaint. Who
would have imagined that this healthy blossom would have faded away so
soon? Her voice is feeble――feeble as a distant harp; but what
eloquence there is in her look! Yesterday I had left her alone for a
few moments with my beautiful godson; on coming back I stopped at the
partly-open door. She was rocking the little darling on her knees, and
saying: “Look at me well, little Cousin Guy, because soon I shall go
away to the land from which you came. Before the leaves fall Madeleine
will go away, but you at least, my little Guy――you will not weep for
my departure. And I shall be the happiest!”
This morning I wanted to curl her beautiful hair. “You love me too
much, dear aunt; but I also love you very much. When I am no longer
here, you will love Alix instead, who is so pretty and sweet when she
raises herself on tiptoe to try and kiss you.” She said this simply
and seriously, and, as a tear fell from my eyes, she added: “Then you
do not wish me to speak to you of my death, that I may console you for
my going away? But remember that the good God will let me see you from
Paradise, and that I shall pray to him for you and for my kind Uncle
René!”
Oh! how weak I am, dear Kate. Pray for me!
JULY 18, 1869.
Adrien read to us yesterday an appreciation of the works of Rossini by
a poet――Méry. Picciola had laid her head on my knee and seemed to
sleep. I have mentioned to you Adrien’s talent as a reader. He was
reading the following passage: “In this _Stabat_ Rossini has sung the
graces of the Redemption, the joys of hope, the beams from the gate of
heaven, opened by the Blood shed on Golgotha; he has scattered over
this page of desolation all the flowers of the celestial garden, all
the garlands of Sharon, all the vistas of the Promised Land; he has
been mindful of that great Christian expression of St. Augustine,
‘Death is life’; he has written his divine elegy in the _Campo Santo_
of Pisa, where the tombs are bathed in azure, crowned with lilies, and
smiling in the sun. And now, after so many works accomplished,
posterity will not ask whether Rossini could have done more; it will
regard that which he has done as the most marvellous work of human
genius.” Here the sweet little Mad raised herself up, her eyes beaming
with a deep joy. Since then she has been frequently repeating, “Death
is life!” Kate, Fénelon was right when he said that “nothing is more
sweet than God, when we are worthy to feel it.”
Margaret is charming in amiability. But what a difference between last
summer and this! We still make parties to go on expeditions, but
always with some pious end――pilgrimages, when we pray for our beloved
sick one. Gertrude comforts me in the same way that you do, dear Kate.
I _see_, I _know_, I understand that God wills it thus. But the time
passes away. Mme. Swetchine wrote: “Time is the riches of the
Christian; time is his misery, time is earth; time is heaven, since it
can gain heaven. Time is the fleeting moment; time is eternity, since
it can merit eternity; and it is time which endangers eternity. At
once an obstacle and a means, it is in an especial manner a two-edged
sword, powerless in itself, and yet the most powerful of auxiliaries,
nothing is done either by it or without it.”
Picciola is like the Angel of Charity among us, it is to her that the
good _curé_ addresses his requests. And how well she knows how to ask!
Oh! what are not children――the treasure of the house! Our casket was
so rich, so resplendent, so precious, and now the fairest pearl, the
purest diamond, is about to be taken from us!
I am writing in haste, my riding-habit over my arm; the horses are
snorting in the court. It is at Mad’s entreaty that we are all going
to a miraculous fountain near a chapel of the Blessed Virgin, at some
little distance off. This child must have extraordinary courage to
struggle as she does against her suffering, and to try to make us
believe that it is nothing. Dear Kate, I repeat with you the _Fiat_ of
Gethsemani, and lovingly embrace you.
JULY 23, 1869.
Margaret appears to have been a prophetess, Kate. I have learnt from
Edouard that the doctor of Hyères was not entirely disinterested in
his devoted attention: he would fain become Anna’s father. Although
the thought of a separation had never occurred to me, I now perceive
from this information the possibility of another future for Marcella.
It seems that she has refused him; but the doctor does not consider
himself beaten, and he has just installed himself in a little manor in
ruins in our neighborhood. He has himself announced this to Edouard,
who finds him very intelligent and likes him much. Marcella turned
pale when Lucy communicated this piece of news to us all this morning:
Anna appeared overjoyed. I do not know what to think.
Our excursion of the 18th led to an unexpected result: we found near
the chapel two little girls in rags, their feet bare and bleeding.
Their story is touching. Being left orphans, they set out on foot from
the furthest part of Cantal to seek hospitality in Brittany from an
uncle, whom on arriving they found was also dead. They have thus been
wandering among the fields of broom, sleeping under trees, and have
not ventured to ask for alms. Picciola embraced them as if they were
sisters, placed them with a farmer’s wife, and has obtained leave from
_grandmother_ to bring them to the _château_. Adrien wrote the same
evening to the priest of their parish. The answer is most
satisfactory: the orphans belong to a great family now decayed, and
are worthy of interest; their pastor was at Rome when the poor
children lost their father and, with the inconsiderateness of youth,
undertook so long a journey. The elder is thirteen, a graceful little
fairy, with piercing eyes; the younger nine, as tall as her sister,
which however, is not saying much. “God sends you them to replace me,”
said Picciola to her mother. Sweet angel! The nest is large enough to
shelter two more doves; stay with us too! Berthe has had the poor
little girls clothed, and has also adopted them. Thérèse and Picciola
undertake to _acclimatize_ them. “This is truly the house of the good
God,” said Marianne.
Margaret loves France. With her, _ennui_ is impossible. And how
quickly she has become attached to Marcella! How well these two
natures suit each other in spite of their contrasts! Dear Kate, this
meeting again is a real blessing; I would fain live always thus. It is
singular that our days are so full of charm, notwithstanding the
uneasiness we are in on Picciola’s account. She also――_she is too dear
to die_! Why cannot we accompany her all together, and pass without
transition from meetings on earth to the meeting again in heaven?
Margaret receives intensely interesting letters from Rome; I should
like to copy them for you. Have I told you how much Gertrude’s
saintliness excites the admiration of our fair lady? Gertrude is
become the guide and adviser of all; even my mother likes to be
directed by her judgment. Her magnificent wardrobe is no longer hers;
robes of silk and velvet――all are made into church vestments:
impossible to imagine a more complete spoliation. She is uniformly
dressed in black woollen; what a contrast to our worldly vanities! Her
rooms, formerly so tasteful and rich, have undergone a radical
transformation. She belongs to a princely family. Her tastes and
habits were in accordance with her rank; her room was hung with
crimson velvet, which is now replaced by a dark-colored paper, whilst
the elegant furniture and superfluities have been banished to make way
for the plainest articles she has been able to find. Adrien has sold
his equipages to found a hospital. “Do you know, nothing would be
easier than to transform this _château_ into a monastery,” Margaret
said to me. “Yes, in proceeding as Gertrude has done.”
Adieu, dear Kate!
TO BE CONTINUED.
[185] “Fold, fold again, my child, thy dove-like wings,
Open thy fair eyes, sweet, ’neath my caress.
Ah! knewest thou the coldness of the tomb!
Nay, happiness dwells only in the skies!
Yet why so soon from earth wouldst thou depart?
Can there, in heav’n itself, be aught more sweet
Than kisses lavished by thy mother’s lips
While rocking thee at eve upon her knees?”
[186] “But God a deaf ear turned; the flower unclosed.
… An angel, clad in golden rays,
One eve, they say, gathered the fragile rose,
And with her took his upward flight to heaven.”
[187] “What sky was ever worth the sky of our
birthplace?――the roof, the cherished nest, the home, dear to
us when quite little, before we knew anything, and which
nothing afar off can ever make us forget?”
[188] I myself am accquainted with sorrow, inconsolable
father. I am young, and yet I have already wept much.
DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.”[189]
There is nothing more unjust than the neglect sometimes shown to
literary performances of the highest merit. But it is not always
difficult to account for this. We have before us a case in point. Here
is a drama on a subject of peculiar interest――a model of classic
elegance, and exhibiting at once a dramatic power and a dignity of
language which have not been surpassed, if equalled, since Shakspere.
Yet this work has been suffered to sink into obscurity. Why? For the
excellent reason, surely, that the Protestant author presents Catholic
claims and personages with a very unusual fairness――a fairness,
moreover, which was specially unacceptable at the date of the book’s
publication, when the excitement over what is called the Oxford
movement was at its height.
After the lapse of nearly thirty years, Sir Aubrey De Vere’s drama has
a new field opened to it, and will not, we trust, be again ignored,
but receive from critics and literary circles its full meed of praise.
The occasion of its fresh appeal to public attention is Tennyson’s
effort on the same subject. We read _Queen Mary_ with our wonted
relish of the melodious English and faultless diction for which
Tennyson stands alone, and with full appreciation of the peculiar
originality, which some call affectation, but to which, as we
consider, he has more than proved his right; but were conscious
throughout of a very undramatic vagueness, and painfully sensible that
a great poet had prostituted his genius to a most unworthy cause. When
we came to _Mary Tudor_, how different our experience! We seemed to be
reading the product of some erudite pen of the Elizabethan era, and
even to be witnessing the play’s performance――the _personæ_ speaking
in the manner of their time, and standing before us as if actually on
the stage. We found, too, the author’s intent very clear――namely, to
draw the characters, both Catholic and Protestant, with perfect
impartiality and in accordance with his information; and this not
merely with a view to show that the right was not all on one side and
the wrong all on the other (which, of course, is perfectly true), but
rather, as it seems to us, to represent both parties as very much the
sport of circumstances, and struggling for what each thought the
truth. There is a mistake here, but an amiable mistake; and whatever
prejudices lie at the bottom of it, they are the prejudices of the
author’s informants, not his own.
He wisely divides his drama into two distinct plays of five acts each;
and we purpose to make each “Part” the subject of a separate article.
Indeed, we feel that, to do the work full justice, we ought to take a
single Act at a time; for every scene will bear minute analysis. As it
is, we must resist the temptation of quoting largely――a necessity the
more to be regretted because the merit of dramatic poetry speaks for
itself far better than the critic can speak for it.
Part I. opens with the death of Edward VI., and ends with the
execution of Jane Grey. The plot is simple――as historical plots have
to be.
In the first Act John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, contrives, with
the help of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to work upon the
conscience of the schoolboy king, till he signs away the throne to the
Lady Jane Grey, wife of Guilford Dudley, Northumberland’s son. Jane
has been nursing Edward, who has come to regard her as a sister. The
Princess Mary, the rightful heir, has been kept from her dying
brother’s side by a device of Dudley’s, who sends for her, indeed, at
the last, but so that she arrives too late to prevent the signing.
Edward attributes her absence, as also Elizabeth’s, to indifference.
Jane Grey protests against the succession being forced upon herself,
but yields sufficient consent to be implicated in the treason.
Northumberland defies Mary’s claim, and the princess has to fly with
her three faithful adherents, Sir Henry Bedingfield, Sir Henry
Jerningham, and Fakenham, her confessor――a character depicted
throughout as not only inoffensive but saintly; indeed, as Mary’s good
genius, though, unhappily, too seldom successful in his influence.
Dudley goes, in the third scene, to visit Courtenaye, Marquis of
Exeter, who is a prisoner in the Tower. The visit is solely for the
purpose of making this man his friend and tool, to what end will
appear later.