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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
------
VOL. XXIII.
APRIL, 1876, TO SEPTEMBER, 1876.
------
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE
9 Warren Street.
1876.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Abroad, How we are Misrepresented, 1
Allies’ Formation of Christendom, 689
American Revolution, Catholics in, 488
Are You My Wife? 22, 186, 316
Assisi, 742
Aude, The Valley of, 640
Brownson, Dr., 366
Catholicity in the United States, Next Phase of, 577
Catholic Church in the United States, The, 1776-1876, 434
Catholics in the American Revolution, 488
Catholic Sunday and Puritan Sabbath, The, 550
Charitas Pirkheimer, 170
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 537
Chillon, The Prisoner of, 857
Church and Liberty, The, 243
Daughter of the Puritans, A, 92
De Vere’s “Thomas à Becket,” 848
Devout Chapel of Notre Dame de Bétharram, The, 335
Dr. Brownson, 366
Easter in St. Peter’s, Rome, 1875, 255
Epigraphy, Sacred, 270
Eternal Years, The, 128, 258, 402, 565
Formation of Christendom, Allies’, 689
French Novel, A, 158
Frenchman’s View of It, A, 453
German Journalism, 289
Gladstone Controversy, Sequel of, 30
Hammond on the Nervous System, 388
Hobbies and their Riders, 413
Home-Rule Movement, Irish, 500, 623
How we are Misrepresented Abroad, 1
Hundred Years Ago, One, 802
Irish Home-Rule Movement, The, 500, 623
Italian Commerce in the Middle Ages, 79
Journey to the Land of Milliards, A, 773
Kiowas and Comanches, A Day among, 837
Labor in Europe and America, 59
Land of Milliards, A Journey to the, 773
Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, 464, 654, 687
Life and Works of Madame Barat, The, 592
Madame Barat, Life and Works of, 592
Miles Standish, Was He a Catholic? 668
Modern English Poetry, 213
More, Sir Thomas, 70, 224, 350, 517, 698, 817
Napoleon I. and Pius VII., 200
Next Phase of Catholicity in the United States, The, 577
Notre Dame de Bétharram, The Devout Chapel of, 335
Notre Dame de Pitié, 116
Novel, A French, 158
Philosophy, Thomistic, 327
Pirkheimer, Charitas, 170
Pius VII. and Napoleon I., 200
Plea for our Grandmothers, A, 421
Poet among the Poets, A, 14
Poetry, Modern English, 213
Poets, Some Forgotten Catholic, 302
Primeval Germans, 47
Prisoner of Chillon, The, 857
Protestant Bishop on Confession, A, 831
Prussia and the Church, 104
Religious Liberty in the United States, The Rise of, 721
Rise of Religious Liberty in the United States, 721
Root of Our Present Evils, The, 145
Sacred Epigraphy, 270
Scanderbeg, 234
Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy, A, 30
Sir Thomas More, 70, 224, 350, 517, 698, 817
Six Sunny Months, 606, 758
Some Forgotten Catholic Poets, 302
Some Odd Ideas, 710
Studio in Rome, A Quaint Old, 781
“Thomas à Becket,” De Vere’s, 848
Thomistic Philosophy, 327
Transcendental Movement in New England, The, 528
Typical Men of America, The, 479
Valley of the Aude, The, 640
Vittoria Colonna, 679
Was Miles Standish a Catholic? 668
Wild Rose of St. Regis, The, 379
Years, Eternal, The, 128, 258, 402, 565
POETRY.
Ascension, The, 377
Centenary of American Liberty, The, 433
Chorus from the “Hecuba,” 653
Consuelo, 816
Forty Hours’ Devotion, 223
Da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” Lines on, 13
Lamartine, From, 424
Lines on Da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” 13
Mysteries, 185
Sacerdos Alter Christus, 58
Sennuccio Mio, 233
Sunshine, 278
Vago Angelletto che Cantanas Vai? 7
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Achsah, 718
Acolyte, The, 286
All Around the Moon, 430
Alzog’s Universal Church History, 279
Are You My Wife? 426
Asperges Me, etc., 430
Authority and Anarchy, 288
Breviarium Romanum, 288
Brief Biographies, 142
British and American Literature, Student’s Hand-book of, 138
Board of Education, Report of, 431
Boston to Washington, 432
Burning Questions, 280
Cantata Catholica, 429
Catechism for Confession and First Communion, 280
Catholic Church and Christian State, 425
Daniel O’Connell, Popular Life of, 143
Eden of Labor, The, 139
Elmwood; or, the Withered Arm, 143
Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 432
Episodes of the Paris Commune in 1871, 431
Explanatio Psalmorum, 287
Faber’s Hymns, 282
Father Segneri’s Sentimenti, 142
Faith and Modern Thought, 718
Five Lectures on the City of Ancient Rome, 142
Flaminia, and other Stories, 431
Geographical Text-Books, Mitchell’s, 860
German Political Leaders, 716
Gertrude Mannering, 285
Glories of the Sacred Heart, The, 576
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, The Life, Letters, and
Table-Talk of, 860
Histoire de Madame Barat, 425
How to Write Letters, 287
Labor, the Eden of, 139
Labor and Capital in England and America, 139
Lectures on the City of Ancient Rome, 142
Life, Letters, and Table-Talk of Benjamin Robert
Haydon, The, 860
Life of Rev. Mother St. Joseph, The, 427
Life of Daniel O’Connell, 143
Little Book of the Holy Child Jesus, 288
Literature for Little Folks, 287
Meditations and Considerations, 719
Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago, 860
Mitchell’s Geographical Text-Books, 860
Newman, Characteristics from the Writings of, 288
New Month of the Sacred Heart, 720
Note to Article on Thomistic Philosophy, 432
Notiones Theologicæ, 720
Outlines of the Religion and Philosophy of Swedenborg, 281
Ordo Divini Officii Recitandi, 141
Pius IX. and his Times, 288
Principia or Basis of Social Science, 428
Principes de la Sagesse, Les, 287
Publications Received, 288
Revolutionary Times, 720
Sancta Sophia, 859
Science and Religion, 720
Scholastic Almanac for 1876, The, 144
Segneri’s Sentimenti, 142
Sermons by Fathers of the Society of Jesus, 141
Story of a Vocation, The, 432
Spectator, The, 144
Spiritualism and Allied Causes, 713
Student’s Hand-book of British and American
Literature, The, 138
Universal Church History, Alzog’s, 279
Voyages dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, 432
Wyndham Family, The, 430
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 133.—APRIL, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
HOW WE ARE MISREPRESENTED ABROAD.
Following the example of older nations, the United States has been
accustomed to keep at foreign courts and capitals certain diplomatic
agents whose presence there seems to be considered necessary for the
protection of our national interests, as well as a pledge of mutual
friendship and comity. Under the more modest title of envoys or
ministers these gentlemen exercise the powers and enjoy the immunities
of ambassadors, and to their supposed wisdom, tact, and judgment are
entrusted all difficult negotiations and the settlement of doubtful
questions of international law.
In view of the increased facilities for communication between
independent governments afforded by railroads and telegraphs, the
general diffusion of accurate geographical and commercial knowledge,
and the almost total disuse of the secret diplomacy of former times,
it has been seriously considered whether this class of rather
expensive officials might not be dispensed with altogether. Many
persons, also, are inclined to believe that the public welfare would
suffer little, if at all, by such a measure, on the principle that bad
or incompetent representatives are worse than none. But if the custom,
as appears probable, is still to be adhered to, it is becoming more
and more apparent that the _personnel_ of our diplomatic corps must
speedily undergo a radical change for the better, if we would not
bring our country into lasting disrepute and contempt in the eyes of
all just and discerning men.
In Europe diplomacy is practically as much a profession as law or
medicine. Its students begin their allotted course at an early age in
the capacity of _attachés_ or secretaries of legation. As they gain in
experience they are moved from one court to another, in regular order
of promotion, until finally, after years of practical observation and
laborious study, they develop into accomplished diplomatists and ripe
statesmen, whose services are invaluable to their country, at home and
abroad. Not so in America; with us the post of minister resident or
envoy extraordinary, is usually the reward of some obscure partisan,
the solace of a disappointed Congressional aspirant, or the asylum in
which superannuated cabinet officers can find dignified obscurity.
Occasionally accomplished international lawyers like the late Mr.
Wheaton or Reverdy Johnson are selected, but these rare cases are in
sad contrast with the generality of persons chosen, every few years,
to represent in foreign countries the power, dignity, and intelligence
of the republic. They are almost invariably men of mediocre ability,
contracted views, and defective education; unaccustomed to any high
degree of social refinement, and sometimes ignorant of the very
language of the country to which they are accredited, while not
necessarily masters of their own. From a perusal of some volumes of
state documents[1] we are led to conclude that the principal duty of
our diplomats is to write long, prosy letters to the Secretary of
State, and to encumber the archives of his office with copious
extracts from foreign newspapers of no value or public interest
whatever. In this mass of correspondence we look in vain for the keen,
accurate criticism of men and manners, or the profound views of
statesmanship which characterized the despatches of the Venetian
ambassadors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the French
and English emissaries of a later period.
On the contrary, we find these letters exhibiting a remarkable
feebleness and crudity of mind, and, where matters relating to
religion or morals are discussed, a purblind prejudice unworthy of any
rational American, but especially reprehensible in an exalted official
of our government. This latter blemish is so prominent, and withal so
repeatedly displayed, as to be painfully suggestive of a desire on the
part of the writers to win, by unworthy means, the favor of the
appointing power at the federal capital. We also observe with regret
that they are accustomed to use, with the greatest deliberation and
upon the slightest occasion, the terms reactionist, Romanist,
ultramontane, and other nicknames—all of which are inaccurate and most
of them offensive—when describing the supporters of the Catholic
Church, who, in various parts of the Christian world, are battling for
the rights of conscience and the freedom of their religion; while
eulogistic adjectives are lavished on all parties and measures, no
matter how tyrannical or arbitrary, provided they are directed against
the church and her priesthood. Just here we may as well ask at the
start, Is there not occupation enough for our diplomatic service in
attending to the great commercial and other secular interests of the
republic, but that they must turn aside to devote their chief
attention to the cultivation and spread of anti-Catholic bigotry?
One of the most glaring examples of this indecent partisanship is to
be found in the records of our diplomatic relations with Mexico—our
nearest neighbor and the most populous of the Spanish-American
republics. Formerly the greatest care was exercised in filling this
important mission, only gentlemen of sound discretion and liberal
views being selected; but since the advent of Mr. Fish as Secretary of
State, this wise precaution has been neglected, and, as a consequence,
we have had at the Mexican capital, for several years, a deputy named
John W. Foster, whose total misapprehension of the duties of his
office is painfully apparent, even from his own reports. It will be
remembered that in 1859 the partisans of Juarez, assembled at Vera
Cruz, proclaimed war on the Catholic Church, abolished all religious
communities, confiscated their property, and expelled their members of
both sexes. They also declared marriage a civil contract, to be
entered into only before a magistrate, abolished religious oaths, and
attempted other “reforms” equally impertinent and detrimental to the
public good. During the short reign of Maximilian these attempts on
the liberty of the church were of course discontinued; but when Juarez
assumed absolute control of the government they were renewed, and on
the 25th of September, 1873, were declared by his successor, Lerdo de
Tejada, a part of the constitution. This effort to make religious
proscription the fundamental law of the republic seemed so judicious
and praiseworthy to Mr. Foster that he immediately transmitted to
Washington a full copy of Lerdo’s proclamation, with the remark:
“Their incorporation into the federal constitution may be regarded as
the crowning act of triumph of the liberal government in its long
contest with the conservative or church party.”
Knowing something of the antecedents of Mr. Foster, we are not
surprised at his sympathy with what may be called the illiberal or
anti-church party; but the reply of our Secretary of State is simply
inexplicable. On October 22 he writes:
“The Mexican government deserves congratulation upon the
adoption of the amendments of its constitution to which the
despatch relates. It may be regarded as a great step in
advance, especially for a republic in name. We have had
ample experience of the advantage of similar measures—an
experience, too, which has fully shown that, while they have
materially contributed to enlarge and secure general freedom
and prosperity, they have by no means tended to weaken the
just interests of religion or the due influence of clergymen
in the body politic.”
How a gentleman of Mr. Fish’s acknowledged intelligence could permit
himself to write such a document is incomprehensible. He knows well
that “we”—meaning the United States—have not had “ample experience,”
or any experience whatever, “of the advantage of similar measures.”
“We” have had our moments of fanaticism, our church-burnings and
convent-sackings, it is true; but neither the municipal law nor the
Constitution has presumed to control the spiritual affairs of the
church in this republic. Our seminaries, colleges, convents, and
schools are yet untouched by the civil magistrate; our priests can
administer the sacraments without the risk of police interference; and
our Sisters of Mercy and Charity can pursue their holy avocations and
not incur the risk of perpetual banishment. What has contributed to
enlarge and to secure to us general freedom and prosperity is not such
anti-Catholic legislation as that upon which Mr. Fish congratulates
the “republic in name,” but the very contrary.
It would seem, however, that some of those entrusted with the highest
offices of state regret this happy condition of things. Evidence crops
out everywhere to strengthen the suspicion that our government, not
finding interests at home of sufficient magnitude to occupy its
attention, is drifting more and more into sympathy with the conspiracy
now prevalent in Europe against the rights of the Catholic Church and
that birthright of every American citizen—freedom of conscience.
But, however unsustained by fact, the moral sympathy thus tendered by
the mouth-piece of our government to the Mexican president was highly
valuable to his party at that juncture. The laws against the clergy
and nuns were exceedingly unpopular with the great mass of the
Mexicans, and it was necessary that the endorsement of the powerful
and prosperous republic of the north should be secured in their favor.
If such measures had “materially contributed to enlarge and secure
general freedom and prosperity” in one country, as Mr. Fish solemnly
asserted, why should they not have the same salutary effect in
another? There is no reason for surprise, therefore, to find that when
the elated Mr. Foster transmitted Mr. Fish’s letter, with his own
felicitations, to Mr. Lafragua, the Mexican Minister of Foreign
Affairs, he was answered in the following complimentary phrase:
“The president of the republic has received with special
gratification the expression of the kind sentiments which
animate the people and government of the United States
respecting the people and government of Mexico, which
sentiments could not have been interpreted by a more
estimable person than your excellency. The president is
sincerely thankful, as well for the cordial congratulation
which his excellency the Secretary of State has had the
kindness to address to you on account of the proclamation of
the amendments to the federal constitution, as for the
ardent wishes which your excellency manifests for the
consolidation of the republican institutions and of peace,
and for the prosperity and material development of the
United Mexican States.”
It will thus be seen that by the wilfulness—or indiscretion, let us
call it—of Mr. Fish “the people and government of the United States”
are credited with a sympathy for, and approval of, what their
conscience, their spirit, and their whole history up to this time
repudiate—a legislation of tyranny and religious proscription. Mr.
Fish—and no man better—knows that such sympathy has no foundation in
the hearts of the American people or in the real policy of its
government. He knows that the people abhor the sentiment expressed in
the “amendments to the federal constitution” of Mexico. What are we to
think, then, of a statesman who, actuated by whatever motive, shows
himself so ready to play fast and loose with the solemn trusts
confided to him? Is the vast power that he must exercise safe in the
hands of one who is ready to veer with every wind that blows,
especially when it blows against Rome? Is this the true expression of
the policy of which we have lately heard so much—“Let the church and
the state be for ever separate”? Our American feelings rise with
indignation against so grave a misrepresentation of the principles and
policy of our government, especially by one so familiar with them as
Mr. Fish. There is no excuse for this.
Mr. Fish’s _faux pas_ was too precious to the anti-Catholic faction
not to receive the widest publicity. “This correspondence,” writes Mr.
Foster to his principal, “was yesterday read in the national Congress
by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by direction of the president of
the republic, and after its reading the president of Congress, in the
name of that body, expressed the gratification with which the assembly
had received the intelligence, and by a vote of Congress the
correspondence was entered upon its journal. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs has also caused its publication in the official newspaper, and
it has appeared in all the periodicals of this capital.”
A year had scarcely passed away, during which every effort had been
made thus to mislead and pervert public opinion, when De Tejada’s
government found itself strong enough to pass additional “laws of
reform” infringing still farther on the rights of conscience. On the
15th of December, 1874, the Sisters of Charity, the last remnant of
the Catholic orders in Mexico, were also rudely expelled from their
institutions and ordered to quit for ever the scenes of their pious
and untiring labors. And in this connection, a curious comment on Mr.
Fish’s congratulatory despatch was offered by the people of the city
of San Francisco. The Sisters expelled by virtue of the constitution
which met with such marked approval from Mr. Fish, were received with
open arms and welcomed by our fellow-citizens in California. Surely,
this was giving the lie direct to Mr. Fish by his own countrymen,
whose conscience naturally revolted from a system of government which,
as its chief claim to the sympathy and fellowship of foreign peoples,
set up its power and willingness to banish from its jurisdiction all
that was purest and holiest. Yet Mexico is as far from “general
freedom and prosperity” as ever, and Messrs. Fish and Foster, the
instigators of this last outrage on humanity, continue to be high and
trusted officials of our freedom-loving republic.
Still, the faction that controls Mexican politics was not content with
constitutional and statutory “reforms.” As long as the heart of the
country remained Catholic its hold on power was feeble and uncertain.
It therefore aimed at nothing less than a general conversion of the
people, at a new Reformation, and selected what it considered the most
fitting instruments for that purpose. These were itinerant Protestant
missionaries of all sects, kindly furnished to order by the Boston
American Board of Missions and the Pacific Theological Seminary of
California, who soon overspread the promised land and began their
labors of conversion. The states of Mexico, Vera Cruz, Guerrero,
Puebla, Jalisco, Hidalgo, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi were
especially favored by their presence, where, from their method of
proceeding, their foul abuse of the religion of the populace, and the
rank blasphemy that characterized their preaching, it was plain that
they considered they had fallen among barbarians and idolaters. Going
from place to place, and surrounded by armed guards, they not only
fulminated the heresy of Protestantism, but scattered broadcast
printed travesties of the Commandments and of the prayers and ritual
of the church, some copies of which they had the hardihood to nail to
the cathedrals and other places of Catholic worship. To make matters
still more offensive, they frequently interspersed their harangues
with laudations of the “liberal” party who patronized them, and direct
attacks on all who opposed its iniquitous policy.
One of those zealots, a Rev. Mr. Stephens, after a nine months’
journey through several towns, found his way to Ahualulco, where,
relying on the countenance of the government officials, he commenced a
series of bitter assaults on Catholicity. A popular tumult was the
result, during which the unfortunate man was killed, March 2, 1874.
When news of this cruel, though not unprovoked, murder reached Mr.
Foster, he waited on the Mexican minister, who informed him that “the
principal assassins and two priests had been arrested, and that a
judge had been despatched to the district with an extra corps of
clerks to ensure a speedy investigation and trial.” This promise was
faithfully and promptly kept, as we find by a despatch dated April 15,
in which the minister says:
“Up to the present date seven of the guilty parties have
been tried and condemned to death, from which sentence they
have appealed to the supreme court. Twelve or fifteen more
persons charged with complicity in the crime are under
arrest awaiting trial, including the _cura_ of the parish of
Ahualulco.”
Yet this summary vengeance, nor even the indignity offered to the
venerable _cura_, who had had no participation whatever in the
disturbance, did not satisfy the insatiable soul of Mr. Foster. From
his subsequent letter to Lafragua, and several despatches to our
government, we infer that the condign punishment of the priest,
innocent or guilty, was to him the most desirable of objects. To
inaugurate the new Reformation by the execution of a Catholic
clergyman appears to have been considered by him as a master-stroke of
policy. But even the Lerdistas were not prepared for so desperate a
step, and Foster was doomed to find his hopes blighted. Alluding to a
conversation with Minister Lafragua in September, he writes to Mr.
Fish, bemoaning his hard fate:
“I thanked him for communicating the intelligence in
relation to the trials of the assassins of Rev. Mr.
Stephens, the receipt of which I had anxiously awaited, but
expressed my disappointment in finding no mention of the
proceedings had in the trial of the _cura_ of Ahualulco, to
whom the published accounts attributed the responsibility of
the assassination.…”
This information, and the fact that the appeal of the seven condemned
persons had not been determined, drew forth one of Mr. Fish’s
unaccountable diplomatic missives. “You may farther inform him
orally,” says our Secretary, alluding to Lafragua, “but
confidentially, if need be, that this must necessarily become an
international affair, unless it shall be satisfactorily disposed of
and without unreasonable delay.” Now, why should the information be
given _orally_ and _confidentially_ if there was not some desire, some
trick, to avoid responsibility for a doubtful act tending to
intimidate a friendly power? and wherefore should the killing of the
man Stephens be made an international affair—_i.e._, a just cause of
war—when so many American citizens had been already murdered in Mexico
with impunity? Foster had repeatedly complained that during the short
time he had been in charge of the legation thirteen “murders of the
most horrid character and revolting to our common civilization” had
been committed on his countrymen, for which there had not been a
single punishment; yet we hear of no intimation of making them
international affairs. Were the lives of these persons, presumably
following legitimate callings, collectively of less value than that of
a mendacious preacher of a gospel of violence?
Emboldened by the words of Mr. Fish, Foster again returned to the
attack in a note to Lafragua, in which he directly, and on his own
responsibility, charges the _cura_ with having been the instigator of
the crime. The first intimation that the _cura_ had had any
participation in exciting the mob against Stephens was contained in a
letter from a brother preacher named Watkins, who was stationed at
Guadalajara, more than sixty miles from the scene of the disturbance.
On this suspicious and slender foundation Foster had been in the habit
of building up a mass of insinuations and charges against the priest,
referring to “general” and “printed” reports as his authority. When
after a searching investigation the _cura_ was honorably discharged,
and the minister again complained to Lafragua, that official replied
rather tartly in the following unequivocal terms:
“In relation to the acquittal of those who were charged with being
instigators of the crime, it is the result of a judicial act, which
has taken place after the due process had been completed for the
investigation of the truth, which is not always in accord with the
prejudices of the public.”
If the minister had added: “and of Mr. Foster and the Board of
Missions,” the sentence would have been more complete. Having failed
to accomplish his grand design—the chastisement of the _cura_—the
ultimate fate of the convicted laymen became a matter of little
importance to our assiduous representative.
Another opportunity soon presented itself for Mr. Foster’s official
interference. On the night of January 26, 1875, a riot occurred in
Acapulco, in which five persons were killed and eleven wounded on both
sides. Of the former, one was claimed to be an American. It appears
that a Rev. M. N. Hutchinson, supported by the United States consul,
J. A. Sutter, and a few native officials, had commenced his
evangelical labors in that city by personally insulting the parish
priest, Father J. P. Nava, and by openly abusing everything considered
holy and venerable by Catholics. This method of preaching Christ’s
Gospel so exasperated the populace that an attack was made on the
building used as a Protestant church, and a street fight, with fatal
results, followed. Hutchinson, the cause of the fray, escaped and
found refuge on board a ship; while Sutter, who seems to have been as
cowardly as he was vicious, threatened to abandon the consulate and
follow his example. As in the case at Ahualulco, the “liberal”
authorities at once arrested the _cura_, but so indignant were the
citizens, and even some of the federal employees, at the act that he
was at once set at liberty.
Here was a rare chance for Mr. Foster to display his reformatory
energy, and on this occasion he had a most efficient associate in the
gallant consul. That truthful gentleman writes to his chief, January
27, three days after the riot:
“All the Indians are under arms, and threaten to attack the
town if the parish priest—who, in my opinion, is the prime
mover of these heinous crimes—should be arrested. So he is
still at large, and laughing, probably, at the impotence of
the authorities.… Everybody in town is afraid of the
Indians, who, incited by a fanatical priest, would
perpetrate the most atrocious crimes.”
All this Mr. Foster believed, or appeared to believe; for we find him
embodying it in his official communications to Lafragua, with some
additional remarks of his own to give the calumny greater point and
force. Supported by the American minister, Sutter now looms up as the
defender of Protestant rights in general. Addressing personages of no
less distinction than the governor of the state and the district
judge, he requests them to “promptly take the necessary measures
within your power to procure the speedy punishment, according to the
law, of the instigators and perpetrators of the atrocious massacre of
Protestants,” etc. There is no limitation here, it will be observed,
to American citizens; the peremptory consul, “in obedience to
instructions received yesterday from the Hon. John W. Foster, envoy
extraordinary, etc.,” had assumed a protectorate over the entire
evangelical body of Acapulco, and felt himself at liberty to insult
the executive and judiciary of the state of Guerrero.
The people of Acapulco, however, differed materially in opinion from
the consul. Not only did they not fear the Indians or regard their
priest as an abettor of riot and murder, but, on the contrary, five or
six hundred of them waited on Governor Alvarez, and, in the name of
the rest, assured him that the disturbance was wholly caused by
Hutchinson and his handful of Protestants, requesting him at the same
time to remove the disturbers from their city, as he had the power to
do under the laws of the state. Even the Minister of Foreign
Affairs—though, like so many of his party, deadly opposed to the
church—could not help but ascribe the riot to something like its
proper cause. Annoyed, doubtless, by the impertinence of Sutter and
the importunities of Foster, he writes to the latter in a vein of
delicate irony:
“The consul in Acapulco cannot be ignorant of the fact that
Protestant worship was a new propaganda among a people who,
unfortunately, have not been able to attain to that degree
of civilization to enable them to accept without aversion
religious tenets which they disown, and it is well known
that the religious sentiment is one of the most sensitive,
and that, when attacked, it is all the more irritable.”
The logical position of the Mexican minister is unassailable. But what
a humiliating predicament for our government to be placed in by her
diplomatists abroad! Such is the natural result of selecting the kind
of men for important posts, or indeed for any posts at all, complained
of at the beginning of the article. It is clear that this Mr. Foster
has missed his vocation. He would be more at home in a Protestant
board of missions, or as a “worker” in “revivals,” than standing
before a people as the representative of the truth, worth, and genius
of a great nation.
Mr. Foster was not satisfied with the explanation. He had lost one
priest, and he was not going to let another slip through his
fingers without a struggle. He reminds Lafragua of Mr. Fish’s
“congratulations,” and appeals to his gratitude. “While it is very
natural that I,” he writes, “as the representative of a government
which has officially congratulated that of Mexico on the
constitutional triumph and recognition of the principles of religious
liberty, should watch with deep interest the practical enforcement of
these principles, I have made the outbreaks of fanatical mobs the
subject of diplomatic intervention only when American citizens have
been assassinated.” But the plea was in vain; even the government of
Lerdo de Tejada dared not molest the _cura_ of Acapulco, who, strong
in his innocence and in the affection of his flock, continued to
exercise the duties of his sacred office, regardless alike of native
“reformers” and officious diplomats. Up to the latest dates Mr. Foster
had not yet caught a _cura_, and the people of Mexico seem as far as
ever from the enjoyment of the blessings of a new Reformation, so
happily and characteristically begun.
The Central American States include Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, each of which holds an undivided fifth
interest in the official attention of Mr. George Williamson, our
worthy minister peripatetic. When not involved in domestic
brawls—which seldom happens—these miniature commonwealths have a habit
of varying the monotony of peaceful life by a descent on one of their
neighbors, and even a civil and a foreign war have been known to rage
at the same time and place. Having such a vivacious people to look
after, the attention of our representative might reasonably be
considered fully occupied; yet we learn that he has ample leisure to
devote himself to theological and educational speculations, and
particularly to the subject of marriage. On this important social
relation he not only becomes eloquent, though occasionally obscure, in
his despatches, but is evidently looked upon as an authority by the
“liberal” party on the Isthmus. Having been asked his opinion by
President Barrios of Guatemala, who contemplated extending civil
marriage to his people, “I replied,” he says, “it would in all
probability soon come; … that in our country we considered the civil
law supreme, and would neither furnish a hierarchy of Romanists nor
Protestants, to assert its sanction was necessary to give validity to
a contract which the law pronounced good.” It may be objected that
this passage is not well constructed; so, in justice not only to the
liberal views, but to the erudition of Mr. Williamson, we quote the
following descriptive extract from a despatch on the condition of the
Central American population:
“Intelligence is more generally diffused; people are slowly
learning republican habits and adopting republican ideas; a
monarchical hierarchy that fostered superstitions, that only
allowed education in a certain direction, and which
‘gathered gear’ unto itself ‘by every wile,’ has been
dethroned; agriculture now has the aid of the numerous
laborers who were employed in the erection of large edifices
for monks and nuns and religious exercises.”
A subsequent communication on the state of public education furnishes
a rather strange commentary on the above:
“The present attempt at organizing a public-school system
is, in my judgment, one of the most laudable acts of the
present government, for which it should be entitled to
credit, whether there be success or failure. My opinion is
that there are too many obstacles to be overcome for the
plan to be successful, and that the government is
undertaking a grave experiment which is likely to create
great dissatisfaction, and may result in revolution. But
having driven out most of the priests and nuns, who were
heretofore the instructors of the people, it seemed
necessary the government should try to supply their place.”
The same latitude of opinion and ill-concealed hostility to the
Catholic Church, the same desire to take advantage of every trifling
circumstance to misrepresent and malign the motives of her supporters,
pervade the correspondence of our other representatives in South
America, almost without exception. Thus Mr. Thomas Russell has no
scruple in lauding the usurping government of Venezuela, which, in
1870, first imprisoned and then banished perpetually the Archbishop of
Caracas and Venezuela, suppressed the seminaries, confiscated the
property of the monasteries, and expelled the nuns. Still less has Mr.
Rumsey Wing in assuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, in
writing about an alleged desecration of a grave in Quito, that the
news “of those outrages on the bodies of Protestants” “would create an
intense feeling not only in my own country but throughout Europe”;
while, having nothing else to send, we suppose, the same officious
gentleman forwards to Washington copies of two decrees of Congress,
one granting a tithe of the church revenues to his Holiness the Pope,
and the other placing Ecuador under the protection of the Sacred
Heart, “to show the intense Catholicism prevailing in this country.”
Then Mr. C. A. Logan, some time of Chili, appears to have interested
himself very much in local politics, and it is not difficult to
discover upon which side his sympathy rests. In a despatch to
Secretary Fish, November 2, 1874, he has the hardihood to charge the
Archbishop of Santiago with bribing congressmen, pending the passage
of a bill for the partial repeal of a penal law against the clergy. He
writes:
“The day arrived for the vote, and a large crowd gathered
about the building, awaiting the result with the most
breathless anxiety; among these was the archbishop himself,
in full clerical robes. Much to the chagrin of the liberals,
a two-third vote was gained by the church party under the
spur and lash of the clericals, and, as it is freely
asserted, by the liberal use of money. The senate is
composed of only twenty members, which is not a large body
to handle, if they take kindly to handling.”
Mr. Francis Thomas, of Lima, goes even farther than his _confrère_,
and deliberately asserts the complicity of the Catholics, as a body,
in the recent attempt to assassinate President Pardo.
“The conspirators,” he says, “had calculated upon the
co-operation of all that class of the population of this
country who have become hostile to the president of Peru on
account of his proceedings, in which high dignitaries of the
Catholic Church were concerned. The congress of Peru at its
last session passed a law forbidding members of the order of
Jesuits to reside within the jurisdiction of Peru. In
violation of this law, members of that order who had been
expelled from other Spanish republics took possession of a
convent in the interior of Peru, and took measures to
organize their society. President Pardo, in conformity to
the law, issued a proclamation requiring them to leave the
country, which has caused some degree of excitement.”
This fact, and the attempts of the government to introduce irreligious
books and periodicals into the schools, were sufficient, in the
opinion of our impartial minister, to provoke the Catholics of Peru to
the foulest crimes.
The Emperor of Brazil, in his open war on the church, also finds an
advocate and eulogist in Mr. Richard Cutts Shannon, the American
_chargé_ at his court, who employs his vicarious pen in justifying the
arrest, trial, and condemnation of the Bishop of Olinda to four years’
imprisonment with hard labor. But he is surpassed by minister James R.
Partridge, who, in alluding to the determined intention of the
government to prosecute to the bitter end the various vicars who were
named to take the place of those successively cast into prison,
emphatically declares: “From present appearances, the ministerial
party are going on and are determined to carry it through. It is to be
hoped that their courage may not fail, neither by reason of the long
list of those who are thus declared ready to become martyrs, nor by
any political move of the ecclesiastical party.”
Such, in brief, are the views of the men sent to represent this
country on American soil. If we turn to Europe—though we may
acknowledge a higher order of ability in our diplomatic agents
there—we discover prejudice as strong and partisanship equally
conspicuous. Referring to the German Empire, we are pained to find so
profound a student of the past as Mr. Bancroft our late minister at
Berlin, so easily deceived in contemporary history. Nothing,
certainly, can be more untrue than the following statement of the
position of affairs in Prussia in 1873:
“The effect of the correspondence [between the Pope and
Emperor William] has been only to increase the popularity
and European reputation of the emperor, and to depress the
influence of the clerical party, thus confirming the
accounts, which I have always given you, that the
ultramontane political influence can never become vitally
dangerous to this empire. The Catholic clergy are obviously
beginning to regret having commenced with the state a
contest in which it is not possible for them to gain the
advantage. The intelligent Catholics themselves for the most
part support the government, and so have received from the
ultramontanes the nickname of state Catholics.”
There is not a single sentence in the above which is not a
misapprehension of facts. How far Mr. Bancroft’s easy assertions and
confident predictions, made scarcely two years ago, have been
justified by the event is a matter that happily needs no inquiry,
while comment on our part would be almost cruel. Mr. Bancroft,
however, was not content with supplying information to the State
Department on matters exclusively pertaining to his mission. His wide
range of vision took in all Europe, past and present. Of the old
Helvetian republic he writes:
“Switzerland shows no sign of receding from its
comprehensive measures against the ultramontane usurpations;
and the spirit and courage of these republicans have
something of the same effect on the population of Germany
that was exercised by their forefathers in the time of the
Reformation.”
And again:
“How widely the movement is extending in Europe is seen by
what is passing in England, where choice has been made of a
ministry disinclined to further concessions to the demands
of the Catholic hierarchy, and where the archbishops of the
Anglican Church are proposing measures to drive all
Romanizing tendencies out of the forms of public worship in
the Establishment. Here in Germany, where the question takes
the form of a conflict between the authority of the state at
home within its own precincts, and the influence of an alien
ecclesiastical power, it is certain that the party of the
state is consolidating its strength; and I see nothing,
either in the history of the country, or in the present
state of public opinion, or the development of public
legislation, that can raise a doubt as to the persistency of
the German government in the course upon which it has
entered.”
What the “comprehensive measures” in Switzerland “against the
ultramontane usurpations” mean readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD already
know. They are simply a rather aggravated form of the Falck laws—a
form so aggravated that it is only within the past year M. Loyson
himself warned the world that the “comprehensive measures against
ultramontane usurpations,” which Mr. Bancroft finds such reasons to
commend, were aimed, through Catholicity, at all Christianity. And yet
a high official of our free government, a man of universal reputation
and great authority in the world of letters, finds in this elaborate
system of proscription and intolerance food for congratulation. One
would suppose from the spirit so plainly animating Mr. Bancroft that
he is a member of the O. A. U., and that he was chosen rather to
represent that delectable society in Berlin than the American
Government. It is to be presumed, from his own despatches, that he
would have our government follow the tyrannical attempt of Prussia and
Switzerland to “stamp out” freedom of conscience. Mr. Bancroft’s
diplomatic experience, under the influence of the court of Prussia,
seems destined to reverse his principles and maxims as an American
historian. He has, we fear, remained too long abroad for the good of
his native truth, character, and sense of right. It is to be hoped
that this baneful influence of foreign courts does not pursue him on
his return to his own country and people.
Mr. John Jay, who formerly acted as our envoy at Vienna, though not so
pronounced or diffusive in his despatches, is not far behind Mr.
Bancroft in expressing his entire concurrence with the restrictive
policy recently adopted by the government of Austria towards the
church; while Mr. George P. Marsh, our representative in Italy, is so
great an admirer of Garibaldi that he is never tired of chanting his
praises in grandiloquent prose. Those familiar with the life of that
notorious bandit will be surprised to learn from so high an authority
as the American minister that “he has never through life encouraged
any appeal to popular passion or any resistance to governments, except
by legal measures or in the way of organized and orderly attempts at
revolution; and, from the moment of his arrival at Rome, he exerted
himself to the utmost to restrain every manifestation of excitement.”
In marked contrast to the unfair and ungenerous spirit displayed in
the despatches of those ministers are the letters from France, Spain,
and England. The stirring political events which occupy the entire
attention of the two former countries leave no room, perhaps, for the
discussion of penal laws and judicial decrees against Catholicity;
while the latter, having carried out Protestantism to its logical
conclusion, and found it a sham, is more inclined to profit by the
blunders and crimes of its neighbors, so as to push its commercial
interests, than to imitate them and begin anew the _rôle_ of
persecutor for conscience’ sake.
In explanation of the erroneous views so frequently put forth by so
many of our diplomatic officials, we are assured that most of those
sent to Mexico and Central and South America have been members of
secret societies, and, having been accustomed to affiliate with the
lodges of those Freemason-ridden countries, have had whatever little
sense of equity they originally possessed perverted by the sophisms of
their new associates. Possibly; but let us consider how much harm may
be done by following such a short-sighted course. All the independent
countries south of us on this continent are largely Catholic, and,
with the exception of Brazil, claim to be republican. They are bound
to us by strong ties, political as well as commercial, and are
naturally inclined to look upon the United States as their exemplar
and guide, and, if need be, their protector. When they shall have
shaken off the incubus of military dictation that now weighs upon
them, and, restoring to the church its rights—as will eventually be
done—have entered on a new career of freedom and material prosperity,
how will they be disposed to feel towards a power which they have
known only through its agents, and those the advocates and supporters
of everything that is illiberal in politics and degrading in polemics?
In Europe the influence of incapable and unworthy representatives is
likely to be even more deleterious to our national character. The
affections of the people of the Old World are strongly inclined toward
the free institutions of the New. But if we continue to permit our
delegated authority to be used only in favor and encouragement of such
enemies of human liberty as the usurper at the Eternal City, the
tyrant at Berlin, and the communists of Geneva, the popular sympathy
born of our protestations of liberality will soon fade away, to give
place to feelings of mistrust, if not of positive aversion.
In calling public attention to the incapacity and perversity of the
majority of our diplomatists—men who do not hesitate to put into their
correspondence with foreign governments, and their private home
despatches, sentiments they dare not utter publicly in the forum or
through the press—we by no means desire to restrict proper expressions
of opinion or limit the just criticisms of the agents of the
Department of State. We only insist that these shall not be indulged
in at the expense of a very large and respectable portion of this
community. Neither do we require that they shall take sides with
Catholics, as such, anywhere, no matter how harsh or unjust may be
their grievances. This country is not Catholic, it is true, neither is
it Protestant; and, indeed, it is questionable if, in any strict
sense, it can be called Christian. But it is a country civilly and
religiously free, by custom, statute, and Constitution, and we have a
right to demand that whoever undertakes to act for it, as part and
parcel of the machinery of our government, among foreigners, shall
represent it as it is, in spirit as well as in fact—the opponent of
all proscription for conscience’ sake, the enemy of tyranny whether
exercised by the mob or the state. Is it not the true policy of our
government to send abroad as representatives of our interests men who,
while they are not hostile to the prevailing religious beliefs of the
country to which they are accredited, are, at the same time, true and
stanch Americans? If such men cannot be found, let us, in the name of
common sense, have none at all. Some minor interests may perhaps
suffer by the omission, but the honor and reputation of the republic
will remain unsullied and unimpaired.
[1] _Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United
States_, etc., for 1874-5.
LINES ON LEONARDO DA VINCI’S “VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS.”
Maternal lady with the virgin grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.
CHARLES LAMB.
A POET AMONG THE POETS.
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly
discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the
field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought
to take. The rule may be summed up in one word—disinterestedness.
Mr. James Russell Lowell[2] has applied Mr. Matthew Arnold’s rule with
rare fidelity in his essays, just published, on Dante, Spenser,
Wordsworth, Milton, and Keats. His estimate of the two greatest of
modern poets, especially the paper on Dante, is calculated to attract
general attention, and to arouse, we apprehend, some acrid sentiment
in a certain class of literary butterflies who are accustomed to sip
or decline according to the theological character of the garden. It
requires considerable courage to place Dante above all his rivals and
salute him as
“The loftiest of poets!”
in an hour when poetry has lost the qualities that made Dante lofty
and Milton grand, and when the epithet “Catholic,” which Dante loved
and Milton hated, has become again a reproach. Lowell’s consideration
of both is characterized by disinterestedness as to time, religion,
politics, and literature; and the sincere student who casts aside his
prejudices, like his hat, when he approaches the temples that enshrine
so much of divinity as God deposited in the souls of the Florentine
and the Puritan, will find it difficult to dissent from the judgment
of Lowell upon their individuality, their inspiration, or their art.
Lowell is peculiarly adapted to the form of literature, semi-critical,
semi-creative, in which he has recently distinguished himself. We
believe his essay on Dante to be the most successfully-accomplished
task which he has yet undertaken; and the cultivated American public
should thank one who has amused and diverted it as well as he has done
for the solid instruction which this volume conveys in a style at once
scholarly, fresh, and refined. Lowell’s mental temperament is
admirably adapted for the mirroring of poets’ minds. Himself a genuine
poet, without ambition above his capacity, his agile fancy discerns
the quicker and appreciates more intensely the imagination of epic
souls; while his critical faculty, naturally acute, has the additional
advantage of a keen sense of humor, which enables him to discover more
readily the incongruous, and is, therefore, an invaluable assistant in
literary discrimination.
It is the trade of criticism to expose blemishes; it is genius in
criticism to appreciate the subject. The journeyman critic of the last
two centuries has been so busy making authors miserable without
felicitating mankind that when we read through an essay like Lowell’s
on Dante, on Wordsworth, or on Spenser, we cheerfully recognize a man
where experience has taught us to look only for an ingenious carper or
spiteful ferret. However, critics are no worse than they used to be.
Swift, who had excellent opportunity of forming an opinion, both in
his own practice and in the observation of that of others, has left
this dramatic picture, the truthfulness of which there is no reason
yet to question: “The malignant deity Criticism dwelt on the top of a
snowy mountain in Nova Zembla; Momus found her extended in her den
upon the spoils of numberless volumes half devoured. At her right hand
sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left,
Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had
torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hoodwinked, and
headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her
children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness,
Pedantry, and Ill-Manners.” Such is reckless and conscienceless
criticism even to this day; and we turn from it, in grateful delight,
to the reverential commentary which Lowell has produced upon one of
the saddest of all human creatures—the great Catholic poet of the
middle ages.
Dante, little understood by those who have the largest title to his
legacies, is, after all, the universal poet—the poet of the soul.
Homer chants the blood-red glories of war, and is the poet of a
period; Virgil charms by the grace of his lines, and is the poet of an
episode; Milton awes with the mighty sweeps of his rhetoric, and is
the poet of the grandiose; Shakspeare astounds with his knowledge of
human nature and enchains with his wit, and is the poet of the
passions; Dante, when read aright, is found to be the poet of the
Soul. The line that divides him from Shakspeare lies between the
subjective and the objective—Shakspeare’s themes are men and women;
Dante’s sole subject is Man—man within himself, as he is related to
God, to religion, to eternity. As Lowell felicitously writes it,
“_Arma virumque cano_; that is the motto of classic song. Dante says,
_Subjectum est homo_, not _vir_—my theme is man, not a man.”
Why, then, do we not read him more and value him as he deserves? For
two reasons: first, the difficulty of adequate translation; next, the
mysterious richness of his thought, whose pearls are not strung across
the door of the lines to warn us, as later poetry so candidly does,
that within there is nothing but barrenness. The proper understanding
of Dante has been a growth, beginning in Italy as soon as he was dead,
extending gradually over Europe, into England, and now westward,
gaining in clearness and glory as time recedes and space enlarges.
Within a century after the poet’s death lectures on his works were
delivered in the churches, and, as soon as the invention of printing
enabled, numerous editions were edited and circulated. The first
translation was into Spanish; then into French; next into German; and
a copy of a Latin translation of the _Divine Comedy_ by a bishop was
made at the request of two English bishops in the early part of the
fifteenth century, and was sent to England. Spenser and Milton were
familiar with the poet’s works, but the first complete English
translation did not appear until 1802. Of the English translations
since then, the most familiar are Cary’s and Longfellow’s; and to this
catalogue Mr. Lowell adds: “A translation of the _Inferno_ into
quatrains by T. W. Parsons ranks with the best for spirit,
truthfulness, and elegance”—praise which will be cordially endorsed by
those who have profited by Mr. Parsons’ labor.
We propose to discuss Dante the man and Mr. Lowell’s estimate of him,
as exhibited in his writings, and shall touch upon the latter only as
they may be necessary to the clearer revelation of their author’s
character. For Dante, like Milton, was not of common mould; in
whatever aspect we view him he proves extraordinary to a degree which
frequently becomes incomprehensible. It is natural to wish to throw
the two under the same light, although the result of the experiment is
only to magnify their points of difference and diminish those of
comparison. The sum of the results appears to be that only in the
accidents of life are they comparable; in the essentials of character,
with a single exception—that of intense faith—they were radically
unlike. Widely apart as their names appear—Dante dying in 1321 and
Milton entering life in 1608—men were engaged during the lives of
both in civil revolution, and each had his own theory of government
and exercised the functions of political power. Both were men of
sorrow, both were unappreciated in their day and generation, and the
light and joy which each experienced emanated from within and supplied
the fire of their genius. The noblest work of each was written in the
gloomiest period of his life. Here the possibility of parallel ends.
There is a close relation—a much closer one than may at first be
suspected—between Dante and the instant condition of American society
and politics. Nearly six hundred years have passed away, and we have
to go back to Dante to learn personal virtue in political life, as
well as religion in social affairs. Lowell has escaped the poison of
the time. He perceives the essence as well as the necessity of virtue,
and fully realizes its absence in our own state.
“Very hateful to his fervid heart and sincere mind would
have been the modern theory which deals with sin as
involuntary error, and by shifting off the fault to the
shoulders of Atavism or those of Society—personified for
purposes of excuse, but escaping into impersonality again
from the grasp of retribution—weakens that sense of personal
responsibility which is the root of self-respect and the
safeguard of character. Dante, indeed, saw clearly enough
that the divine justice did at length overtake society in
the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and
thence of civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his
could not be satisfied with such a tardy and generalized
penalty as this. ‘It is Thou,’ he says sternly, ‘who hast
done this thing, and Thou, not Society, shalt be damned for
it; nay, damned all the worse for this paltry subterfuge.
This is not my judgment, but that of the universal Nature,
from before the beginning of the world.’… He believed in the
righteous use of anger, and that baseness was its legitimate
quarry. He did not think the Tweeds and Fisks, the political
wire-pullers and convention-packers, of his day merely
amusing, and he certainly did think it the duty of an
upright and thoroughly-trained citizen to speak out severely
and unmistakably. He believed firmly, almost fiercely, in a
divine order of the universe, a conception whereof had been
vouchsafed him, and that whatever or whoever hindered or
jostled it, whether wilfully or blindly it mattered not, was
to be got out of the way at all hazards; because obedience
to God’s law, and not making things generally comfortable,
was the highest duty of man, as it was also his only way to
true felicity.… It would be of little consequence to show in
which of two equally selfish and short-sighted parties a man
enrolled himself six hundred years ago; but it is worth
something to know that a man of ambitious temper and violent
passions, aspiring to office in a city of factions, could
rise to a level of principle so far above them all. Dante’s
opinions have life in them still, because they were drawn
from living sources of reflection and experience, because
they were reasoned out from the astronomic laws of history
and ethics, and were not weather-guesses snatched in a
glance at the doubtful political sky of the hour.”
In this Dante strikingly differed from Milton, who was a revengeful
and intensely-bigoted fanatic of his own faction, and he admitted to
his companionship no man, high or low, who presumed to differ from
him. Dante was a politician by principle, placing his country first,
and setting a high value on himself as her servant. Milton was a
politician by bigotry, placing himself first, and setting a high value
on his country because he was her servant. But the manliness of Dante
in demanding that the severe precepts of religion should be inflexibly
applied to political administration in an age whose corruption was
only less shocking than that of our own, is the particular lesson
which this vigorous extract from Lowell conveys. If society in this
era should esteem political wire-pullers, convention-packers, and
politicians who deem patriotism the science of personal exigencies, as
Dante esteemed and treated them, should we be any the worse off? Dante
looked upon a thief as a thief, and the knave who conspired to defraud
the government as fit only to “begone among the other dogs.” Would
there not be a healthier tone in our political affairs if these
classes of criminals were not met, as is usually the case, by justice
daintily gloved and the bandage removed from her eyes, lest she should
make a mistake as to persons?
The inspiration of Dante was strictly religious. So was Milton’s; but
with this distinction: that Dante’s religiousness was real and
beneficent, while Milton’s was unreal and malignant—as Lowell says,
Milton’s “God was a Calvinistic Zeus.”
A brief and succinct analysis of the _Divine Comedy_ will be found
serviceable by those who have not analyzed it for themselves, and at
the same time will make manifest the dependence of Dante’s inspiration
upon Catholic doctrine:
“The poem consists of three parts—Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
Each part is divided into thirty-three cantos, in allusion to the
years of the Saviour’s life; for although the Hell contains
thirty-four, the first canto is merely introductory. In the form
of the verse (triple rhyme) we may find an emblem of the Trinity,
and in the three divisions of the threefold state of man, sin,
grace, and beatitude.… Lapse through sin, mediation, and
redemption—these are the subjects of the three parts of the poem;
or, otherwise stated, intellectual conviction of the result of
sin, typified in Virgil; … moral conversion after repentance, by
divine grace, typified in Beatrice; reconciliation with God, and
actual, blinding vision of him—‘The pure in heart shall see
God.’… The poem is also, in a very intimate sense, an apotheosis
of woman.… Nothing is more wonderful than the power of absorption
and assimilation in this man, who could take up into himself the
world that then was, and reproduce it with such cosmopolitan
truth, to human nature and to his own individuality as to reduce
all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. We
protest, therefore, against the parochial criticism which would
degrade Dante to a mere partisan; which sees in him a Luther
before his time, and would clap the _bonnet rouge_ upon his
heavenly muse.”
Dante proved himself a reformer of the most aggressive kind. The
difference between him and Luther was that Dante endeavored to reform
men by means of the church; Luther endeavored to destroy the church
rather than reform himself. Evils existed within the church, as a part
of society, during the periods of both. Dante helped to correct them
as a conservative; Luther chose, as a radical, to tear the edifice
down. Unlike the temple of Philistia, the church stood, and the Samson
of the sixteenth century fell beneath the ruins of a single column.
No fact in the history of poetry is more striking than the necessity
of religion as a source of inspiration. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
acquire their epic quality from the religion of Greece; gods stalk
about, and Minerva’s shield resounds in the clangor with that of
Achilles. The _Æneid_ would be beautiful without the association of
mythology; but it is mythology which enhances its grace into grandeur.
The Vedas are an expression of the religious aspirations of the
Hindoos. The verse of Boccaccio is pleasing only in proportion as
religion cleansed his pen. Petrarch’s sonnets would never have been
written had not Laura taught him the distinction between pure love, as
the church knows it, and the passions which carried Byron into
hysterics. The Italian epic of the sixteenth century, _Jerusalem
Delivered_, which is held by Hallam to be equal in grace to the
_Æneid_, had the First Crusade for its theme. Would it have been
possible for Milton to have written any poem equal to _Paradise Lost_
out of other than Scriptural materials? Aside from the literary
characteristics and dramatic strength of the plays of Shakspeare, does
not their chief value lie in their correct morality—the morality which
is found nowhere outside Catholic teaching? This is not the place to
discuss the modern decline of poetry. Matthew Arnold’s theory—it is a
general favorite—is that history and boldly-outlined epochs make
poetry; and Lowell says, in his essay on Milton, “It is a high
inspiration to be the neighbor of great events.” But the last two
centuries have been crowded with history; boldly-outlined epochs have
lifted their awful summits in England, in France, in Italy, in the
United States, in Spain. Where are the great poets among the
verse-makers who have been neighbors of these great events, and might
have caught high inspiration from them? Since the Reformation the
moral world has been growing iconoclastic, and there is no poetry in
iconoclasm.
Next to religion, woman has been the great inspiration of poets; but
the modern idea of marriage has shattered the sanctuary walls which
Christianity erected around it; the sacredness of home is invaded, the
oneness of love destroyed—there is no poetry in divorce.
Is not the decline of poetry a very curious, if not a fatal, reply to
the hypothesis of evolution, carried logically into the moral and
intellectual world?
Mr. Lowell completes his essay by a minute examination of Dante’s
thought and style, as exhibited in the _Divine Comedy_; and we can
find space only for the closing period:
“At the Round Table of King Arthur there was left always one
seat empty for him who should accomplish the adventure of
the Holy Grail. It was called the perilous seat, because of
the dangers he would encounter who would win it. In the
company of the epic poets there was a place left for whoever
should embody the Christian idea of a triumphant life,
outwardly all defeat, inwardly victorious; who should make
us partakers in that cup of sorrow in which all are
communicants with Christ. He who should do this would
achieve indeed the perilous seat; for he must combine poesy
with doctrine in such cunning wise that the one lose not its
beauty nor the other its severity—and Dante has done it. As
he takes possession of it we seem to hear the cry he himself
heard when Virgil rejoined the company of great singers:
‘All honor to the loftiest of poets!’”
Mr. Lowell’s Dante is a man divinely inspired and overshadowed by
divinity to the grave itself—a character austere, devoid of humor,
unflinchingly faithful to his conceptions of right whether moral or
political, self-respecting, and believing in his own commission from
God; a mind logical, systematic, and illuminated by Heaven,
consciously developing its marvellous genius in the midst of
contumely; a heart consumed first by human love for Beatrice, and by
it purged and refined out of personality into the love of God and the
proper relative appreciation of all creatures; a sublime human soul,
in brief, transformed from the individual into the universal, and
teaching all men, as it was taught in sorrow and in love, to seek
eternity as the sole object worthy of human effort; and teaching in a
lofty splendor of phrase and successions of exquisite imagery which
continue to astonish posterity and will for ever adorn general
literature.
The essay on Milton is devoted rather to Mr. David Masson than to the
poet. There is nothing to indicate that the critic is in love with
either the poems or the personality of the sublime Puritan who
officiated in the capacity of Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell, and
who devoted himself to epic verse after his services ceased to be
available for the oppression of his fellow-men. Still less is he
enamored of Mr. David Masson as a biographer of Milton, and the jovial
though thoroughly effective manner in which he demonstrates the Scotch
professor’s unfitness for this office adds to his volume a flavor of
pungency which brings back happy recollections of the “Table for
Critics.” Masson is very voluminous and exasperatingly given to remote
and often irrelevant detail; and Macaulay, in extinguishing some of
the literary pretenders of his time, was never more dextrous than
Lowell in this grotesque joust at the Edinburgh professor’s faults,
nor half so witty. Referring to the length of the biography—there are
eight volumes octavo of the _Life_ and _Works_—Lowell says with
perfect gravity: “We envy the secular leisures of Methuselah, and are
thankful that _his_ biography, at least (if written in the same
longeval proportion), is irrecoverably lost to us. What a subject that
would have been for a person of Mr. Masson’s spacious predilections!”
And he goes on to say: “It is plain, from the preface to the second
volume, that Mr. Masson himself has an uneasy consciousness that
something is wrong, and that Milton ought to be more than a mere
incident of his own biography.” Masson, on the other hand, is of
opinion “that, whatever may be thought by a hasty person looking in on
the subject from the outside,” no one can study Milton without being
obliged to study also the history of England, Scotland, and Ireland;
whereupon Lowell retorts that, even for a hasty person, eleven years
is “rather long to have his button held by a biographer ere he begins
his next sentence.”
Masson’s rambling history of the seventeenth century “is interrupted
now and then,” says Lowell, “by an unexpected apparition of Milton,
who, like Paul Pry, just pops in and hopes he does not intrude, to
tell us what _he_ has been doing in the meanwhile.” Blinded by the
dust of old papers which Masson ransacks, to discover that they have
no relation to his hero, the critic compares the ponderous biography
to Allston’s picture of Elijah in the wilderness, “where a good deal
of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like
a conundrum in the landscape, where the very ravens could scarce have
found him out.” This characterization of Edinburgh by Harvard will
certainly inspire suggestion, if it does not awaken hope; but Lowell’s
right to criticise the sedate and prolix gentleman who occupies in the
Scottish metropolis the chair which he himself fills at Cambridge does
not rest, as we have already seen in the essay on Dante, on Susarion’s
faculty of turning the serious and dull into actual comedy.
Like all who have recently written of Milton—with the exception of
Masson—Lowell looks upon him as a being “set apart.” To idealize the
author of _Paradise Lost_ is quite as natural as to idealize Dante,
notwithstanding their relative distances from us; but in the former
case, with Lowell, it is the idealization of admiring awe; in the
latter, of tender and exquisitely appreciative love. He does not
appear to hold Milton in any degree of the personal affection which he
feels for the inspired Florentine, but is constrained to insist that
Masson is disrespectful toward his subject, and that “Milton is the
last man in the world to be slapped on the back with impunity.”
When Lowell writes of Milton’s literary style, although he does it
sparingly, every stroke is a master’s. His estimate of Milton as a man
is calm, judicial, and courageous. “He stands out,” he says, “in
marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of
the civil war, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration,
a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man.” It is the
habit of hurried teachers of our day, who have to teach so many more
things than they know, to exalt Milton
“High on a throne of royal state,”
and swing before him the incense of a senseless and absurd homage. In
our school-days most of us were led to look upon the sightless poet as
a being more than man, if a little less than God. Virtues, as he
understood them, he certainly possessed; but many more virtuous than
he suffered ignominy and death for presuming to exercise the very
liberty which he grandly claimed for himself, but which, we find on
examining his prose, he was dilatory in awarding to others, even in
the abstract. These prose writings are at once curious and monstrous,
and exhibit the real Milton in a true and natural light, even as
_Samson Agonistes_, _Lycidas_, and _Paradise Lost_ manifest his superb
and supreme characteristics as a poet. In prose he wrote as he
thought; in verse he wrote as he could. He was always the rhetorician,
making an art of what men of less genius can display only as the
artificial; but while his poetry is the complete manifestation of his
art, his prose, always written with an obvious and acknowledged
personal purpose, manifests himself. His prose works are already
scarce; the day is not distant when nothing will remain of them but
their ashes, for the types will plead release from perpetuating the
hard, angular, stony reality of a man whom taste, if not instinct,
yearns to withdraw from our painful knowledge of what he was, and veil
him in a radiant mistiness of what we wish he might have been. Nothing
better illustrates the idealism with which the pencil of youth paints
Milton than Macaulay’s essay, written while he was still a boy, but
included with the mature expressions of his manhood. Nothing could
more completely pulverize this roseate estimate than Milton’s own
works in the days when he wrote for time and not for immortality. No
matter what the theme, his prose is always ponderous and polysyllabic,
abounding in magnificent metaphor, violent epithets, arrogant
dogmatism, and personal abuse of those who differed from him, of which
no trace, happily, remains in our day. The higher the man, the coarser
the missile which he hurled at him with a giant’s force. In his reply
to Salmasius he addresses that eminent scholar as “a vain, flashy
man,” and, in the progress of his argument, reminds him that he is
also a knave, a pragmatical coxcomb, a bribed beggar, a whipped dog,
an impotent slave, a renegade, a sacrilegious wretch, a mongrel cur,
an obscure scoundrel, a fearful liar, and a mass of corruption.
He seems to have lacked both consistency and clearness of conviction.
He was apparently incapable of loving woman; he scarcely respected
her; and, in his social theory, awarded the sex a place somewhat below
that which it occupied under the patriarchs, and considerably lower
than that described by Homer as peculiar to the heroic age of Greece.
He obtained coy and pretty Mary Powell from her father in
consideration of so many pounds of the coin of the realm, at a time
when a mortgage had become embarrassing and a daughter was the only
available means of extinguishing it. When that volatile young woman,
shivering in the shadows of a Puritan despot, found courage enough to
leave his roof, Milton was undoubtedly more impressed by her audacity
than grieved by her absence. It was his pride that was hurt; and
notwithstanding that he had previously advocated social views of the
straitest and most conservative kind, he then published his essay on
divorce, which, in amazing egotism, in wealth of classical and
Scriptural allusion, in looseness of morals, and in equality of social
privileges as between man and woman, is as veritable a curiosity as
antiquarians have yet rescued from the monumental mysteries of old
Assyria. In politics and religion he was as unsound and wavering as in
his laws for society. An aristocrat of the most despotic type, he
enthroned learning, and yet permitted his daughters to acquire only
the alphabets, that he might use their senses as his slaves. He
despised them as human beings, and they, in turn, hated and deceived
him, and almost his last words on earth were terrible denunciations of
those whom God intended to illumine his home, soothe his life, and
deliver his whitened head, already aureoled, to
“Dear, beauteous Death.”
For many years—the very best of his life—he lent himself to the
political schemes of Oliver Cromwell, and the violence and coarseness
of his pamphlets made him one of the most conspicuous figures of a
long series of civil storms; yet Lowell is constrained to admit that
“neither in politics, theology, nor social ethics did Milton leave any
distinguishable trace on the thought of his time or in the history of
opinion.” He considered his ideas and inclinations correct and above
appeal, simply because they were John Milton’s. The harshest word
which Lowell says of his prose style is his comparison of a man of
Milton’s personal character, which was without taint, to Martin
Luther, whose writings were a true reflection of their author. Lowell
is very gentle in saying of so noted a plagiarist as Milton: “A true
Attic bee, he made boot on every lip where there was a trace of truly
classic honey.” He did indeed, not in prose only, but in his verse.
But we easily forgive him. There are thieves whom stolen garments more
become than their owners.
[2] _Among my Books._ Second Series.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS
VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EPISODE EXPLAINED.
The night closed in—night, that is so cruel, yet so merciful;
intensifying every pain in the long dark watch, or lulling it in
blessed sleep.
There was very little sleep for Raymond that night, and none at all
for his two nurses. They sat by his bed while the slow hours dragged
on, watching his feverish restlessness, that was occasionally soothed
by broken snatches of rest, thanks to a potion that was administered
at intervals. Franceline’s anxiety gradually returned as she sat there
observing every sound and symptom. She could not but see that there
was something far more serious in this sudden attack than an ordinary
fainting fit. Raymond was so troubled and excited in his sleep that
she almost wished him to awake; and then again she longed for
unconsciousness to soothe his feverish terrors. He clutched her hand;
he could not bear her to move from him. At last the dawn came, and
like a bright-winged angel scattered the darkness and scared away the
ghostly phantoms of the night, and Raymond fell into a slumber long
and deep enough to be refreshing.
Some days passed without bringing any change; but he was no worse,
which, the doctor said, meant that he was better. His condition,
however, continued extremely critical.
It was wonderful both to Angélique and to herself how Franceline bore
up under the strain; for both her mental and physical powers were
severely taxed. She had hardly closed her eyes since her father had
fallen ill; and she took scarcely any food. But anxiety, so long as it
does not utterly break us down, buoys us up.
The few neighbors who were intimate were kind and sympathizing. Lady
Anwyll had driven over and made anxious inquiries, and would gladly be
of use in any way, if she could. Miss Bulpit also came to offer her
services in any way they could be available. Miss Merrywig called
every day. So far Franceline had seen none of them; she was always
with her father when they called, and Angélique would not disturb her
for visitors.
Father Henwick came constantly to inquire, but did not always ask to
see the young girl. Franceline wondered why her father had not before
this expressed a wish to see him; it seemed so natural that such a
wish should have manifested itself the moment Raymond was able to
receive any one. She dared not take the initiative and suggest it, but
she could not help feeling that it would be an immense relief to the
sufferer if he could disburden his mind of the weight that was upon
it, and speak to Father Henwick as to a tried and affectionate friend,
if even he did not as yet seek spiritual help and guidance from him.
It had long since been borne in on Franceline that the horrible
suspicion which had so mysteriously fallen on Raymond was in some way
or other connected with his sudden illness; she brooded over the
thought until it became a fixed idea and haunted her day and night.
How was it that he did not instinctively turn for comfort to the
Source where he was sure to find it? Father Henwick himself must feel
pained and surprised at not having been summoned to the sick-room
before this. Franceline was thinking over it all one morning, sitting
near Raymond’s bedside, when Angélique put in her head and announced
in a loud whisper that M. le Curé, as she dubbed Father Henwick, was
down-stairs, and would be glad if she could speak to him a moment.
Franceline rose softly, and was leaving the room, when her father, who
was not dozing, as she fancied, said:
“Why does he not come up and see me? I should be glad to see him; it
would do me good.”
Father Henwick came up without delay, and Franceline soon made a
pretext for leaving him alone with the invalid. It was with a beating
heart that she closed the door on them and went down-stairs to wait
till she was recalled. She could hear only the full, clear tones of
Father Henwick’s voice at first; after a while these grew lower, and
then she heard the murmur of Raymond’s voice; then there seemed to
follow a silence. She was too agitated to pray in words, but her heart
prayed silently with intense fervor. The conference lasted a full
half-hour, and then Father Henwick’s cheerful voice sounded on the
stairs.
“How do you think he looks, father?” she said, meeting him at the
study door with another question in her eyes that Father Henwick
thought he understood.
“Much better than I expected!” he answered promptly and with a
heartiness of conviction that was music to her ears; “and you will
find that from this out he will improve steadily, and rapidly, I hope,
too.”
A stifled “Thank God!” was Franceline’s answer.
“And now how about you?” said the priest, with something of the old
blunt grumble that was so much more reassuring than the tenderness
called forth by pity. “I heard a very bad account of you this
morning—no sleep, and no food, and no air; you mean to fret yourself
into an illness before your father is up and able to attend on you, do
you? That would be one way of showing your dutiful affection for him.
Humph! Are those the eyes for a young lady to have in her head on a
fine sunny morning like this? Did you go to bed at all last night?”
“Yes, but I could not sleep; I was too anxious, too unhappy.”
“Too unbelieving, too mistrustful. Go up-stairs this minute, you child
of little faith, and lie down and lay your head upon the pillow of
divine Providence, and be asleep in five minutes!”
He left her with this peremptory injunction, and Franceline, with a
lightened heart, went up-stairs determined to obey it. It was as yet,
of course, a matter of pure conjecture what had passed between the
priest and her father; but when, an hour later, after obediently
taking that refreshing sleep on the pillow of divine Providence which
had been commanded her, she came into Raymond’s room, there was a
marked change in his whole demeanor. He had not passed the interval in
the listless apathy that had now become habitual to him. He had made
Angélique bring over a little celestial globe and set it on the bed
for him, and had amused himself with it awhile; and then he had taken
up the book Franceline had left on the chair beside him when she stole
out of the room. It was _The Imitation of Christ_. He was reading it
when she entered, and there was an expression on his features that
made her happier than she had been for a long time. He looked more
peaceful, more life-like than she had seen him for weeks even before
he had fallen ill.
“You are feeling better, petit père?” she said, kissing him, and
taking the dear face between her hands to look into it more closely.
“Yes, my clair de lune, much better,” he replied, with a smile that
had all its wonted sweetness and something of the old brightness. “I
think I shall be able to get down-stairs in a day or two.”
“I see you have been at your old tricks again,” she said, shaking her
finger at him and pointing to the globe; “you know you are forbidden
to do anything that gives you the least fatigue.”
“It was not a fatigue, my little one—it amused me; but I will not do
it again, if you don’t wish it.”
Franceline hugged his head to her cheek, and said she would let him do
anything so long as it amused him.
“I was thinking of you last night, petit père,” she said, making the
globe revolve slowly on its axis; “the sky was so beautiful at twelve
o’clock when I happened to look out of my window that I longed for you
to see it.”
“Ha! Then probably it will be the same to-night,” said Raymond. “I
will keep my curtain drawn, so that I may see it, if it is.”
“Yes; and let the moon keep you awake whether you will or not! I
should like to hear what Angélique would say to that proposal! No; but
I will tell you what we’ll do: I will be on the watch to-night, and if
the stars are like last night I will steal in and see if you are
awake, and if you are I will draw the curtain so that you may see them
from your bed. We shall be like two _savants_ making our
‘observations’ in the night-time, shall we not? And—who knows?—we may
discover a new star!”
Raymond pinched her cheek and laughed gently. His hopes in this
respect were limited by facts—or rather negatives—that Franceline did
not stop to inquire into; she had not gone deeply into the science of
astronomy.
“There is no saying what I might not discover with those bright eyes
of thine for a telescope,” said M. de la Bourbonais.
Angélique rejoiced in her own fashion at the decided turn for the
better that her master had suddenly taken. She saw that he spoke a
good deal during the evening, and ate with a nearer approach to
appetite than he had yet shown; so she settled him for the night, and
went to bed with a lighter heart than for many past nights, and soon
slept soundly.
Franceline did not follow her example. It was not anxiety that kept
her awake, but happiness; she could not bring herself to part with it
so quickly, and lose it for a time in unconsciousness. There was a
presence, too, in the ecstatic silence of the night, that answered to
this sense of joy and appealed to her for responsive watch. Joys are
more intense when we dwell on them in the night-time, because they are
more separate, farther lifted from the jarring discord of our daily
lives, where pain cries around us in so many multiform tongues. It is
as if the world grew wider in spiritual space, and that senses and
fibres, too delicate to vibrate in the glare of daylight, woke up in
the solemn hush when the world of man is out of sight and God comes
nearer to us.
Franceline stood at the window and gazed at the beautiful scene that
spread itself before her. The moon was at her full; the landscape,
diluted in the moonlight, floated in mystic, illimitable space, still
and hushed as if the world were holding its breath to hear the stars
tingling in the sapphire dome; every tree and blade of grass were
listening to the silence; the river sped stealthily along like a
silver snake between its banks where the gray poplars stood looking
down, frighted by the vibration of their own shadows, dyeing
themselves black in the water.
“If he were awake, how he would enjoy this!” murmured Franceline to
herself; and then, unable to resist the temptation, she stole softly
through Angélique’s room and across the landing into Raymond’s. The
doors were all open, partly to admit more air, partly that they might
hear the least tinkle of his little hand-bell, if he sounded it.
“Is that my Franceline?” asked a voice from the bed. The night light
threw her shadow on the floor, and Raymond, who was not asleep, saw
it.
“Yes, petit père,” she answered in a whisper; “the sky is so lovely I
thought I must come and see if you were awake. Shall I draw the
curtain?”
“Yes.”
She did so, and then crept back and knelt down beside him. Raymond
laid his cheek against her head, and clasped her hand in his, and they
remained for some moments gazing at the beauty of the heavens in
silence. Then he said, making long pauses, as if he were thinking
aloud rather than speaking to her:
“How wonderful is the splendor of God as he reveals it to us in his
works!… Who can measure his power, his glory?… Think what it means,
the creation of one of those stars! And there are myriads and myriads
of them spangling millions of miles of blue sky! There are no steppes,
no barren spots, there where the stars cannot grow. They are not like
flowers, those stars of our world; they never perish or fade—they only
draw behind the light for a while; always harmonious, moving in their
appointed places like the notes of a divine symphony; they make no
discord. The great stars are not scornful of the little ones; the
little stars are not jealous of the great; each is content to be as it
is and where it is, and to stay where the great Star-Maker has fixed
it.… My clair de lune, let us try and be content like the stars.”
Franceline raised his hand to her lips, and murmured the strophe of
her favorite hymn of S. Francis: “Praised be my Lord for our sister
the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in the
heavens.…”
The next morning Father Henwick came and was once more closeted with
Raymond. Nothing had been said about it, but, when the door-bell
sounded, M. de la Bourbonais glanced quickly at the clock, and
exclaimed in a tone of surprise: “Already half-past twelve! I did not
think it was so late. Thou wilt show him up at once, my child, and
then leave us alone for a little.”
No further explanation was necessary. Franceline kissed him in
silence, placed a chair close by his pillow, and then, in a happy
flutter, went down to meet Father Henwick.
Two days after this there was great joy at The Lilies. The little
cottage was decked out as for a bridal. Franceline had stayed up late
to have it all finished for the early morning; she would do everything
with her own hands. The stairs were wreathed with garlands of green
leaves and ferns; every vase and cup she could find was filled with
the sweet spring flowers—cowslips, primroses, anemones, and wild
violets—and placed in the tiny entrance and on the landing opposite
Raymond’s room. The room itself was transformed into a chapel. At the
foot of the bed stood a small table covered with Franceline’s snowiest
muslin, joyously sacrificed for the occasion. Lights were burning on
either side of a large crucifix; there were lights and flowers on the
mantelpiece, where she had placed her statue of the Madonna and other
precious ornaments; the thin curtains were drawn and filled the little
room with a soft golden twilight. Franceline was kneeling beside the
bed, reciting some litany aloud, which Raymond answered from a book in
timid, reverential under-tones.
But now a sudden hush falls upon the faintly-broken silence. There is
a sound of footsteps without; a dear and awful Presence is
approaching. No need to ring; the door stands open to its widest, and
Angélique, kneeling on the threshold, adores and welcomes the divine
Guest; a little bell goes tinkling up amidst the flowers, and ceases
as it enters the illuminated room.…
* * * * *
The sudden improvement in Raymond’s state was not followed by a
proportionately rapid progress. He still continued extremely weak, and
was not able to come down-stairs until several days later. Dr. Blink
was puzzled; he had been very sanguine when the rally took place, and
now he hardly knew what to think. He was convinced from the first that
the attack had been in a great measure caused by some mental shock;
but that seemed at one moment to have righted itself, and he thought
his patient was safe. This was apparently a mistake. The pressure may
have been unexpectedly lightened, but it was clearly not removed; and
until this was done medicine could do very little.
“There is something on his mind,” said the doctor to Mr. Langrove one
morning, on coming out from his daily visit; “there is some trouble
weighing on him, and he will not recover until something is done
toward removing it.”
The vicar understood perfectly the drift of this remark. It was an
appeal from the medical man to the friend of the patient for help or
light. Mr. Langrove could give neither. He observed that the count had
been seriously anxious about Franceline’s health; but Dr. Blink shook
his head. He knew how to discriminate between the effect of heartache
and a pressure on the mind. In this case the mind was oppressed by
some secret burden, or he was very much mistaken; it might be some
painful apprehension in the future, or something distressing in the
past; but whatever the cause was, past or future, the present effect
was unmistakable, and, unless some friend who had the full confidence
of the patient could afford some relief, the worst might still be
apprehended. Mr. Langrove answered by some irrelevant expression of
sympathy and regret, but volunteered no opinion of his own. He went
home and sat down and wrote to Sir Simon Harness. This was all he
could think of. If Sir Simon could not help, he believed no one else
could.
It so happened that the baronet was just now absent in the South of
Italy, in dutiful attendance on Lady Rebecca; and as he had been
called off suddenly, and left no orders about his letters being sent
after him, those directed to his bankers lay there unopened. There was
another besides Mr. Langrove’s lying there, which, if it had reached
him, would have rejoiced the baronet’s heart and provoked a quick
response.
The fears which Raymond’s tardy progress raised in the mind of his
medical man were not shared by Franceline. Hope still triumphed over
alarm, and she felt confident that, since the great weight on her
father’s mind had been removed, his complete recovery must ultimately
follow. This certainty made the delay easy to bear. It was wonderful
how her own strength bore up. She had quite lost her cough—a fact
which confirmed the doctor’s previous opinion that the nerves had more
to do with this symptom than the lungs—she kept well, and was
altogether in better health than for some months previously. Her
spirits raised to elation after that happy morning’s episode,
continued excellent—at times as joyous as a child’s.
The moment M. de la Bourbonais was able to get down-stairs Angélique
insisted on Franceline going every day for a walk while the sun was
shining. One morning, when he had come down and was comfortably
established on the sofa in his study, propped up so that he could see
out of the window, Franceline said she was going to gather him a
bouquet. She smoothed and changed the cushions, put another shawl over
his feet, moved the sofa a little bit nearer the window, and then back
again a little bit nearer the fire, until, finding there was
absolutely nothing more to fuss over, except to kiss him for the tenth
time with “Au revoir, petit père!” as if they were separating for a
journey, she sallied forth for her constitutional.
The weather was mild and beautiful; spring was intoning the first bars
of its idyl, striking bright emerald notes from the tips of the trees,
and drawing low, pink whispers from the blackthorn in the hedges; the
birds were beginning to tune their lutes and make ready for the great
concert that was at hand. Franceline’s heart bounded in unison with
the pulse of joy and universal awakening; she began to warble a duet
with the skylark as she went along, stopping every now and then to
make a nosegay of the pink and white anemones and violets and
torch-like king-cups that grew in wild luxuriance in the woods and
fields. Dullerton was famous for its wild flowers. Half an hour passed
quickly while thus engaged, and then she turned homewards. The doves
were on the watch for her, “sunning their milk-white bosoms on the
thatch,” as she came in sight, and swelling the sweet harmony of earth
and sky with a tender, well-contented coo. But hark! Could that be the
cuckoo that was already calling from the woods? She paused with her
hand on the latch to listen. No: it was only the voice of the sunshine
echoing through her own happy heart. She pushed open the gate and
walked quickly on; but again her step was arrested. Some one was
coming round by the park entrance. It was no doubt Mr. Langrove; no
one else came that way—no one but Sir Simon Harness, and there he
stood. Franceline had nearly uttered a cry, when a quick sign from the
baronet checked it and made her walk leisurely on without doing
anything to attract attention. She cast a furtive glance towards the
casement, to see if by chance her father had changed his place and
come to sit by the window; but he was still on the sofa where she had
left him.
Sir Simon opened his arms and clasped her with a warmth of emotion
that did not surprise Franceline.
“You heard that he was ill! You are come to see him!” she exclaimed.
“I have only heard it this minute from my people at the house. Why did
you not write to me, child? Ah! he would not let you, I suppose? My
poor Raymond! And now how is he? Can I see him? _Will_ he see me?”
“Why should he not see you, dear Sir Simon?” said Franceline, raising
her large, soft glance to him, full of wondering reproach.
“Of course, of course,” said the baronet; “but is he strong enough to
see me? They tell me he has been terribly shaken by this illness. It
might cause him a shock if he saw me too suddenly.” “Shall I tell him
that you are expected down to-day? That would break it to him,”
suggested Franceline. “Or you might write a line and send it in first
to say you were here; would that do?”
Before Sir Simon could decide for either alternative, fate, in the
shape of Angélique, decided for him. She had seen Franceline enter the
garden, and wondered why she loitered outside instead of coming in; so
she came out to see, and, on beholding Sir Simon, threw up her arms
with a shout of astonishment.
Franceline cried out “Hush!” and shook her hand at the old woman, but
it was too late; Raymond had seen and heard her from his sofa.
“Go in at once,” said Sir Simon, much excited—“go and tell him I am
come to kiss his feet; to ask his forgiveness on my knees. Tell him _I
know everything_.” And he pushed her gently from him. Franceline did
not stop to ask what the strange message could mean, but ran in,
thinking only how best she could deliver it so as to avoid too sudden
a shock to her father.
Raymond was sitting up on the sofa, his face slightly flushed.
“What is the matter? Who is there?” he cried.
“Dear father, nothing is the matter; only something you will be glad
to hear,…” she began.
“Ha! it is Simon! What has he come for? What does he want?”
“He wants to embrace you; and, father, he bade me say that he knows
everything, and has come to ask you to forgive him and let him kiss
your feet. He is waiting; may he come in?”
But Raymond did not answer; he was murmuring some words to himself,
with hands lifted reverently as in prayer, while a smile of unearthly
joy diffused itself on his whole countenance. The emotion was too much
for him; he fell back exhausted on his pillow.
Franceline thought he had fainted and screamed out for help. Sir Simon
was beside her in an instant.
“Raymond! my friend, my brother, can you ever forgive me?” he cried,
kneeling beside M. de la Bourbonais and taking his hand in both his.
“You know the truth, then? You got his letter?”
“Whose letter? I got no letter; but I found the ring. Look at it!”
He drew an enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and held up
the diamond, that flashed in the sun like a little star.
“Thank Heaven! I shall now be justified before all men!” exclaimed M.
de la Bourbonais with trembling emotion. “This is more than I dared to
hope. My God! I give thee thanks for this great mercy.”
No one spoke for a moment. Franceline had signed to Angélique to leave
the room, but remained herself, a silent spectator of the strange
scene.
“Who had it? How was it found?” said M. de la Bourbonais, taking the
ring and examining it with an expression of mistrust, as if it were
some uncanny thing that he half expected to see melt in his fingers.
“It has been in my possession, locked up at the Court, all this time!”
replied Sir Simon. “You may remember I used this snuff-box that night,
and sent it round the table. Someone dropped the ring into it
unawares; it was not opened afterwards, and it never entered into my
stupid brain to think of looking into it. I went away in a great hurry
next morning, and threw the snuff-box into a safe in my room where I
keep papers and the loose jewelry I have in use. I came down this
afternoon to get a deed out of the safe, saw the snuff-box, and by the
merest chance opened it and found the ring.”
“Mon Dieu!” murmured Raymond, after hearing this simple explanation of
the mistake that had very nearly cost him his life.
“Bourbonais, can you ever forgive me?” said Sir Simon.
Raymond opened his arms without speaking. Sir Simon flung himself with
a sob upon his breast, and the two clung together and wept.
Franceline felt as if even she had no right to be present; that she
was intruding in a sacred place where some mystery, not intended for
her eyes, was being unfolded. She was moving softly toward the door
when her father called her back.
“Come hither, my child; come and embrace me. I can have no happiness
that thou dost not share.”
“Franceline,” said Sir Simon, rising from his knees and taking her
hand with an expression of humility that was very touching in the
grand, white-haired gentleman, “I have been guilty of a great act of
disloyalty towards your father. I cannot tell you what it was; perhaps
he will. Meantime, he has forgiven me for the sake of our long
friendship, and because his soul is too noble, too generous, to bear
malice, even against an unfaithful friend. Will you do as he has done,
and say you forgive me too?”
His voice was full of trembling, his eyes were still moist. Franceline
did as he had done to her father: she flung her arms round his neck
and wept.
TO BE CONTINUED.
A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.
III.
The keen relish which we all have for other people’s sins is
proverbial. As those who think with us are right, so are they virtuous
who have only our own vices. Prodigality, which, to the miser’s
thinking, is the worst of sins, is, in the eyes of the spendthrift,
merely an evidence of a generous nature. Men who wish to be thought
gentlemen have a weakness for what are called gentlemanly vices; but
from the coarser though less depraved wickedness of the vulgar they
turn with loathing. This bias of our common nature is not confined in
its action to individuals; it affects classes, nations, races. The
rich are shocked by the vices of the poor, and the poor, in turn, no
less by those of the rich; masters hate the sins of servants, and are
repaid in their own coin.
When the free-born Briton sings, “England, with all thy faults, I love
thee still,” he means that faults, if only they be English, are after
all not so bad. Wrapt up in the precious bundle of our self-love are
all our pet sins and weaknesses. The universal hatred which existed
between the nations of antiquity must be attributed in great part to
the fact that their vices were unlike, and therefore repellant. The
national contempt for foreigners is, in Christian times, strong in
proportion to the barbarism of the people by whom it is felt; but in
Greece and Rome such civilization as was then possible seemed to have
no power over this prejudice. Not to be a Greek was to have been
created for vile uses, and not to be a Roman was to be nobody. The
French, as seen by the English, are giddy and lack dignity; the
English appear to French eyes, sulky and wanting in good nature; the
Turk thinks both struck with madness, because they walk about and
stretch their legs when they might sit still; and though he is at
their mercy, yet he cannot persuade himself that they are anything but
Christian dogs. The negro is quite sure the first man must have been
black, and in this he is in accord with Mr. Darwin. The North American
Indian will vanish from the earth through the golden portals of the
western world still believing that he is the superior of the “pale
face.” The power of national prejudice is almost incredible. “Our
country, right or wrong” is, we believe, an American phrase; but it
expresses a sentiment which is almost universally held to be right and
proper. In international disputes men nearly always take sides with
their own country, without stopping to inquire into the merits of the
quarrel, which, indeed, the strong feeling that at once masters them
would prevent them from being able to do. They act instinctively like
children who always think that in difficulties with neighbors their
own parents are in the right. We Americans are certainly not paragons
of virtue, and in this centennial year it is probably wise to discuss
almost anything rather than our morals; yet we cannot but think that
M. Louis Veuillot was somewhat under the influence of national
prejudice when he wrote that, if we were sunk in the bottom of the
ocean, civilization would have lost nothing. Our form of government,
it is true, does not lead us to look for salvation, either in church
or state, from a king by divine right; still, he might just as well
have let us alone, especially as he is at no loss for quarrels at
home. Nor can we think that the Germans who have raised such a storm
of indignation over the crime in Bremerhaven, committed, as it is
supposed, by an American, would have held the whole German people and
their civilization responsible for the offence had they known its
author to be native there and to the manner born.
As no passion takes hold of the human heart with such sovereign power
as that of religion, it follows that no bias of judgment is more fatal
to truth than religious prejudice; and now let us gently descend again
to M. Emile de Laveleye and his pamphlet:
“It is agreed on all sides,” he says (p. 25), “that the
power of nations depends on their morality. Everywhere is
found the maxim, which is almost become an axiom of
political science, that where morals are corrupted the state
is lost. Now, it appears to be an established fact that the
moral level is higher among Protestant than among Catholic
populations. Religious writers confess this themselves, and
explain it by the fact that the former remain more faithful
to their religion than the latter, which explanation I
believe to be the true one.”
Here is fairness surely. The soft impeachment could not have been made
in a more moderate or subdued tone. Catholics are notoriously more
immoral than Protestants; but the subject is a painful one, and M. de
Laveleye does not wish to emphasize the unpleasant truth by giving
proof—which, indeed, would be superfluous, since Catholics themselves,
we are assured, admit the fact and are concerned only about its
explanation; and, strange to say, they have found the key to the
mystery in the greater fidelity of Protestants to their religion: so
M. de Laveleye and the Catholics shake hands and the dispute is at an
end.
The position of Protestants with regard to this question is peculiar.
The very life of their religion is intimately associated with a fixed
belief in the preternatural wickedness of popes, priests, nuns, and
Catholics generally. The sole justification of Protestantism was found
in the abominable corruptions of Rome, and its only defence is that it
is a purer worship, capable of creating a higher morality. The history
of the Reformation, as written by Protestants, traces its origin to an
awful and heaven-inspired indignation at the sight of papal iniquity,
which resulted in a divine Protest against sin. It is this feeling,
indeed, which is the living human magnetism in the words of Luther,
Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox. They all felt that in so far as they
protested against open and patent evil they were right, and therefore
strong. Leo X., with God’s eternal truth, but encircled by all the
Graces and Muses, was at a disadvantage with those strong and
plain-spoken men. In fact, the eternal ally of human error is human
truth. It is because men who are right do wrong that men who are wrong
seem right; and if men in general were fit to be priests of God, there
would be on earth no power to oppose the Catholic Church. St. Paul had
protested, St. John Chrysostom had protested, St. Peter Damian had
protested, St. Bernard had protested, St. Catherine of Sienna had
protested, and yet there was no Protestantism. To protest was well and
is well, but to seek to found a religion upon a protest is madness;
and this is Protestantism. With Protestants purity of dogma is out of
the question; and nothing, therefore, remains to them but purity of
morals. To this they must cling like drowning men to straws.
Protestantism, if considered from a doctrinal point of view, is
nihilism. Gather up the hundred sects which, taken collectively, are
called Protestantism, and we will find every positive religious dogma
excluded; not even the personal existence of God remains. Mr. Matthew
Arnold is a true Bible-Protestant, who has a little sect of his own,
and all that he holds is that there is “a Power in us, not ourselves,
which makes for righteousness”; and this he has discovered to be the
sum and substance of all Scripture teaching. Doctrinal Protestantism
is like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry with its fag-ends
hanging in patches, twisted and jumbled; and yet they are the very
substance out of which has been wrought a work of divine beauty. The
dogmatic weakness of Protestantism throws its whole energy upon the
moral side of religion. Its utter falseness, when we accept the fact
that Christ has established a divine system of faith, is so manifest
that no impartial thinker would hesitate to give his full assent to
the sentiment of Rousseau: “Show me that in religious matters I must
accept authority, and I shall become a Catholic at once.” Supposing
the Christian religion to be what it is commonly held to be by both
Catholics and Protestants, it necessarily follows that the Catholic
Church is the only logical as it is the only historical Christianity.
This, we believe, is the almost universally-received opinion of
non-Christian writers in our own day, in which, for the first time
since the Reformation, a considerable number of learned men who are
neither Catholic nor Protestant have been able to view this subject
dispassionately. We do not mean to say that these writers prefer the
church to the sects; on the contrary, they are partial to these
because in their workings they perceive, as they think, the
breaking-up and dissolution of the whole Christian system.
Protestantism is valuable in their eyes as a stage in what Herbert
Spencer calls “the universal religious thaw” which is going on around
us. If there has been no divine revelation, then whatever tends to
weaken the claim of the church to be the depository of such revelation
is good, especially as her claim is the only one which rests upon a
valid historical basis. And it is because a very large number of men
more than half suspect there never has been a revelation that
Protestantism meets with so much favor from the unbelieving and pagan
world, as serving the purpose of an easy stepping-stone from the
strong and pronounced supernaturalism of the church to the
nature-worship of Darwin and Spencer or the German _Culturists_.
Macaulay was struck and puzzled by what his keen eye could not fail to
perceive to be so universal a phenomenon as to have the force of a law
of history.
“It is surely remarkable,” says this brilliant writer, “that
neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century nor
the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth should have
in any perceptible degree added to the domain of
Protestantism. During the former period whatever was lost to
Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter
whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries
was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have
expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to
infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to
superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point.
Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits,
and those which were maintained at the little supper-parties
of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval in which the
human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some
resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two
extremes; and at the time of the Reformation millions found
such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced popery
without ceasing to believe in a First Cause, in a future
life, or in the divine authority of Christianity. In the
last century, on the contrary, when a Catholic renounced his
belief in the Real Presence, it was a thousand to one that
he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and when the
reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back
belief in the Real Presence. We by no means venture to
deduce from these phenomena any general law; but we think it
a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did
not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end
of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them.
Catholic communities have since that time become infidel and
become Catholic again, but none has become Protestant.”
There could not be a more satisfactory proof of the transitional
and accidental nature of Protestantism. Like all human revolutions,
it grew out of antecedent circumstances; and these were primarily
political and social and only incidentally religious. The faith in the
divine authority of the Christian religion was at that time absolute,
and not at all affected by the tendency to scepticism observable among
a few of the Humanists. The political power of the pope, however,
together with his peculiar temporal relations to the German Empire,
had gradually created throughout Germany a very strong national
prejudice against his authority, which, upon the slightest
provocation, was ready to break out into downright hatred of the
Papacy. The worldly lives and ways of some of the popes had been as
fuel for the conflagration which was to burst forth. Men,
unconsciously it may be, grew accustomed to look upon the Christian
religion and the Papacy as distinct and separable; and the temper of
the public mind, while remaining reverential toward Christ and his
religion, was embittered against his vicar. When, from amidst the
social abuses and political antagonisms of Germany, Luther, in the
name of Christ, denounced the pope, his voice struck precisely the
note for which the public ear was listening, and, as Macaulay says,
whole nations renounced allegiance to the pope without giving up
faith in God and his Christ. This was done in the excitement of
revolutionary enthusiasm, when passion and madness made deliberation
impossible, and when a thoughtful and analytical study of the
constitution of the church was out of the question. The Reformers
imagined that they could abolish the pope and yet save Christianity,
just as in France, two centuries and a half later, it was thought
possible to abolish God and yet save the principle of authority,
without which society cannot exist. And, indeed, it is as reasonable
to suppose that this world, with its universal evidence of design and
adaption of means to ends, could have come into existence without the
action of a supreme and intelligent Being, as to think that the
system of religious truths taught by Christ can have either unity
or authority amongst men without a living centre and visible
representative of both. Protestants, by rejecting the primacy of the
pope, were forced to accept as fundamental to their faith a principle
of so purgative and drastic a nature that, in the general process of
sloughing of religious thought which it brings on, it is itself
finally carried away into the vacuum of nihilism.
This became evident as soon as the attempt was made to agree upon
articles of belief. New heresies sprang up day after day, and
complete chaos would have ensued from the beginning had not the
different states taken hold of one or other of the sects and
“established” it, thus, by the aid of the temporal power, giving
to it a kind of consistency, but at the same time depriving it of
vitality. Thus what Macaulay regarded as so remarkable—that no
Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the
Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century should ever
have adopted them—and he might as well have made the proposition
universal, since there was no reason why he should limit it to
Christian nations, since it is well known that in nothing has
Protestantism given more striking proof of its impotence than in
its utter failure to convert the heathen,—this, we say, far from
surprising us, seems so natural that we cannot understand how an
observant mind should think it strange.
Protestantism was, in the main, the product of the peculiar
political and social condition of Europe during the last period
of the middle ages, and to expect Catholic nations, or indeed
individual Catholics of any intellectual or moral character, to
become Protestant in our day argues a total want of power to
grasp this subject. As well might one hope to see the pterodactyls
and ichthyosauri of a past geologic era swimming in our rivers.
Catholics there are, indeed, now, as in the eighteenth century, who
become sceptics, who abandon all belief in Christianity, but none who
become Protestants; for we cannot consider such persons as Achilli or
Edith O’Gorman as instances of conversion of any kind. A very limited
acquaintance with Catholics and Catholic thought will suffice to
convince any reflecting mind that for us there is no alternative but
to accept the doctrine of the church or to renounce faith in Christ.
Was there ever fairer field for heresy to flourish in than that which
opened up before Old Catholicism at its birth? But it was still-born.
To this day its sponsors have not dared define its relation to the
pope; and until this is done it remains without character. At any
rate, it does not claim to be Protestant.
Turning to view the present condition of Protestantism, we are
struck by the contrast. The very word “Protestant” is without
meaning when applied to two-thirds of the non-Catholics of
Germany, England, and the United States. Their mental state is
one of disbelief in, or indifference to, all forms of positive
religion; and if occasionally they are roused to some feeling
against the church, it is through an association of ideas,
traditional with them, which places her in antagonism with their
political theories and national prejudices. Among earnest and
reflecting Protestants who are united with one or other of the
sects, there are two opposite currents of religious thought of a
strongly-marked and well-defined character. Those who are borne
on the one are being carried farther and farther away from the
historic teachings of Christ, and are busied in trying to dress
out in Biblical phraseology some of the various cosmic or
pantheistic philosophies of the day. They very generally assume
that religion has nothing to do with theology, nor, consequently,
with doctrines and dogmas. As its home is the heart, its realm is
the world of sentiment; and so it matters not what we believe,
provided only we feel good. Opposed to this current, which is
bearing with it all the distinctive landmarks of the Christian
religion, is another which is carrying men back to the church. In
fact, all great minds among Protestants who have been strongly
impressed by the objective character of Christian truth have been
drawn towards the Catholic Church. Who can have failed to
perceive, for instance—to mention only the three greatest who
have occupied themselves with religious questions—how Leibnitz,
Bacon, and Bishop Butler, in their intellectual apprehension of
the Christian system, were, in spite of themselves, attracted to
the church? Or who that is acquainted with the English Catholic
literature of our own day is ignorant of the divine illumination
which many of the most intellectual and reverent natures from the
sects of Protestantism have found in the teachings of the one
Catholic Church? In this way, by a process of supernatural or
natural selection, the fragments of Protestantism are being
assimilated to the church or are disappearing in the sea of
unbelief in which even now they are seen only as barren islands
in the wild waste of waters.
These considerations must be borne in mind by whoever would take
a comprehensive view of the question which we propose now to
discuss. In the first place, by reflecting upon them we shall
find no difficulty in accounting for the marked difference in
tone and character between Catholic and Protestant controversy,
by which no attentive observer can have failed to be struck.
Taking for granted the existence of God and the divinity of
Christ, as admitted by the earlier Protestant sects, the logical
position of the church is unassailable, which, as we have already
stated, is generally conceded by impartial non-Christian
thinkers.
As a consequence, Catholic controversialists, assured of the
absolute coherence of their whole system with the fundamental
dogma of the divine mission of Christ, have been chiefly
concerned with showing the logical viciousness of the essential
principles of Protestantism. They have, indeed, not omitted to
remark upon the moral unfitness of such men as Henry VIII.,
Luther, Knox, and Zwingli to be the divinely-chosen agents of a
reformation in the religion of Christ; but such observations have
been incidental to the main course of the argument, and this is
alike true of our more learned discussions and of our popular
controversies.
Catholic writers—allowing for individual exceptions—have not felt
that, to show the falsity of Protestantism, it was necessary to
denounce Protestants or to stamp upon them any mark of infamy.
They have treated them as men who were wrong, not as men who were
wicked. Protestant controversy, on the other hand, presents for
our consideration characteristics of a very different nature. In
the consciousness of their inability to settle upon a fixed
creed, which has been shown by history, and from the necessarily
feeble manner in which articles of faith could be held by them,
on account of the disagreement and conflict of opinion among
themselves, Protestant writers were forced to treat their
religion, not as a doctrine, but as a tendency; and for this
reason, together with the natural hatred which men entertain for
a church or government against which they have rebelled, they
were led to draw contrasts between the results of Protestantism
and Catholicity; so that it became customary to attribute all the
enlightenment, morality, progress, and liberty of the world to
Protestantism, and to represent Catholics as cruel, ignorant,
corrupt, and in every way depraved. Luther, as we should
naturally expect, led the way in this style of controversy.
“The Papists,” he said, “are for the most part mere gross
blockheads.… The pope and his crew are mere worshippers of idols
and servants of the devil.… Pope, cardinals, bishops, not a soul
of them has read the Bible; ‘tis a book unknown to them. They are
a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich, wallowing in wealth
and laziness.… Seeing the pope is Antichrist, I believe him to be
a devil incarnate.… The pope is the last blaze in the lamp which
will go out and ere long be extinguished—the last instrument of
the devil, that thunders and lightens with sword and bull;… but
the Spirit of God’s mouth has seized upon that shameless
strumpet.… Antichrist is the Pope and the Turk together.… The
pope is not God’s image, but his ape.… Popedom is founded on mere
lies and fables.… A friar is evil every way; the preaching friars
are proud buzzards; all who serve the pope are damned; the
Papists are devoid of shame and Christianity.”[3]
This is the style of Protestant controversy which, except in
form, still lingers in this nineteenth century. Protestant
devotion, it may be said without sarcasm or exaggeration,
consists essentially in a holy horror of popery. Were it possible
to eliminate the Catholic Church from human society, Protestantism
would at once fatally assume an attitude towards the world wholly
different from that in which it now stands. At present, when attacked
by evolutionistic pantheism—which means all the sophistries of the
day—it takes refuge behind the historic fortress of Christianity, the
Catholic Church, and, when encountered by the church, it makes an
alliance with cosmism or anything else. Were the Catholic Church not
in existence, it would be forced at once to build a fortress of its
own; for the Bible is only a breastwork, which must be in charge of a
commander-in-chief if we hope to hold it for the sovereign Lord. From
the beginning, then, Protestants branded Catholics with a mark of
infamy; they were idolaters, worse than pagans, for the most part
gross blockheads, who fall an easy prey to the designing arts of
priests and monks, who are only knaves and rogues, whose chief aim is
to carry out the fiendish purposes of the pope, the arch-enemy,
Antichrist, the devil in the flesh; and thus the church becomes the
Woman of Babylon, flaming in scarlet, and alluring the nations to
debauch.
No evidence, therefore, is needed to show that Catholics are
immoral, depraved, thoroughly corrupt. To doubt it would be to
question the truth of Protestantism and to believe that something
good might come out of Nazareth. In good sooth, do not the
Catholics, as M. de Laveleye says, admit the fact themselves?
We often hear persons express surprise that intelligent and
honest Protestants should still, after such sad experience, be so
eager to believe the “awful disclosures” of “escaped nuns,”
and to patronize that kind of lecture—of which, thank God!
Protestants have the monopoly—delivered to men or women only, in
which the abominations of the confessional are revealed and the
general preternatural wickedness of priests, monks, and nuns is
made fully manifest. This, to us, we must say, has never seemed
strange. The doctrine of total depravity is an article of
Protestant faith, and, when applied to Catholics, to none other
have Protestants ever clung with such unwavering firmness and
perfect unanimity. When disagreeing about everything else, they
have never failed to find a point of union in this. Even after
having lived and dealt with Catholics who are kind-hearted, pure,
and fair-minded, in the true Protestant there still lurks a vague
kind of suspicion that there must be some mysterious and secret
diabolism in them which eludes his observation; that after all
they may be only “as mild-mannered men as ever scuttled ship or
cut a throat”; and after his reason has been fully convinced that
the Catholic Church is the only historical Christianity, he is
still able to remain a strong Protestant by falling back upon the
undoubted total depravity of Papists. Dr. Newman, in his
_Apologia_, the most careful and instructive self-analysis which
has been written in this century, or probably in any other,
declares that after he had become thoroughly persuaded of the
truth of the Catholic Church his former belief that the pope was
Antichrist still remained like a stain upon his imagination; and
yet he had never been an ultra-Protestant. Many a Protestant has
ceased to believe in Christ, without giving up his faith in the
pope as Antichrist. It is not surprising, in view of all this,
that Protestants should have habitually held the church
responsible for the evil deeds of Catholics.
When quite recently the excited Germans charged the dynamite plot
of Thomassen upon our American civilization, we replied, with
perfect justice, that such crimes are anomalies, the guilt of
which ought not to be laid upon any nation, and all reasonable
men admitted the evident good sense of our answer; but Protestants
the world over have been unanimous in seeking to hold up the church to
the execration of mankind as responsible for the St. Bartholomew
massacre. Is Protestantism answerable for Cromwell’s massacres at
Drogheda and Wexford? Religious fanaticism, no doubt, had much to do
in urging him to butcher idolaters and slaves of Satan; but we should
blush for shame were we capable of thinking for a moment that such
inhumanities are either produced or approved by the real spirit of the
Protestant religion.
We know of nothing in the Catholic Church which in any way
corresponds with Protestant anti-popery literature; indeed, we
doubt whether in the whole history of literature anything so
disgraceful and disreputable as this can be found, unless,
possibly, it be that which is professedly obscene, but which has
nowhere ever had a recognized existence; and we question whether
even this is as discreditable to human nature as the “awful
disclosures” and “lectures to men or women only” of Protestants.
In discussing the comparative morality of Catholic and Protestant
nations it would be more satisfactory, even though it should not
be more conclusive, to consider their respective virtues rather
than their vices. There would seem to be neither good sense nor
logic in taking the individuals and classes that are least
brought under religious influences of any kind, in order to use
their depravity as an argument for or against the church or
Protestantism. In the apostolic body one out of twelve was a
thief and traitor, yet neither Catholics nor Protestants are in
the habit of concluding from this that they must all have been
rogues and hypocrites. The amount of crime, one would think, is
but a poor test of the amount of virtue. As the greatest sinners
have made the greatest saints, so in the church depravity may
co-exist with the most heroic virtue, though, of course, not in
the same individual. Our divine Saviour plainly declares that in
his church the good shall be mingled with the bad; that the
cockle shall grow with the wheat till the harvest time; that some
shall call him Lord and Master, and yet do not the will of his
Father; that even, with regard to those who sit in the chair of
Moses—and, let us add, of Peter—though their authority must ever
be acknowledged, yet are not their lives always to be imitated,
nor approved of even. It is manifestly contrary to the teaching
of Christ to make the note of sanctity in his church consist in
the individual holiness of each and every member. He is no
Puritan, though he is the all-holy God. A puristic religion is
essentially narrow, self-conscious, and unsympathetic; it draws a
line here on earth between the elect and the reprobate; its
disciples eat not with sinners, nor enter into their abodes, nor
hold out to them the pleading hands of large-hearted charity.
Such a faith does not grow upon men; it does not win and convert
them to God.
If, instead of comparing the crimes, we should consider the
respective virtues of Catholic and Protestant nations, we should
at once be struck by the difference in their standards of
morality. The most practical way of determining the real standard
of morality of any religion is to study the character of its
saints. There we find religious ideals made tangible and fully
discernible. Here at once we perceive that there is an essential
difference between the Catholic and the Protestant standard of
morality. The lives of our saints, even when understood by
Protestants, generally repel them. They are, in their eyes,
useless lives, idle lives, superstitious lives, unnatural and
inhuman. We take the words of Christ, “If thou wouldst be
perfect, go sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come
and follow me,” in their full and complete literal meaning. The
highest life is to leave father and mother, to have nor wife nor
children, nor temporal goods except what barely suffices, and to
cleave to Christ only with all one’s soul in poverty, chastity,
and obedience. Now, this life of prayer in poverty, chastity, and
obedience is an offence to Protestants. They do not believe in
perfect chastity, they hold religious obedience to be a slavery,
and poverty, in their eyes, is ridiculous. Inasmuch as the monks
tilled the earth, transcribed books, and taught school, they
receive a partial recognition from the Protestant world; but
inasmuch as they were bound by religious vows they excite
disgust. We should say, then, that the distinctive trait of
Catholic morality is ascetic, while the Protestant is utilitarian.
The one primarily regards the world that is to be, the other that
which already is. The one inclines us to look upon this as a worthless
world to lose or win; the other is shrewd and calculating—this is the
best we have any practical experience of; it is the part of wisdom to
make the most of it. The one seems to be more certain of the future
life, the other of the present. It is needless to prolong the
contrast, and we shall simply confess that we have always been
inclined to the opinion of those who hold that Protestantism, in its
aims and direct tendencies, is more favorable to what is called
material progress than Catholicism. In fact, one cannot realize the
personal survival of the soul through eternity, and at the same time
be supremely interested in stocks or the price of cotton.
Not that the church discourages efforts which have as their
object the material interests of mankind; but, in her view, our
duties to God are of the first importance, and to these all
others are subordinate. What doth it profit? she is always
asking, whereas Protestantism is busy trying to show us how very
profitable and pleasant the Reformation has made this world—and
virtuous, too, since honesty is the best policy and enlightened
self-interest the standard of morals. It is the old story—God and
the world, the supernatural and the natural, progress from above
and progress from below.
But we feel that it is time we should give our readers proof that
we have no desire to avoid direct issue with M. de Laveleye. We
flatly deny, then, his assertion that the Catholic nations are
more immoral than the Protestant; and when he further affirms
that Catholic writers themselves—for his words can have no other
meaning—admit this, he lies under a mistake for which there can
be no possible excuse. In the statement of facts, however, which
we propose now to give, we make no use whatever of the testimony
of Catholics, but rely exclusively upon the authority of
Protestants and of statistics; and that our readers may have the
benefit of observations extending over considerable time as well
as space, we will not confine ourselves to the most recent
writers or statistics on the subject under discussion. Laing, a
Scotch Presbyterian and a most conscientious and observant
traveller, who wrote some thirty-five years ago, says of the
French: “They are, I believe, a more honest people than the
British.… It is a fine distinction of the French national
character and social economy that practical morality is more
generally taught through manners among and by the people
themselves than in any country in Europe.”[4] Alison, the
historian, writing about the same time, but referring to the
early part of this century, says that the proportion of crime to
the inhabitants was _twelve times_ greater in Prussia than in
France.[5] To this may be added the testimony of John Stuart
Mill, in his _Autobiography_, published since his death, who
passed a considerable portion of his life in France. Referring to
his sojourn there when quite a young man, he says:
“Having so little experience of English life, and the few
people I knew being mostly such as had public objects of a
large and personally disinterested kind at heart, I was
ignorant of the low moral tone of what in England is called
society: the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for
granted in every mode of implication that conduct is of
course always directed towards low and petty objects; the
absence of high feelings, which manifests itself by sneering
depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general
abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists)
from professing any high principles of action at all, except
in those preordained cases in which such profession is put
on as part of the costume and formalities of the occasion. I
could not then know or estimate the difference between this
manner of existence and that of a people like the French,
whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different;
among whom sentiments which, by comparison at least, may be
called elevated are the current coin of human intercourse,
both in books and in private life, and, though often
evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation
at large by constant exercise and stimulated by sympathy, so
as to form a living and active part of the existence of a
great number of persons, and to be recognized and understood
by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general culture
of the understanding, which results from the habitual
exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the
most uneducated classes of several countries on the
Continent, in a degree not equalled in England among the
so-called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of
conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on
questions of right and wrong.”[6]
This is strong testimony when we consider that it comes from an
Englishman. In speaking of the elder Austin the same writer says: “He
had a strong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the
absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low objects on
which the faculties of all classes of the English are intent.”[7]
Mill’s opinion of the French is confirmed by Lecky, who writes: “No
other nation has so habitual and vivid a sympathy for great struggles
for freedom beyond its border. No other literature exhibits so
expansive and œcumenical a genius, or expounds so skilfully or
appreciates so generously foreign ideas. In no other land would a
disinterested war for the support of a suffering nationality find so
large an amount of support.”[8]
Much has been said and written of the licentiousness of the French,
which may, in part at least, be due to the fact that they, more than
any other people, have known how to make vice attractive by taking
from it something of the repulsive coarseness which naturally belongs
to it, but must also be ascribed to the feeling that they are
Catholic, and therefore sensual. But let us examine the facts on this
subject. We again bring Laing forward as a witness.
“Of all the virtues,” he says, “that which the domestic
family education of both the sexes most obviously
influences—that which marks more clearly than any other the
moral condition of a society, the home state of moral and
religious principles, the efficiency of those principles in
it, and the amount of that moral restraint upon passions and
impulses which it is the object of education and knowledge
to attain—is undoubtedly female chastity. Will any
traveller, will any Prussian, say that this index-virtue of
the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than
in almost any part of Europe?”[9]
Acts which in other countries would affect the respectability and
happiness of a whole family for generations are in Prussia looked upon
as mere youthful indiscretions. But let us take the statistics of
illegitimacy, which is a method of discussing the question made
popular among Protestants by the Rev. Hobart Seymour in his _Evenings
with the Romanists_.
The number of illegitimate births in France for every hundred was, in
1858, 7.8; in the same year in Protestant Saxony it was 16; in
Protestant Prussia, 9.3; in Würtemberg (Prot.), 16.1; in Iceland
(Prot.) (1838-47), 14; in Denmark (1855), 11.5; Scotland (1871), 10.1;
Hanover (1855), 9.9; Sweden (1855), 9.5; Norway (1855), 9.3.
Catholic France, then, judged by this test, stands higher than any
Protestant country of which we have statistical reports, except
England and Wales, where the percentage was, in 1859, 6.5; but England
and Wales are below other Catholic countries, and notably far below
Ireland. The rate of illegitimacy in the kingdom of Sardinia (1828-37)
was 2.1; in Ireland (1865-66), 3.8; in Spain (1859), 5.6; in Tuscany,
6; in Catholic Prussia, 6.1.
In Scotland there are, in proportion to population, more than three
times as many illegitimate births as in Ireland; and in England and
Wales there are more than twice as many, and in Protestant Prussia the
percentage is a third greater than in Catholic Prussia.[10]
If chastity, to use Laing’s expression, is the index-virtue, the
question as to the comparative morality of Protestant and Catholic
nations may be considered at an end. Lecky’s words on the Irish people
have often been quoted, to his own regret we believe.
“Had the Irish peasants been less chaste,” he says, “they
would have been more prosperous. Had that fearful famine
which in the present century desolated the land fallen upon
a people who thought more of accumulating subsistence than
of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be living who perished
by literal starvation on the dreary hills of Limerick or
Skibbereen.”[11]
There is not in all Europe a more thoroughly Protestant country than
Sweden. For three hundred years its people have been wholly withdrawn
from Catholic influences. During all this time Protestantism, upheld
by the state, undisturbed by dissent, with the education of the people
in the hands of the clergy, and a population almost entirely rural,
has had the fairest possible opportunity to show what it is capable of
doing to elevate the moral character of a nation. What is the result?
In 1838 Laing visited Sweden and made a careful study of the moral and
social condition of the people; and he declares that they are at the
very bottom of the scale of European morality. In 1836 one person out
of every 112—women, infants, sick, all included—had been accused of
crime, and one out of every 134 convicted and punished. In 1838 there
were born in Stockholm 2,714 children, of whom 1,577 were legitimate
and 1,137 illegitimate, leaving a balance of only 440 chaste mothers
out of 2,714.
Drunkenness, too, was more common there than in any other country of
Europe or of the world. Nearly 40,000,000 gallons of liquor were
consumed in 1850 by a population of only 3,000,000, which gives
thirteen gallons of intoxicating drink to every man, woman, and child
in the kingdom.
If these things could be said of any Catholic nation, the whole
Protestant world would stand aghast, nor need other proof of the
absolutely diabolical nature of popery. Compare this agricultural and
pastoral population with the Catholic Swiss mountaineers—who to this
day claim to have descended from a Swedish stock, and whose climate is
not greatly different from that of Sweden—and we find that the
Catholic Swiss are as moral and sober as the Protestant Swedes are
corrupt and besotted. Or compare them with the Tyrolese, than whom
there is no more Catholic and liberty-loving people on earth.
“Honesty may be regarded as a leading feature in the
character of the Tyrolese,” says Alison.… “In no part of the
world are the domestic or conjugal duties more strictly or
faithfully observed, and in none do the parish priests
exercise a stricter or more conscientious control over their
flocks.… Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the
character of the Tyrolese is their uniform piety—a feeling
which is nowhere so universally diffused as among their
sequestered valleys.… On Sunday the _whole people_ flock to
church in their neatest and gayest attire; and so great is
the number who thus frequent these places of worship that it
is not unfrequent to see the peasants kneeling on the turf
in the church-yard where Mass is performed, from being
unable to find a place within its walls. Regularly in the
evening prayers are read in every family; and the traveller
who passes through the villages at the hour of twilight
often sees through their latticed windows the young and the
old kneeling together round their humble fire, or is warned
of his approach to human habitation by hearing their evening
hymns stealing through the silence and solitude of the
forest.… In one great virtue the peasants in this country
(in common, it must be owned, with most Catholic states) are
particularly worthy of imitation. The virtue of _charity_,
which is too much overlooked in many Protestant kingdoms, is
there practised to the greatest degree and by all classes of
people.”[12]
With true Protestant condescension Alison adds: “Debased as their
religion is by the absurdities and errors of the Catholic form of
worship, and mixed up as it is with innumerable legends and visionary
tales, it yet preserves enough of the pure spirit of its divine origin
to influence in a great measure the conduct of their private lives.”
Among rural populations more than elsewhere the divine power of the
Christian religion is made manifest. To the poor, the frugal, and the
single-hearted those heavenly truths which have changed the world, but
which were first listened to and received by fishermen and shepherds,
appeal with a force and directness which the mere worldling and
comfort-lover cannot even realize. In the presence of nature so silent
and awful, yet so vocal, everything inclines the heart of man to
hearken to the voice of God. Mountains and rivers; the long,
withdrawing vales and deep-sounding cataracts; winter’s snows, and
spring, over whose heaving bosom the unseen hand weaves the tapestry
that mortal fingers never made; summer’s warm breath, and autumn, when
the strong year first feels the chill of death, and “tears from the
depth of some divine despair rise in the heart and gather to the
eyes”—all speak of the higher world which they foreshadow and
symbolize. But in the hurry and noise of the city, with its extremes
of wealth and poverty, of indulgence and want, of pride and
degradation, the pleading voice of religion is not heard at all, or is
heard only as a call from the shore is heard by men who are madly
hurrying down some rapid stream. It is evident, therefore, that the
easiest and surest way of getting at the relative moral influence of
the Catholic and Protestant religions is to study their action upon
rural populations. We have already established on the best authority
the incalculable moral elevation of the Catholic rural populations of
Switzerland and the Tyrol over the Protestants of the same class in
Sweden. Let us now turn to Great Britain.
Kay, after having given a table of criminal statistics for England and
Wales for the years 1841 and 1847, makes the following remarks upon
the facts there presented:
“This table well deserves study. It shows that the
proportional amount of crime to population calculated in two
years, 1841 and 1847, was greater in both years in almost
all the _agricultural_ counties of England than it was in
the _manufacturing_ and mining districts.… With what
terrible significance do these statistics plead the cause of
the poor of our rural districts! Notwithstanding that a town
life necessarily presents so many more opportunities for,
and temptations to, vice than a rural life; notwithstanding
that the associations of the latter are naturally so much
purer and so much more moral than those of the former;
notwithstanding the wonderfully crowded state of the great
manufacturing cities of Lancashire; notwithstanding the
constant influx of Irish, sailors, vagrants, beggars, and
starving natives of agricultural districts of England and
Wales; and notwithstanding the miserable state of most of
the primary schools of those districts and the great
ignorance of the majority of the inhabitants, still, in the
face of all these and other equally significant facts, the
criminality of the _manufacturing_ districts of Lancashire
is LESS in proportion to the population than that of most of
the rural districts of England and Wales!”[13]
In Scotland illegitimacy is more common in the country than in the
towns and cities. In 1870 the rate of illegitimacy for the whole
country was 9.4 per cent., or 1 in every 10.6; whereas in the rural
districts alone it was 10.5, or 1 in every 9.5. In 1871 it was for the
whole country 10.1, or 1 in every 9.8, and in the rural districts
11.2, or 1 in every 8.9.[14] In England also the rate of illegitimacy
is much larger in the rural districts than in the cities, whereas in
Catholic France it is just the reverse. In the country districts of
England we have the following rate:
Nottingham, 8.9
York, North Riding, 8.9
Salop, 9.8
Westmoreland, 9.7
Norfolk, 10.7
Cumberland, 11.4
In France:
Rural districts, 4.2
La Vendée, 2.2
Brittany—Côte d’Or, 1.2
Thus in the most Catholic rural districts of France there are only one
or two illegitimate births in every hundred.
This is also true of Prussia, whose most strongly Catholic provinces
are Westphalia and the Rhineland. In Westphalia there are only three
and a half illegitimate births in every hundred, and in the Rhineland
only three and a third; but in thoroughly Protestant Pomerania and
Brandenburg there are ten and twelve illegitimate births in the
hundred.[15] In Ireland, again, we find the same state of things. The
rate of illegitimate births for all Ireland is 3.8 per cent.; but the
lowest proportion is in Connaught, nineteen-twentieths of whose people
are Catholics, and the greatest is in Ulster, half of whose population
is Protestant. “The sum of the whole matter,” says the _Scotsman_
(June, 1869), a leading organ of Presbyterian Scotland, “is that
semi-Presbyterian and semi-Scotch Ulster is fully three times more
immoral than wholly popish and wholly Irish Connaught—which
corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that
Scotland as a whole is three times more immoral than Ireland as a
whole.” There is no reason why further proof should be given of what
is a manifest truth: that rural populations—let us say, rather, the
people—in proportion as they are Catholic, are also chaste; and
consequently that the Catholic Church, as every man who is competent
to judge must know, is the mother of purity, which is the soul of
Christian life, and without which we cannot draw near to the heart of
the Saviour and supreme Lover of men. Protestants, however, will be at
no loss for arguments. Should the worst come to the worst,
illegitimacy, like the gallows, may be declared an evidence of
civilization, and then it needs must follow, as the night the day,
that it is more common in Protestant than in Catholic countries.
Let us now turn to the vice of intemperance. “I am sure,” says Hill,
“that I am within the truth when I state, as the result of minute and
extensive inquiry, that, in four cases out of five, when an offence is
committed intoxicating drink has been one of the causes.”[16]
In an attempt, then, to form an estimate of the relative morality of
nations, we should not omit to consider the vice of drunkenness, which
is the cause of half the crime and misery in the world. Were it in our
power to obtain accurate statistics on this subject, as on that of
illegitimacy, the superior sobriety of the Catholic nations would be
shown even more strikingly than their superior chastity. The
Spaniards, it is universally acknowledged, are the soberest people in
Europe, as the Swedes are the most intemperate. Their respective
geographical positions suggest at once what is often assigned as a
sufficient explanation of this fact—the great difference of climate.
It was long supposed that the southern nations were more sensual than
the northern, because it was thought a warm climate must necessarily
develop a greater violence of passion. We know now, however, that this
is not the case. Though climate has an undoubted influence on
morality, its action is yet so modified or controlled among Christian
and civilized nations that generalizations founded upon its supposed
effects are unreliable. The Swedes and the Scotch are intemperate, the
Spaniards and the Italians are sober. The former are Protestant, the
latter Catholic; it is therefore at once evident that religion has
nothing to do with this matter, which can only be accounted for by the
difference of climate. These are the tactics of our opponents: those
virtues in which the Catholic nations excel must be attributed to
natural causes; but when some of them are found to lack the enterprise
and industrial spirit of the English or the Americans, it would be
altogether unreasonable to ascribe this to anything else than their
religion.
Scotch statistics show a greater amount of intemperance in summer than
in winter, which would seem to indicate that a high temperature does
not tend to destroy the passion for intoxicating drink. But we do not
propose to enter into a discussion of causes, which, however, we are
perfectly willing to take up at the proper time. Our controversy with
M. de Laveleye turns upon facts.
We have already cited the testimony of Laing to show that the Swedes,
after they had been under the exclusive influence of Protestantism for
three hundred years, were the most drunken people in Europe. Laing was
in Venice on the occasion of a festival, when the whole population had
turned out for pleasure, and he did not see a single case of
intoxication; not a single instance, even among the boys, of rudeness;
and yet all were singing, talking, and enjoying themselves. He gives
the following account of a popular merry-making which he saw at
Florence:
“It happened that the 9th of May was kept here as a great
holiday by the lower class, as May-day with us, and they
assembled in a kind of park about a mile from the city,
where booths, tents, and carts, with wine and eatables for
sale, were in crowds and clusters, as at our village wakes
and race-courses. The multitude from town and country round
could not be less than twenty thousand people, grouped in
small parties, dancing, singing, talking, dining on the
grass, and enjoying themselves. _I did not see a single
instance of inebriety, ill-temper, or unruly, boisterous
conduct_; yet the people were gay and joyous.”[17]
Robert Dale Owen, writing from Naples, said: “I have not seen a man
even partially intoxicated since I have been in the city, of 420,000
inhabitants, and they say one may live here for four years without
seeing one.”
Let us now turn to Protestant lands. St. Cuthbert’s parish, Edinburgh,
had in 1861 a population somewhat exceeding 90,000 souls. Of these,
1,953 were “drunk and incapable,” 3,935 were “drunk and discharged”;
making in all 5,888, or nearly 1 in 15.
In Salford jail (England), in 1870, the proportion of commitments for
drunkenness was, as compared with commitments for all offences, 37 per
cent.[18]
We have it upon the authority of the English government that in 1874
no fewer than 285,730 Britons were proceeded against for being drunk
and disorderly, or drunk and not disorderly; and, of course, to this
must be added the probably greater number who escaped arrest. Mr.
Granville, one of the secretaries of the Church of England Society in
the Diocese of Durham, estimates that there is an aggregate of 700,000
habitual drunkards in England. “It is a melancholy but undeniable
fact,” says the _Alliance News_,” that, notwithstanding vast agencies
of improvement, intemperance, crime, pauperism, insanity, and
brutality are more rampant than ever; and, if we except pauperism,
these evils have more than doubled in the last forty years.” We have
not been able to get the statistics of drunkenness for Ireland, and
can therefore institute no comparison between England and that country
with regard to intemperance;[19] but we have before us the criminal
statistics of both countries for 1854, the population of England and
Wales in that year being about three times as great as that of
Ireland. The following table of convictions will enable us to form an
estimate of the comparative honesty of the two nations:
Robbery by persons armed, England and Wales, 210
Robbery by persons armed, Ireland, 2
Larceny from the person, England and Wales, 1,570
Larceny from the person, Ireland, 389
Larceny by servants,[20] England and Wales, 2,140
Larceny by servants, Ireland, 44
Larceny, simple, England and Wales, 12,562
Larceny, simple, Ireland, 3,329
Frauds and attempts to defraud, England and Wales, 676
Frauds and attempts to defraud, Ireland, 62
Forgery, England and Wales, 149
Forgery, Ireland, 4
Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin,
England and Wales, 674
Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin,
Ireland, 4
On the other hand, the following crimes are proportionately more
numerous in Ireland:
Convictions for manslaughter in 1854:
England and Wales, 96
Ireland, 50
Burglary, England and Wales, 384
“ Ireland, 240
We cannot think, however, that these returns are reliable, for the
_Statistical Journal_ of 1867 gives the following criminal tables for
England in 1865:
Wilful murder cases tried, 60
Manslaughter, 316
Concealment of birth, 143
---
Total, 519
And in Ireland from 1865 to 1871, a period of six years, only 21
persons were sentenced to death, of whom 13 were executed.
It is greatly to be regretted that criminal statistics give us no
information upon the religious character of the persons accused or
convicted of offences against the law. Many persons have been baptized
in infancy, and are called Catholics, though they have never been
brought under the influence of the church. In the absence of official
statistics, Dr. Descuret, who, in his capacity of legal physician in
Paris, had abundant opportunity to obtain data relative to this
subject, made, about thirty years ago, a careful study of the
religious views and sentiments of French criminals. The conclusion
which he reached was that, in every hundred persons accused of crime,
fifty are indifferentists in religion, forty are infidels, and the
remaining ten sincere believers. In a hundred suicides he found only
four persons of known piety, three of whom were women subject to
melancholia, and the other had been for some time mentally
deranged.[21]
[3] _The Table-Talk of Martin Luther_, pp. 200, 206, 213,
_et passim_.
[4] _Notes of a Traveller_, pp. 79, 80.
[5] _History of Europe_, vol. iii. chap. xxvii. 10, 11.
[6] _Autobiography_, pp. 58, 59.
[7] _Ibid._ p. 177.
[8] _History of European Morals_, p. 160.
[9] _Notes of a Traveller_, p. 172.
[10] For the full discussion of the statistics of this
subject see THE CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. ix. pp. 52 and 845.
[11] _European Morals_, p. 153.
[12] Alison’s _Miscellaneous Essays_, p. 119.
[13] Kay’s _Social Condition of the People_, vol. ii. p.
392.
[14] See _London Statistical Journal_, 1870, 1871.
[15] _Historische Politische Blätter_, 1867.
[16] _Crime: its Amount, Causes, and Remedies._ By Frederick
Hill, Barrister-at-law, late Inspector of Prisons.
London, p. 65.
[17] _Notes of a Traveller_ pp. 418-19.
[18] See _London Statistical Journal_, 1871.
[19] In 1871, 14,501,983 gallons of spirits were distilled
in Scotland. What proportion of this was consumed at
home we do not know. For the same year the number of
gallons entered for home consumption in Ireland was
5,212,746. The population of Scotland is nearly three
millions and a half, and that of Ireland about five
millions and a half.
[20] England and Wales, with not quite three times the
population of Ireland, had fifty times as many cases of
dishonesty among servants, which clearly accounts for
those newspaper advertisements in which English
housekeepers are careful to state that “no Irish need
apply.”
[21] _La Médecine des Passions_, p. 116.
PRIMEVAL GERMANS.
_Urdeutsch_ (which we have translated _Primeval Germans_) is a
historical novel, the scene of which is laid in the Black Forest
towards the second half of the fourth century. The author, Conrad von
Bolanden,[22] says in his preface that he intends it to be the first
of a series of three illustrating the action of Christianity on the
German people: the state in which it found them, that to which it
brought them, and that to which he says they are likely to be reduced
by modern infidelity. The story—which is mainly put together from
facts of the biography of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, and from
descriptions of ancient German life drawn from Roman and German
historians—is interesting as the record of a time utterly gone by, and
of a state of barbarism incident to the childhood of nations. Very
nearly the same characteristics appear in the earliest chapters of the
history of all uncivilized tribes, and a special likeness can be
traced between the Teutons of the ninth century and the American
Indians of the sixteenth and seventeenth. Sprung from widely different
races, and experiencing the effects of Christianity in a very
different manner, there is yet a striking likeness in some of the
manners and customs, the industries, the opinions, and the few moral
axioms of both peoples with which Christian missionaries have made us
familiar. The plot of the story is slight, and has the advantage of
not being confused and complicated, as is the case in many modern
novels. St. Martin, yet a deacon, is travelling to Strassburg with his
servant Eustace (one of the best characters in the book), and stumbles
upon a sleeping barbarian, whom he awakens from a bad nightmare by the
strains of his harp or lyre. He then asks of the gigantic German what
is his errand, and the Buffalo (such names were common among the
Teutons) tells him that he is on his return from the famous grove of
Helygenforst, where he had been sent by Bissula, the only daughter of
the last king of the Suevi, to consult an oracle on the issue of a
blood-feud between the two noble families of the Walen and the
Billing. She and her youngest brother Hermanric are the only
representatives left of the former family, her father and her eleven
brothers having all fallen victims to the enmity of the Billing. St.
Martin remonstrates with the German (a freedman of the Suevi), and
tells him that the true God abhors blood-feuds, and, availing himself
of the German belief in one Supreme God, the All-Father, whose reign
is to be made manifest after the end of the world and the destruction
of the gods Odin, Thor, Freya, Loki, etc., tells Buffalo that he is
the messenger of the All-Father, and will save the last of the Walen
from their danger and dilemma. The German, by his word and his hand
(as was also the custom later in the vowing of feudal _homage_),
constitutes himself the Muntwaldo, or protector, of the deacon, and
they set off to the land of the Suevi. Eustace, formerly a soldier
under Martin when the latter was a centurion, strongly objects to this
arrangement, and grimly reiterates his certainty that nothing will
ever transform the hopelessly barbaric Germans. On their way the party
are attacked by four Chatti, a tribe opposed to the Suevi, and Martin
forbids Buffalo to fight in his behalf, saying that he will willingly
go with the strangers, but in six days will not fail to visit the
Suevi. Buffalo goes on his way, and the two Romans are taken to the
village of Duke Fraomar, the leader of the Chatti.
Here follows an interesting description of the dress and domestic
arrangements of the early German tribes. The duke is not an hereditary
chieftain, but a leader chosen by the tribe for his valor and
strength, who has collected round himself a personal following or
guard, a sort of freebooter’s company—the original, perhaps, of the
roving bands of “Free Companions” who played such a conspicuous part
in the wars of the middle ages. The dress of the freemen of the tribe
consisted mostly of skins and furs, with the head of the animal,
whether buffalo, stag, wolf, or bear, drawn like a hood over the head,
and the front paws tied under the chin or crossed on the breast. The
women wore long, rather tight-fitting garments of coarse linen, with
short sleeves and bands of gaudy colors sewed round the hem; the feet
were bare. Both men and women wore long hair; it was a sign of free or
noble birth, and was plentifully greased with butter, as were also, on
some occasions, the bodies of the warriors. The children and the
slaves were for the most part naked or only provided with leathern
aprons. The house had but one apartment, which served all purposes:
the fire was in the middle, while to one side were bundles of straw
and skins, the primitive beds, and to the other a slightly-raised
platform, the primitive table and chairs. The men sat or lay on this
and ate off their shields, or sometimes off wooden platters. The women
served them at meals and filled the drinking-horns with beer and mead.
Besides these horns, human skulls—those of enemies slain in
battle—were used as goblets, and these, together with the skulls of
sacred horses and the horns of stags, adorned the walls of the
dwelling. There was also generally a wooden chest, clumsily fashioned,
containing the clothes of the family. The women, children, and slaves
ate round the hearth after their lords, and while these were gambling
with dice. The passion of gambling seems to have been an inveterate
one, and a man would often stake his all, including wife, children,
and slaves—sometimes even himself. If he lost, he was reduced to the
condition of a slave. The walls of the house were black and glistening
with the smoke of the mighty and continuous fires, and there is no
mention of even a hole in the roof as an outlet. St. Martin and his
servant are introduced into this wild interior just after the Duke
Fraomar has been winning house, lands, slaves, cattle, and even his
wife, from a freeman of the “hundred.” The strangers are made welcome
and become the guests of the duke, which implies that henceforth their
persons are sacred, as nothing was more shameful in the eyes of the
Germans than to break their word or infringe the rights of
hospitality. Eustace, however, looks ruefully on the evidences of
good-will tendered him in the shape of a kind of oat-broth, seasoned
with the primitive German preparation of salt, which (Pliny is
responsible for the statement) consisted of charcoal made of oak or
hazel, impregnated when hot with the water of salt springs; the black
morsels giving the same odor to the broth with which they were mixed.
Duke Fraomar, who has a promise from Odin’s oracle to help him in a
foray against the neighboring Suevi, provided he does not attack them
before the “ninth full moon,” is rather uneasy at having these
strangers, who are under the protection of his enemies, brought to
him, in case anything untoward should happen to them, and the Suevi
fall upon him to avenge them, before the charmed time. The next day
one of the freemen takes the saint and his servant round the
settlement; and the author here introduces an account of the old
German division of property in a “hundred,” or community of one
hundred freemen, each possessing the same quantity of ground, and each
obliged to render military service to the head of the tribe. The
agricultural economy was by no means contemptible. Ploughed land and
land overgrown with bushes alternated in lots, and each was cultivated
during six years, then allowed to lie fallow six more. Manuring was
unknown, chiefly because the animal manure was used as a safe and warm
covering to the earth caves where the grain was stored in winter, and
where not seldom the owner and his family also took refuge from the
cold. Each freeman had his stables, his slave-huts, and his brewery,
the latter being generally a cave in a rock furnished with one or two
mighty caldrons. At the end of this inspection of the “hundred” (such
a division exists still in England, though far enough in spirit from
the ideal of the free Teutons) the strangers come upon a terrible
scene of cruelty and superstition.
The “journey to Walhalla” was the poetical title given to the
immolation of aged and wealthy persons of both sexes, who, instead of
being allowed to die a natural death, were, according to the ancient
custom, first killed and then burned with their possessions, with an
accompaniment of religious ceremonies. A pile of wood was raised, and
the victims, stupefied with beer, laid thereon, with one or two slaves
who were to wait upon them in the halls of Odin; for the Germans
believed that no one who died a natural death went to Walhalla, but
endured torments and shame in hell. Men and women, therefore,
willingly allowed themselves to be killed, and often committed suicide
as another means of reaching Walhalla. On this occasion two old men
and a woman were to be immolated. A ludicrous dispute occurs here
between one of the men and his son, who grudges him _two_ slaves as
his servants in Odin’s hall, whereupon the father announces his
determination to live rather than go to the other world with so paltry
a following. This settles the question, and the son gives up the
second slave. A great deal of drinking and a sacred chant by the
priest of Odin precede the butchery, and the victims are each killed
by one blow of “Thor’s hammer,” wielded by a freeman deputed to this
office by the heathen priest. The worst part follows. Just as the pile
has been set on fire an infant is thrown on, the child of the woman
whom the duke won the night before at dice. The indifference of the
mother at the order for this barbarous execution seems to us rather
overdrawn. Human nature is human nature the world over; and if there
is one feeling more obstinately ineradicable than any other, it is the
feeling of a mother for her child—or, say, in the very lowest possible
scale of civilization, of a female for her young. Even though
infanticide is common among most heathen nations, and was certainly
not unknown among the early Germans, it is rather an exaggeration on
the part of the author to represent the mother herself in this case as
utterly and absolutely indifferent to the child’s fate. While their
guide is busy drinking among the spectators of this scene, Martin and
Eustace penetrate the sacred grove, round which is drawn a cord, which
no German would have passed with unbound hands. Unknowing of this
custom, the strangers enter the wood and gaze on the human skulls and
skeletons, the bloody skins and the sacred horse-skulls, hung on the
branches of the trees. The priest soon discovers their presence in the
holy grove, and threatens to kill them on the spot, but is restrained
by the duke’s messenger, their guide. He afterwards goes to the duke
and demands that the law shall be carried out, which, for such a
sacrilege, decrees that the profaner of the holy grove should lose his
right hand and his left foot. Fraomar, thinking of his plan for
attacking the Suevi at the ninth moon, and not before, hesitates to
consent to the priest’s demand and seeks to protect his guests.
Meanwhile, the story goes on to follow Buffalo to the house of the
Walen princess Bissula, who, though a heathen, has been in Gaul and
had some intercourse with the Romans and a German Christian sovereign
family called the Tribboki. Her dress and dwelling are described as
much embellished by Roman arts and many degrees removed from the
ancient German simplicity. But, though outwardly less a German, she is
at heart an uncompromising adherent of the old customs of her fathers,
particularly of the blood-feud. She lives for the sole purpose of
avenging the death of her father and brothers; and, indeed, her stern
determination is the only circumstance of the book which can be called
a “plot.” Withimer, the son of the king of the Tribboki, is her lover
and her suitor, and comes to her house to offer himself as her
husband. He is a Christian and hopes to convert her also, but the
terrible blood-feud stands between them. She loves him as passionately
as he loves her, but refuses to marry him unless he will swear to take
upon himself the duty of revenge against her enemies, the Billing.
This, as a Christian, he cannot do, and hence ensues a hard struggle
between his love and his conscience, in which the “baptized heathen,”
as the author calls him, very nearly breaks down and forswears the
faith. Bissula, on her side, is still more determined, and once even
attempts suicide by throwing herself in the way of a wild beast while
out hunting, saying, as she does so, that she can more easily give up
her life than her love, but that her honor is yet dearer to her than
her love. Various devices are resorted to by Katuwald, the young chief
of the Billing, the hostile family, to end the blood-feud by marrying
Bissula, with whom he is in love; and the author now introduces the
“Thing,” or assembly of the people, the primeval parliament. This took
place in a circle surrounded by trees, on which the freemen hung their
shields and helmets. A rock, sacred as a kind of tribunal, stood in
the centre, and round this stone benches were ranged, on which sat the
representatives of the several hundreds. The oracle which Buffalo had
been sent to consult had returned the answer, “Let the Thing judge the
cause,” the priest who represented the deity having been bribed by the
Billing prince to send this answer. Bissula, with her lover, appears
at the assembly; but before their coming a lesser court of justice is
held for the adjustment of local claims, which gives us an opportunity
of reviewing some curious customs of the ancient Germans.
For instance, the value of human life in the case of a slave is shown
in two “cases” which come up for arbitration. A slave—but the son of a
free father, and a freeman himself by birth—secretly marries a
freewoman, and, on her father’s discovering the connection, the choice
is given her of killing her husband with her own hand or of being
herself degraded to slavery. A sword and a distaff were offered her;
if she chose the former, she was free, but was forced to plunge it in
the man’s breast; if the latter, she became a slave. There were two
other possible means of settling the question: the father had the
right to kill her, and the owner of the slave might give him his
freedom. In the case in point this last was the happy solution of the
problem. Another difficulty arose in the case of damages claimed by a
freeman whose neighbor’s tame stag, trained for hunting purposes, had
broken into his fields, killed a dozen head of cattle and two slaves,
in return for which he himself had shot the stag. The latter was
declared by law to be of a greater value than the two slaves, and a
fixed rate of compensation was adjudged, which completely satisfied
both parties. From a heathen point of view, considering that both men
and stags were “chattels,” it cannot be wondered at that the latter
were thought most valuable; for the market was over-stocked with
slaves, who might be had any day during a foray, while “domestic”
stags were very hard to train, and required to be taught some years
before they could be of any use to their owners.
When Bissula makes her appearance, the gathering of the people
resolves itself into a “Thing,” and she and her enemies, the five sons
of the noble Billing Brenno, take their place by the rock. Hermanric’s
absence causes some wonder and annoyance, but Marcomir, the umpire,
nevertheless begins the session. Katuwald boldly proposes to end the
feud by marrying Bissula, who openly and contemptuously refuses his
suit, whereupon a great tumult arises and Hermanric rides into the
circle, a bloody head dangling at his saddle-bow. He recounts his
exploit—how he, though not yet invested with a man’s weapons (as the
rule was to entrust neither sword nor spear to a youth under
nineteen), forced the aged Brenno, who had stayed at home, to fight
him in single combat, the Billing armed with sword and shield, and
himself only with a club. The trembling slave who follows him
corroborates his story, and Katuwald, already sore from Bissula’s
proud refusal of his love, looks upon the youth with a significant and
angry eye, and at last leaves the council, having publicly asked to be
told the law of compensation for carrying off another man’s wife or
betrothed. Affairs stand thus with the Suevi, while the story returns
to Martin in the hands of the Chatti.
An assembly of the freemen of this tribe is held to discuss the
question raised by the priest, as to Martin’s punishment for invading
the sacred grove. This takes place the same day that Buffalo goes in
quest of his friend, and he arrives in time to be present at the
gathering. Duke Fraomar is anxious to save the strangers—not for their
own sakes, but for fear of precipitating the attack on the Suevi
before the propitious time appointed by the oracle. At last Martin
proposes an ordeal such as, since the days of Elijah, has often been
resorted to to decide rival claims to truth. A few chosen
representatives are to accompany him and the priest to the shrine of
the heathen gods in the forest, and the Christian and the priest are
both to call upon their gods to show themselves. Here follows a
description of the shrine—a building of wood beneath a gigantic
oak-tree. Within are kept “Thor’s hammer” and “Tyr’s sword,” and the
car of the goddess Hertha, the Cybele of Teutonic mythology, or simply
the Earth-mother. Into this car she was at times supposed to descend,
when a yoke of cows was harnessed to it, and it was covered with a
white cloth, and thus drawn solemnly through the “hundred.” After
these processions, the car and cloth were washed by slaves in a pond,
into which the latter were afterwards thrown and drowned. The statue
or figure of the goddess was erected in a huge crack of the sacred
tree, and her grim, enormous head, with staring eyes and yawning
mouth, black with clotted blood, crowned a clumsily-carved block,
without either arms or legs.[23] Horse-skulls and white horse-skins
(the priest was also clad in such skins), human skulls and skeletons,
dogs’ heads and skins of wild beasts, hung from the branches of the
sacred tree, which might have sheltered a regiment. Near the sacred
car stood a stone altar encrusted with blood. The priest carefully
placed the Christian stranger within easy reach of his arm, and
distributed the others, the duke, the Sueve Buffalo, and the wise men
of the hundred, where they could not see his movements. After his
prayer, he was preparing to swing the hammer so as to reach the
saint’s head, when Buffalo, suspecting foul play, stole quietly
forward and called to Martin to shift his position. Martin simply bade
his companions, who, like himself, had their hands securely bound,
rise up and lift their hands free from the cords. The fastenings fell
off and the heathens stood in awe, waiting for his words. This, says
the author, is word for word from St. Martin’s biographer, Sulpicius
Severus. Then came a crashing noise, and the lightning fell on the
priest, killing him instantly, while the mighty tree was rent in
pieces and fell to the earth, carrying in its fall the idol, temple,
altar, and car, which disappeared under its burning branches. With awe
and terror Fraomar and the Chatti besought the stranger, as a terrible
magician, to leave them and not work them any more mischief. The saint
sorrowfully complies, grieving that the true God had not yet conquered
their hearts, though his might had been shown in such a way, and goes
his way with Buffalo to the Suevian settlement. Here he takes up his
abode in a cave, in front of which is a spring called Odin’s Spring,
and in which the Germans bathe their new-born children and give them
names. Meanwhile, Withimer, the Christian, struggles with his love,
and Bissula, the proud, beautiful heathen princess, still refuses to
marry him unless he will undertake the duty of avenging her murdered
father and brothers. St. Martin reasons with both, and at last
prevails with the former to give up his love for the sake of his
conscience; but having painted the evils of ingratitude to God and of
eternal damnation in vain, he at last conquers the youth by reminding
him that, as a German, it would be an indelible disgrace to him to
forswear himself by breaking his baptismal vows. Bissula mourns his
sudden departure, which she attributes to a messenger having recalled
him during her absence, and turns her attention to preserving her last
remaining brother from the hatred of the Billing. This she does by
resorting to the charms of the Abruna woman Velleda, a priestess said
to be hundreds of years old, and to possess marvellous powers, as
Circe of old, to change men into stones, trees, and animals. She is,
however, not a witch, but the enemy of witches; and here follows a
terrible account of the cruelties and absurdities to which the belief
in witches led in those times, and, indeed, in all times.
Châteaubriand’s[24] beautiful Gallic Velleda is a very different
character from this hideous old hag of the Black Forest. Though not a
witch, she has, in Bolanden’s book, all the conventional “properties”
of one in the shape of a talking raven and two snakes entwined round
her neck and arms. She promises Katuwald to give Bissula a love-drink,
to turn her heart from Withimer to himself; and by a charm, consisting
of a piece of skin inscribed with mystic characters, she promises to
Hermanric invulnerability against “sword and spear.”
St. Martin, in the meanwhile, has managed to gather an audience of
children, whom he instructs in the truths of Christianity and teaches
to behave according to Christian morality, not forgetting also to
induce them to clothe and wash themselves regularly every day. Some of
the parents also join his catechumens, but the greater part still look
upon him as an impious contemner of the gods and a powerful magician
The priest of this “hundred” once tries to entrap him at the head of a
crowd of infuriated Germans, but the saint mildly and logically drives
him into contradictions which are evident even to his unlearned
hearers. On this occasion the two accounts of the creation, the
Biblical and the Teutonic, are set side by side. The defeated priest
retires, but only to plot further mischief; and the scene changes to a
German wedding, which forms a very interesting chapter. Girls of an
age and willing to be married usually wore several little bells in
their girdle, and it was allowed to any freeman to carry them off,
provided he afterwards loyally paid the stipulated price—two fat oxen,
a caparisoned horse, two slaves, a sword, a spear, and a shield—to the
bride’s father. The bridegroom’s dress was that usually worn by
freemen on state occasions, and of course the full complement of
weapons was indispensable. Falk, the bridegroom, is represented as
wearing a magnificent bear-skin, with the head drawn over his own as a
hood. The bride, besides her linen tunic or undergarment; wore also a
cloak of Roman manufacture and of gaudy colors. The whole kindred of
the bridegroom accompanied him with horns, pipes, and a kind of
cymbals to his father-in-law’s house, and the oxen, etc., were led by
the slaves. The father performed the ceremony, and Falk swore by
“sword and spear” to hold his wife in all honor and truth. The father
put a ring on the bride’s finger and bade her remember that, although
her husband would be allowed by ancient custom to take other wives if
he pleased, she herself would nevertheless be bound to the most
unswerving fidelity; and, giving her two yoked oxen as a wedding
present, told her that as these two drew one car, so husband and wife
were bound to share and carry together the burdens of life.[25] The
shrill music of the horns and clashing together of weapons accompanied
the approving hurrahs of the two families, and Falk now led his wife
home. From the door of his house hung a naked sword—the “marriage
sword”—a warning of the doom that follows the least infidelity; and on
going in the bridegroom led the bride three times round the hearth,
saying: “Here shalt thou stay and watch as housemistress in chastity,
prudence, and industry.” A free-woman of the husband’s kindred then
brought a bowl of water and washed the bride’s feet, after which the
bride’s father dipped a linden-branch in the same water and sprinkled
the bed, the domestic utensils, and the relations of the bridegroom. A
wooden platter full of honey was then handed to him, and, as he
anointed the bride’s mouth with honey, he said these words: “Let thy
mouth always speak sweet words to thy husband, but no bitter ones.”
After this ceremony the bride’s head was wrapped in a cloth, and she
was led to the closed door of the dwelling, and in succession to those
of the stables, the grain-store, and the slave-huts, each of which she
struck with her right foot, while the women showered handfuls of
wheat, oats, barley, and beans on her head, during which rite the
father said to her: “As long as thou governest thy house with
industry, so long shalt thou not lack the fruits of the earth.” Falk
now took the cloth off his wife’s head and kissed her, and all the
family followed with their congratulations.
The expected presence of Bissula at the banquet had led to a departure
from the ordinary German usage, and a table had been prepared for such
as would sit at it during the bridal feast. The king’s daughter, when
she came, brought a much-valued present, one which German housewives
of the present day rate as highly as their gigantic ancestresses of
the days of old—a store of home-spun linen. After the banquet, a wild
dance was performed in honor of the young couple. Tacitus gives an
account of it: The young men assembled in a crooked double line, half
of them holding naked swords and the other half spears, held forward,
crossing each other. Four or five youths, entirely naked, now began a
skilful dance, threading their way with incredible quickness between
the shining weapons. The Scotch sword-dance is thought sufficiently
clever nowadays, but what is it compared to the real danger, and the
opportunity of showing dexterity as well as courage, which this
ancient German custom offered? This game was accompanied by the shrill
blast of horns and pipes and the hoarse shouting of the excited
spectators. Another drinking bout followed this exploit, when, as the
day began to fade, the priestess Velleda made her appearance. And now
a natural phenomenon was added to the strange scene—a partial eclipse
of the moon, which the Germans explained as the struggle between the
moon and the giant wolf Managarm, a half-divine creature, who feeds on
the bodies of the dead and now and then hunts and pursues the heavenly
bodies. As the shadow grew less and the moon’s light broke forth
again, the guests clamored and clashed their arms together, crying
out, “The moon wins! the moon wins!” as if encouraging human
combatants. During this confusion Katuwald, the Billing chief,
emboldened by the love-potion which Velleda has given Bissula to
drink, attempts to carry her off; but the maiden, strong as the women
of giant growth of old Germany ever were, wrestles with him and
overcomes him, bearing him in her arms into the midst of the assembled
guests. Most of the authorities quoted by Bolanden go to confirm the
facts of the extraordinary strength of the women of that time, their
stature of six and often seven feet, and of the custom prevalent among
the Germans of teaching young girls to wrestle and throw the spear
like the men.