CHAPTER XVI.

FOUND AT LAST!

While the three inmates of the white-washed villa were watching the

days go by, and wondering if to-morrow could possibly be as happy as

yesterday and to-day, Clide de Winton was living a very different life

in his lodgings near the asylum. He had not yet been permitted to see

the lady whom he believed to be his wife. She had fallen ill with an

attack on the lungs which had very nearly proved fatal, and during the

six weeks that it lasted it was impossible to let any one approach her

except the familiar faces of the doctor and her attendant. She had

rallied from this illness only to return to her old delusion with a

fonder intensity than ever. Day after day she decked herself in her

faded flowers and ribbons, and stood or knelt at her window,

stretching out her arms to the mid-day sun, calling to him with the

tenderest words of endearment, and telling him her passionate

love-tale over and over again; then turning from this to paroxysms of

despair more violent than formerly, and which threatened at each

crisis to shatter the fragile vase and send the feeble spark flying

upwards.

“And now she courted love; now, raving, called on hate.”

Clide had repeatedly asked to see Mr. Percival, but the desire for an

interview was evidently not mutual; for, although no refusal was ever

sent, the promises held out by the medical man were continually

broken; the visit of Mr. Percival was always “unexpectedly prevented”

by one cause or another. Stanton arrived at the conclusion that he did

not wish to meet Clide, and that, moreover, he was constantly at the

asylum unknown to them, and that the only way to see him would be to

lie in wait and collar him, and make him speak out by main force,

since he would not do it otherwise. Mr. de Winton saw difficulties in

the way of this summary method of proceeding, but his valet entreated

him to leave it in his hands and not trouble himself about that. Clide

had small confidence in the diplomatic skill of his man, but he could

trust him not to do anything dangerously rash; so he asked no

questions, but let him follow his own devices for catching Mr.

Percival. That gentleman, however, proved himself a match for Stanton.

He was not to be taken either by stratagem or force; and though

Stanton dodged about the park gates, and recruited a small police

force, amongst little boys on the lookout for a penny, to skulk about

late and early to watch the comers and goers from the asylum, and give

him timely warning, it led to nothing but vain hopes and frequent

disappointments.

Clide was growing sick to death of the miserable business. He had been

more than two months now stationed at his post. Isabel’s illness had

made two-thirds of that time utterly useless to him; but it was now a

full week since the doctor had declared her convalescent, and he

seemed no nearer the solution of her identity than when he first

descried her through the panel of the door. He determined at last one

morning to go in and speak out his mind to the medical man. He told

him that he insisted on an interview with Mr. Percival, or else he

would take steps in the matter which might be disagreeable to all

parties. It was quite inexplicable, he said, that they should not have

been able to find an opportune moment or letting him approach the

patient all this time, and the persistent obstacles that were thrown

in the way of an interview with the man who called himself her

guardian led him to infer that both Mr. Percival and the doctor were

in league to prevent her identity being tested and established.

The effect of this broadside was startling. But although it took the

doctor entirely by surprise, it did not throw him off his guard or

disturb his presence of mind. He looked at the speaker for a moment in

silence, and then said in a perfectly cool and collected manner:

“I see there is no use in playing at this game any longer. I have

humored you up to this, and borne with your mania, because I knew it

was a mania. It has been plain to me from the third time I saw you,

Mr. de Winton, that you were yourself the victim of a delusion and an

eligible candidate for a lunatic asylum. I have prevented Mr. Percival

from taking steps to have you confined—the law empowers us to do so

when a madman threatens the security and honor of another—because I

hoped the monomania would wear itself out with patience. I find I have

been mistaken. I shall interfere no farther with Mr. Percival in his

legitimate desire to protect the lady who is under my care from your

persistent persecution. She is no more your wife than she is mine.

Your story about her is as groundless as the ravings of a man in

fever.”

While the doctor delivered himself of this attack Clide stared at him

in stupefaction. He saw the medical man’s glance fixed on him with the

expression of one who was versed in the art of reading the mind

through that lucid and faithful interpreter—the eye. But though he was

both shocked and indignant, he was not a whit frightened; he bore the

scrutiny without flinching, without dropping his lid once.

“You are a clever tactician, I see,” he said coolly. “Carrying the war

into the enemy’s country is one of the desperate strategies of a

daring general, but it is sometimes more fatal to the invader than to

the invaded. You have now thrown off the mask and shown me exactly

what manner of man I have to deal with, and I shall resort to other

means than those I have hitherto employed for seeing the patient whom

I am now absolutely and fully convinced is no other than my unhappy

wife.”

He rose, and was leaving without further parley when the doctor cried

out:

“You can see her this moment, if you choose—that is, if you choose to

be guilty of homicide. I am prepared to state before the first men in

the faculty, and to stake my character on the assertion, that—if she

be your wife—the sight of you, supposing that it brings recognition,

will be fatal to her life by causing the rupture of a vessel on the

brain. Come back with any qualified witnesses you think fit, and I

will repeat this in their presence, and then, on your responsibility,

I will conduct you to the patient.”

Clide made no answer, but left the house, and was soon on his way to

Piccadilly in a cab. The admiral had come to town the night before; it

was partly the desire to be able to give his uncle some definite

information concerning the inmate of the mad-house that had driven him

to burn his ships and have it out with the doctor.

The cab stopped, and as Clide alighted he was accosted by a friendly

voice and the grip of a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Hallo, De Winton! How are you? Where have you turned up from?”

It was Ponsonby Anwyll’s voice; he looked in the highest state of

elation, blonder and burlier than ever, the very picture of good

temper, good digestion, and general prosperity.

The sight of him jarred on Clide; he had naturally a vindictive

feeling toward poor Ponsonby since that random shot of Sir Simon’s

about his making Franceline a good husband by and by. He did not

believe a word of it; but it made him feel savagely to the young

squire, nevertheless. How dare he behave so as to get his name coupled

with hers at all?

“I have been hanging about town for some time,” returned Clide as

stiffly as he could without being uncivil. “I suppose you’re on leave?

Or perhaps quartered somewhere hereabouts?”

“Quartered! No such luck! We’re vegetating in Devonshire still, I’m

sorry to say; but there’ll soon be an end of it for me. I mean to sell

out and settle down one of these days. I’ve come up to try and get a

month’s leave. I think I’ll succeed, too, the colonel is such an

awfully good fellow; and what do you think I’m going to do with it?

Where do you think I’m going to spend it?”

“How should I know?”

“At Nice! Sir Simon Harness has asked me over to stay at his villa

there; the De la Bourbonais are there, you know. You’ll be glad to

hear that Franceline has made a splendid recovery of it, and the count

has picked up wonderfully too.… Oh! I beg a thousand pardons. Pray

allow me!…” This was to an old lady whose umbrella he had whisked into

the middle of the street with a touch of his stick, that he kept

swinging round while he held forth to Clide. When he had picked it up

and dusted it, and apologized three times over, he went on to say:

“Why shouldn’t you run over and see them all too, eh? You used to be

very friendly with the count, eh? And Sir Simon would be enchanted to

see you. There’s nothing he likes so much as being come down on by a

friend unawares, you know.”

“I never gratify my friends in that respect,” said Clide freezingly;

“I always wait to be invited. Are you to be a large party at the

villa?”

“I don’t fancy so; but I really don’t know. The only invitations I

know of are myself and Roxham. He’s a capital fellow, Roxham; I’m glad

we are going together. I wish you’d come too, though, eh? Perhaps

you’ll think it over and pop down on us one of these days when we

least expect it? Have you any message for Sir Simon or any of them?”

“My best respects to M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter.

Good-afternoon. A pleasant journey to you!”

“Wish me good-luck about the leave first!” said the good-natured,

obtuse dragoon as he strode on, laughing.

“The lumbering idiot! How I should like to kick him! The impudence of

the lout calling her Franceline!” This was Mr. de Winton’s soliloquy

as he stood looking after Ponsonby, giving at the same time a pull to

the bell as if the house were on fire.

The admiral was out. Cromer, his old valet, who had first sounded the

signal about Isabel, happened to be at his master’s for the day, and

said he believed he had gone to see Master Clide. Clide jumped back

into his cab and told the man to go like the wind, as he wanted to

overtake some one. His reflections on the way were none of the

pleasantest. What was bringing Ponsonby Anwyll to spend a month at Sir

Simon’s while M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter were there? What

but to marry Franceline? Had she, then, so completely forgotten Clide?

Why not? If his love for her had a tithe of the unselfishness it

boasted, he ought to be the first to rejoice at it; to be glad that

she was happy and was about to become the wife of a good and honorable

and warm-hearted man whom she loved. Did she love him? could she love

him?—a lump of red and white clay with as much soul as a prize bull!

She that was such an ethereal, lily creature—how could it be possible?

What could any girl see in him to love? If this was an irrational and

unfair estimate of Ponsonby’s outward and inward man, it was natural

enough on Clide’s part. No man, be he ever so reasonable, is expected

to do justice to the claims of any other man to be preferred by the

woman he loves. But Clide was more savage with Sir Simon even than

with Anwyll. What business had he to go meddling at making a match for

Franceline? Why could he not have let her alone, and let destiny take

its course—or, to put it in a more concrete shape, let Clide de Winton

take his chance? Clide did not consider that his chance virtually had

no existence whatever in Sir Simon’s calculations. He believed that

Isabel’s identity was established beyond a doubt, and that this fact,

much as he might regret it, excluded Clide for ever from having any

part in Franceline’s destiny. He believed, moreover, or he wished to

believe—which with the sanguine Sir Simon meant one and the same

thing—that Clide had quite got over his _passion malheureuse_ for

Franceline, but, whether he had or not, it could not be helped; he

could not marry her, and it was preposterous to expect that she was to

remain unmarried out of consideration for his feelings. Here was an

admirable settlement in life that presented itself, and it was Sir

Simon’s duty, as her self-elected guardian and her father’s oldest

friend, to do all in his power to secure it to her.

Oh! but if Franceline would but wait a little longer—it might be such

a very little while—until Clide was free! “What a pitiful thing a

woman’s love is compared to a man’s! If I had been in her position,

and she in mine,” he thought, “I would have waited a lifetime for

her!”

You see Clide was assuming, in spite of his oft-sighed hopes to the

contrary, that Franceline did love him. He argued the point bitterly

in his mind, accusing her and acquitting her and cursing his own fate

all in the same breath, as he rattled over the stony street. But the

cursing brought no relief. Help was nowhere at hand. In the old

story-books, when a man found himself at bay with difficulties, he

called the devil to the rescue, and the devil came. These delightful

legends generally represent him in spectacles and a bottle-green coat;

they may sometimes differ as to the precise color of the coat, but

they all agree that he was the most accommodating practitioner, often

volunteering his services without waiting to be asked. When it came to

striking a bargain, no one was more liberal than he. The man in

difficulties made his own terms: unlimited wealth, a long life with

the lady of his choice, the sweet triumphs of revenge—one or all of

these the devil would concede with the utmost generosity; all the

client had to do in return was to scratch his name to a bit of paper,

signing his soul away—a sort of post-obit bill to be presented at some

period that was not always even of necessity specified.

If this obliging old legendary personage had appeared at this juncture

to Clide de Winton, I suspect he would have had little difficulty in

striking a bargain with him. To be free; to burst at once this odious,

insufferable chain that must soon be dissolved by death; to be able to

seize the prize that was about to be snatched from him at the very

moment he felt sure that a little delay would have secured it to him

for ever—to obtain this Clide would have signed away his life, ay, and

his soul’s life too, for the asking. No evil one, it is true,

presented himself in a bottle-green coat or any other visible attire,

but one, nevertheless, got close enough to the distracted lover’s ear

to whisper a proposal audibly. An invisible devil jumped into the cab

with him, and sat close to him all the way from Piccadilly home, and

never ceased urging, pleading; no tongue of flesh ever spoke more

distinctly:

“You have the game in your own hands. The doctor is out now. You know

your way to her room. No one will stop you. Go straight up, and walk

in, and address your wife; you are her husband, and have a right to do

it. The shock will kill her; but what of that? What is life to her

that any merciful man should wish to prolong it? Death will be the

cessation of mental and bodily anguish to her, poor raving maniac, and

it will set you free—free to marry Franceline. You know Franceline

loves you. The mercy will then be for her too; if she marries Ponsonby

Anwyll, it will be only to please her father. She will be miserable;

it will break her heart. Go and save both her and yourself.”

When the tempter comes armed with such weapons as these, and finds us

in the mood in which Clide was as he drove home through the noisy

streets into the quiet suburb, the issue of the struggle, if struggle

there be, is hardly doubtful. There was a struggle in this case. You

could see it in the feverish movements of the tempted man; he could

not sit still, but kept shifting his limbs as we are apt to do when

there is no other escape from the steady contemplation of our

thoughts. One moment he leaned back with his hands thrust deep into

his pockets, and stared out of the window; the next he started forward

and bent down on his knees, as if examining closely something at his

feet. He took off his hat, smoothed it with his coat-sleeve, pushed

back his hair, and put his hat on again. This physical agitation

seemed to bring him no relief. He drew out his pocket-book and read

over attentively the memoranda of the day before—appointments at the

club, with his tailor, books that he had dotted down for reading; but

while he perused these commonplace items the voice of the tempter kept

on whispering, louder and louder, sweeter and sweeter. The dusty cab

was the temple of a vision. Franceline stood before him, with her arms

outstretched; she drew nearer, she called him by his name; he felt her

breath upon his cheek, the soft touch of her hand in his. Could sin

come to him in such guise as this? His features for a moment were

convulsed, swayed by the terrible conflict. Gradually the combat

ceased, and an expression, not of calm, but of rigid determination,

settled on them; the dark brows drew together, making that black line

across the forehead which gave to Clide’s face its peculiar, strong

individuality. He had not accepted the tempter’s arguments, but he had

accepted the issue they pointed at, twisting reasons to his own

purpose, and adopting the sophistry of passion: “I will go and accost

her. Ten to one—what do I say? a hundred to one, she is not my wife.

The absence of the silver tooth ought to have convinced me of that

long ago. It ought to have settled the non-identity from the first;

for Percival says he never heard of such a thing. As to its killing

her, supposing she be my wife, it’s all nonsense; the fellow is in

Percival’s pay, and that’s why he has fought out so against my seeing

her. I’ll defy him once for all, and make an end of it one way or

another.”

Clide did not, or would not, see the palpable paradox that there was

in this train of reasoning; but deafen himself as he might by

sophistry and inclination, he could not drown the voice of conscience,

that clamored so as to make itself heard above every other.

“Has the admiral been here?” was his first question as he sprang out

of the cab and rushed up-stairs.

“Yes, sir; him and Mr. Simpson.”

“Ah! Simpson. Are they long gone?”

“Not above a good quarter of an hour. They’re not gone very far;

they’re over yonder,” said Stanton, with a knowing jerk of his head in

the direction of the asylum.

Clide started.

“What do you mean? What are they gone to do there?”

“They’re just gone to have it out with the doctor, sir. Mr. Simpson

says it’s all gammon about your not being let see her. He’s gone over

to insist on seeing her himself—him and the admiral; and if the doctor

refuses to let them up, Mr. Simpson’ll set the law on him.”

“Good God! they will kill her. They have done it already perhaps! I am

too late to stop them!” said Clide, white to the lips, and taking a

stride towards the door. The room reeled round him. Was he going to be

an accomplice in the murder of his wife? He would at that moment have

renounced Franceline for ever to prevent the act that a few minutes

ago he was bent on committing.

Stanton was frightened.

“Stay you here, Master Clide,” he said, taking him by both arms and

forcing him into a chair. “Don’t you take on like that. I’ll run

across and stop ‘em. There an’t no ‘arm done; the doctor’s never in

the ‘ouse at this hour, and they never ‘ud let them hup without him.

You stay quiet while I run after them. I’ll be back in no time.”

Clide made no resistance; he let himself drop into the chair in a kind

of stupor. The sudden reaction, coming close upon the fierce mental

conflict he had gone through, acted like a blow on a drunken man; it

stunned and felled him.

“Go, then, and be quick, for God’s sake!” he muttered.

* * * * *

Ten minutes went by, and then fifteen, and Clide began to wonder what

was keeping Stanton.

He could bear the suspense no longer, but took up his hat and went to

see what caused the delay.

Stanton, meantime, had not been amusing himself. In answer to his

inquiries the porter informed him that the two gentlemen he was

looking for had called at the house and asked to see the doctor, and,

on hearing that he was out and not expected home for half an hour, had

declined to come in, but were walking about the place waiting for him.

Stanton hesitated a moment whether he should run home at once with

this reassuring news to his master, or fetch the admiral and Mr.

Simpson, and bring them back with him; he decided for the latter and

set off to look for them. The grounds were spacious and thickly

planted enough to admit of two persons easily getting out of sight for

a few minutes; but when Stanton had looked all round, walking hastily

from avenue to alley, and could see no trace of the two gentlemen, he

began to think they must have changed their minds and gone away. He

went on, however, a good way behind the house until he came on a low

brick wall that he fancied must mark the limits of the premises. He

was about to turn back when he heard a loud, shrill scream proceeding

from the other side of the wall. He ran along by it till he saw a door

that was ajar, and then, without pausing to consider where he was

going or what he was doing, rushed in and ran on in the direction of

the scream. Presently he heard voices raised in angry strife. A few

more steps brought him in presence of Admiral de Winton, Mr. Simpson,

and a third gentleman. They were disputing violently. The admiral was

supporting a woman who had apparently fainted; the stranger was

expostulating and trying to take her from him; Mr. Simpson was

standing between them, speaking in loud and authoritative tones:

“Very well, very good; we shall see if it is as you say. But we must

see for ourselves; we must find out if there was nothing in her crying

out ‘Clide! Clide!’ the moment she saw this gentleman and heard his

voice. Stand back! Don’t lay a finger on him or on her! I _do_ know

what I am doing—I know better than you do. Stand off, I tell you!”

The stranger was, however, determined to make a fight for it, and was

answering in a bullying, insolent manner when Stanton came up.

“I know that voice! Where have I heard it?” was the valet’s first

thought as the loud, harsh tones fell on his ear.

There was a garden seat close at hand. The admiral was carrying the

fainting woman towards it. Stanton ran forward to help.

“Go to the house and call for proper assistance,” said Mr. Simpson

shortly to the stranger. “You know where to find it, I suppose; you

know the house.”

“I know I sha’n’t move from this while my child is at the mercy of two

escaped lunatics! That’s what I know,” retorted the other savagely.

The words were not out of his mouth when Stanton was at his throat,

collaring him with both hands.

“You scoundrel! I’ve caught you at last,” he said. “You villain of

villains! I’ll do for you! He’s the fellow that called himself

Prendergast, and that’s master Clide’s wife!”

All this took much less time to enact than to relate. The scream which

had brought Stanton to the spot had been heard by an attendant; there

was always one on the watch in the neighborhood of the patients’

garden, and she came hurrying up in an instant.

“Who are you all, and what are you doing here?” she cried, casting an

alarmed look at the three men and at the lifeless figure stretched on

the wooden seat.

“A couple of escaped lunatics!” shouted Mr. Percival, struggling

furiously. Stanton was holding him by the collar, while Mr. Simpson

pinioned him from behind, the admiral standing meantime, bent in eager

scrutiny, over the strange figure, decked out in faded flowers and

ribbons, that lay insensible before him.

“Come here!” he said, beckoning to the attendant; “come and attend to

this poor creature, and leave those gentlemen to settle their business

alone.”

The woman evidently felt that this was what it most concerned her to

do; she allowed the admiral to lift the patient in his arms, while she

guided him into the house. They had just entered by a back door when

Clide de Winton walked by in search of Stanton. The porter had

directed him to “somewhere about the grounds,” and, after looking in

vain up and down the avenues, he was going to give it up in despair

when he saw the door in the garden wall, now wide open, and heard a

voice which he recognized as Stanton’s, “Come on! You may as well give

in and come quietly; bad language and kicks will only make it worse

for you, you rascal!”

Clide was quickly on the spot, and beheld Stanton and Mr. Simpson

wrestling desperately with a man whose fury seemed a match for their

united strength.

“I’ve caught him, Master Clide! We have him tight—that rascal

Prendergast! You an’t he? You be choked for a —— liar!”

Clide stood for a moment confounded. There was not a trait of

resemblance, as far as he could see, between the stout, full-bodied

man with jet black hair, and the gray-haired, thin, miserable-looking

mortal whom he remembered as Mr. Prendergast. His first idea was that

Stanton had made another outrageous mistake, as in the case of Miss

Eliza Jane Honey.

“Who are you? You are not the Mr. Prendergast I knew, are you?” he

said, addressing the stranger.

“Of course I am not! I never saw you or this madman in my life! My

name is Mathew Percival; my daughter is unfortunately a patient in

this asylum, and this fellow will have it that she is his wife!”

“My master’s wife, you scoundrel! Don’t think to come over us with

making believe not to understand! She’s Mr. Clide de Winton’s wife!”

said Stanton, taking a tighter grip, as if he feared the prize might

make a sudden dart and escape from him.

“You _are_ the man who called himself Prendergast, and whose niece, as

you then called her, I married!” said Clide. The voice and the broad

Scotch accent were unmistakable, though the speaker had made an effort

to disguise them. “You say she is your daughter now. Speak the truth

at once. The patient in yonder house is the Isabel Cameron whom I

married. Let him go, Simpson! Stanton, let go your hold on him! Speak

out now.”

Mr. Prendergast, or Percival, looked down sullenly for a moment, as if

making up his mind how to meet this challenge; then he looked up with

the dogged, defiant air of a man at bay who is resolved to die game.

He was going to speak, when a woman, the same attendant who had just

left them, came running up in breathless haste.

“Stanton! Which of you is Stanton?” she cried.

“It’s me!”

“Then go as fast as you can and fetch your master! His wife is calling

for him; run quickly, or it will be too late. She is dying!”

“I am his master! I am her husband! Take me with you!” said Clide,

turning so white that Stanton thought he was going to faint and made a

movement to give him his arm; but Clide waved him away and walked on

with a steady step.

Something between a cry and an oath escaped from Percival; he made no

attempt to follow them, but muttered more to himself than to his

companions:

“The murder is out! There is nothing more to tell. She is his wife,

and I am the Prendergast he knew.”

Stanton’s fury had subsided in an instant, quenched by the chill which

those words of the attendant had thrown upon the group: “_She is

dying!_” What had human passion or earthly vengeance to do now with

Isabel or Mr. Prendergast? In the presence of the Great Avenger all

other vengeance was silenced. The three men walked on toward the house

without exchanging a word. The porter let them in. The doctor, he

said, had not yet returned. It did not matter; they would wait, not

for him now, but for Death.

When Clide entered the room, he beheld Admiral de Winton seated beside

the dying woman’s bed; her face was lifted toward his with a mute

expression, half of yearning, half of fear, while she listened to the

soothing words he tried to speak to her. The moment Clide appeared her

eyes turned toward him. There was no mistaking the identity now; those

eyes, so faded and dim, were the same that had first fired his foolish

heart with their dark young radiance. The cheeks, once round, were wan

and hollow, the glossy, ebon hair was specked with gray, but the face

was that of his long-lost wife, the Isabel of his boyish love.

“You have come!… You have come to say that you forgive me!” she said

in faint, low tones, fastening a wistful, trembling glance on him; for

Clide did not advance at once, but stood on the threshold, arrested by

the mournful spectacle.

“Isabel!” he exclaimed, approaching softly, and he knelt down and

leaned over her.

She looked at him so long without speaking that he began to fear she

did not know him after all. He raised the little hand to his lips, and

then stroked it caressingly; the action, the touch, seemed to strike

some chord long sleeping.

“Clide, Clide!” she murmured, and the tears rose and rolled in large

drops down her cheeks. His heart was wrung with pity; there was no

room for any other feeling. If she had wronged him as deeply as he had

ever feared, he forgave it all. He remembered nothing but that they

had once loved each other, that she had suffered cruelly, and that she

was dying.

“My poor Isabel! I forgive you with all my heart, as I hope to be

forgiven; so help me God!”

He let his head fall on the pillow beside her and wept silently.

Admiral de Winton made a sign to the attendant that they had better

withdraw and leave them alone; she hesitated a moment, and then

followed him and closed the door softly behind her. And so they were

once more together—those two who had been joined and parted, and

reunited now for a moment only before the final parting. No one

disturbed them, no eye looked behind the curtain while that last

sacred interview lasted. For three hours Clide knelt by the side of

his dying wife, her hand in his, her head resting on his breast. He

whispered words of tenderness and mercy to the wearied spirit; he told

her of a Love greater than his, and of a pardon mightier and more

availing, of which his was but the pledge and the forerunner.

At sunset she died.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

NAPOLEON I. AND PIUS VII.[75]

In the _Life of Pope Pius VII._ Miss Allies has given us a picture of

rare beauty and deep interest. We think, however, that the title of

the book has not been well chosen. It is not a biography of Pius VII.,

but a history of the efforts of Napoleon Bonaparte to make the Papacy

an appendage and support of the vast empire which he had founded with

his sword. The materials for the narrative have been drawn chiefly

from the _Mémoires_ of Cardinal Consalvi and the _Memorie Storiche_ of

Cardinal Pacca, both of whom were witnesses of the facts which they

relate. The author is also greatly indebted to the recent work of

d’Haussonville, _L’Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire_.

The shock of the Revolution of 1789, which unsettled everything in

Europe—ideas, customs, laws, government—could not possibly have left

the church undisturbed. In France the goods of the clergy were

declared to belong to the nation. The churches were turned into

temples of Reason, the convents converted into barracks, the priests

who remained faithful to their consciences guillotined or sent into

exile. The new republic, “one and indivisible,” aspired to be also

universal, and soon the clash of arms resounded throughout Europe.

Napoleon, at the head of the army of Italy, gained those brilliant

victories which kindled in his heart the flame of an all-devouring

ambition. He was ordered to march upon Rome, and he wrote to Cardinal

Mattei: “Save the pope from the greatest of evils; be persuaded that I

need only the will in order to destroy his power.” Pius VI. was in

consequence forced to sign a treaty in which he gave up a considerable

part of his territory, and in the following year (1798) the French

republic invaded Rome. The reign of the popes was declared to be at an

end; the Holy Father was dragged away into captivity, and in August,

1799, died at Valence. The following November the cardinals met in

conclave in Venice under the protection of Russia, England, and

Turkey, and elected Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the title of Pius

VII., and on the 3d of July, 1800, entered Rome amidst universal

demonstrations of joy. Just two months before Bonaparte had led his

victorious troops across the Alps, and, having triumphed over Austria,

had a _Te Deum_ sung in the cathedral of Milan for the deliverance of

Italy from infidels and heretics—the Turks, namely, and the English.

Shortly afterwards he informed Pius VII. of his wish to open

negotiations for the arrangement of religious matters. The First

Consul was preparing to assume the purple. “I did not usurp the

crown,” he said; “it was lying in the mire: I picked it up. The people

placed it on my head.” He felt, however, that an empire founded upon

“blood and iron” could not dispense with the moral support of

religion. He therefore determined to enter into a Concordat with the

pope. This resolution, we are bound to believe, sprang purely from

political and selfish motives. Whilst fortune smiled upon him Napoleon

cared for religion only so far as it served his ambitious ends. To

Menon, in Egypt, he wrote: “I thank you for the honors you have paid

to _our prophet_.” In India he would have been for Ali, for Confucius

in China, and in Thibet for the Dalai Lama. Consalvi was despatched to

Paris to enter into articles of agreement with the First Consul. When

the cardinal presented himself before Bonaparte, he turned abruptly

upon him and said: “I know what brings you to France. I wish the

negotiations to begin at once. I give you five days, and, if at the

end of that time matters are not arranged, you must return to Rome;

for my own part, I have already provided against such a contingency.”

After many discussions the First Consul declared that he was ready to

ratify the Concordat. Joseph Bonaparte, Bernier, and Crétet were to

sign for the French government, and Consalvi, Spina, and Caselli for

the pope. At the appointed hour and place they all met. Bernier held

in his hand what he said was the Concordat, and, as the cardinal

claimed the right of signing first, he attempted to get him to affix

his signature without looking at the document; but a glance showed

Consalvi that a spurious paper had been substituted, and he refused to

sign his name. The Concordat was to be proclaimed at a public dinner

on the following day; so the discussions were reopened and continued

through the whole night, but no satisfactory conclusion was reached.

The hour for the dinner arrived, and when the cardinal entered the

banquet-hall Bonaparte called out to him in a mocking tone:

“So you wish to break with me, Monsieur le Cardinal? Well,

be it so! I have no need of Rome! I have no need of the

pope! If Henry VIII., without the twentieth part of my

power, was able to change the religion of his subjects, how

much more able am not I! In changing the religion of France

I shall change it in all Europe, in all places where my

power is felt. When will you go?”

“After dinner,” replied the cardinal with seeming unconcern. This

outburst of wrath was meant to frighten Consalvi: Bonaparte had really

no intention of breaking so suddenly with the pope. Again negotiations

were begun. The Concordat was signed, and Joseph was deputed to take

it to the First Consul to obtain his _placet_; but the great man tore

the paper into a hundred pieces. Finally, however, he yielded, and the

public exercise of religious worship was again permitted in France.

But when Bonaparte published the Concordat, he added to it the

“Organic Articles,” by which many of its provisions were practically

annulled; and he was even guilty of the falsehood of making it appear

that these articles were part of the convention with Pius VII. He was

resolved to rule the consciences of men in the same absolute way in

which he commanded his army. The bishops were required to submit all

their official documents to the prefects of the departments. To

prelates who were particularly zealous pastorals were sent, made to

order by the central bureau at Paris. A bishop was not permitted to

appoint or remove a priest without Bonaparte’s permission. Public

worship was placed under the supervision of the police.

On the 16th of May, 1804, the senate voted that Napoleon should assume

the title of emperor. Two months before, with premeditation and in

cold blood, he had had the Duc d’Enghien assassinated at Vincennes;

and this stain upon his name made him the more anxious to receive the

imperial crown from the consecrated hands of the pope. A middle course

was not open to Pius VII. He had either to accept Napoleon’s

invitation or to declare himself his enemy.

With the understanding that the “Organic Articles” should be repealed,

and that the constitutional clergy should make their retractation in

his hands, the pope set out for Paris. In his long journey he was

permitted to stop but twice, and upon his first meeting the new

emperor he was treated in the most uncivil manner.

On the eve of the coronation Pius VII. received a visit from

Josephine. She came to unburden her heart to him. The church had never

blessed her marriage with Bonaparte, and she felt that this would

probably be her last opportunity to have this matter arranged. The

pope declared that he would not assist at the coronation unless the

marriage was first contracted according to the rite of the church. The

duplicity of Napoleon had deeply wounded the Holy Father, and the

emperor’s wrath could not shake the pope’s firm resolve. During the

night preceding the coronation, therefore, Cardinal Fesch performed

the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence

of two witnesses. When the moment for the coronation came, Napoleon

took the crown from the altar of Notre Dame, and himself placed it on

his head. He had given the Holy Father his word that there should be

but one coronation; in violation of this promise he had himself

crowned a second time in the Champ de Mars. He crammed for his

interviews with the pope, in order to astonish him by his knowledge of

church history. Already he was pondering over the thought of keeping

the Holy Father in France. The archiepiscopal palace was to be fitted

up for Pius VII. and reserved exclusively for the Pontifical Court.

When this was intimated to the pope, he replied that it had not been

unforeseen; before leaving Rome he had signed a formal abdication, in

case he should be forcibly detained in France. The document was in

Palermo in the hands of Cardinal Pignatelli; the emperor might

imprison Barnaba Chiaramonti, the simple monk, but not Pius VII., the

Vicar of Christ.

The subject was dropped. The petty jealousy and dread of rival power

or popularity which was so marked a feature in Napoleon’s character

could not be concealed whilst the Holy Father remained in Paris as an

independent sovereign. He was not allowed to celebrate pontifical Mass

at Notre Dame on Christmas day; and he was hurried off to Mâcon before

Easter, and thence continued his journey back to Rome, having refused

to assist at the ceremony of Napoleon’s coronation at Milan as King of

Italy.

Jérome Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoleon, had married a

Protestant girl in the United States, and the emperor, who wished his

brothers and sisters to make matrimonial alliances with the most

powerful families of Europe, applied to the pope to annul the

marriage. Pius VII. declared that he had no power in the case.

Napoleon sought revenge by meddling still further with the affairs of

the church in Italy, and by taking forcible possession of Ancona, a

portion of the papal territory. The Holy Father protested in a letter

dated the 13th of November, 1805, which Napoleon did not find time to

answer till January 7, 1806. In those two months he had brought to a

close one of his most brilliant campaigns, had conquered the emperors

of Austria and Russia, and dictated terms to all Europe.

In reply to the protest of the Holy Father Napoleon wrote to his

ambassador at Rome in the following style: “The pope has written me a

most ridiculous, a most foolish letter. These people thought I was

dead.… Since these idiots do not object to the possibility of a

Protestant occupying the throne of France, I will send them a

Protestant ambassador.… I will change nothing outwardly, if people

behave themselves with me; but otherwise I shall reduce the pope to be

bishop of Rome. Really, nothing is so wanting in sense as the court of

Rome.”

Only the Emperor of Russia and the King of England he declared were

masters in their own states, because they had no pope to trouble them.

A month later (February, 1806) Pius VII. received another letter from

Napoleon.

“Your Holiness,” he wrote, “must profess the same regard for

me in the temporal order as I profess for you in the

spiritual order. All my enemies must be your enemies. That

an Englishman, a Russian, a Swede, or a minister of the

Sardinian king should henceforth reside in Rome or in any

part of your states is entirely unfitting. No vessel

belonging to any of these states should enter your ports.”

The Holy Father replied that he was unable to assent to demands which

were opposed to the character of his divine mission, “which owns no

enmities, not even with those who have departed from the centre of

unity.” Napoleon attributed the pope’s firmness to the counsels of

Consalvi, and he determined to drive him from office. “Tell him,” he

wrote to his ambassador, “that but two courses remain open to him:

always to do what I wish or to quit the ministry.” He also informed

the cardinal that none of his movements were unknown to him, and that

for the first compromising act he should answer with his head; he

would have him arrested in the streets of Rome. “These priests,” he

said, “keep the soul for themselves and throw me the carcass.”

All this storm of imperial rage had broken upon the Head of the church

because he had dared defend the honor of a Protestant girl, the

daughter of a simple American citizen, against the attacks of the most

terrible monarch of Europe.

Napoleon’s dream was to found a great western empire like that of

Charlemagne, and for the accomplishment of this design he saw that the

co-operation of the pope was necessary. He was therefore willing to

defend the pope on condition that he should become his tool and lend

himself as an obedient slave to his ambitious projects. But when he

saw that there was no hope of bringing Pius VII. to accept his views

on this subject, he began to govern the church after his own fashion.

The bishops and priests who did not conform to his wishes were thrown

into prison or forced to keep silence. He had his victories proclaimed

from the pulpits; he furnished pastorals and exhortations in which it

was made to appear that he was the defender of the faith, fighting

against infidels and heretics; he recommended that prayers should be

said that “our brothers, the persecuted Catholics of Ireland, might

enjoy liberty of worship.” “Inform M. Robert, a priest of Bourges,” he

wrote, “of my displeasure. He preached a very foolish sermon on the

15th of August. L’Abbé de Coucy is a great worry to me. He keeps up

too great a correspondence. I wish him to be arrested and put into a

monastery.… It is really shameful that you have not yet arrested M.

Stevens. People are too sleepy; else how could a wretched priest have

escaped?… I see from your letter that you have caused a _curé_ of La

Vendée to be arrested. You have acted very wisely. Keep him in

prison.” All religious newspapers—save one, the _Journal des Curés_,

whose publications were strictly supervised—were suppressed. “No

priest,” said Napoleon, “should bother his head about the church

except in his sermons.” A special Sunday each year was set aside to

commemorate the coronation and the victories of the _Grande Armée_;

and in the sermon preached on that day particular mention was to be

made of those who had fallen at Austerlitz. M. Portalis was charged

with the preparation of a new imperial catechism, which was published

in August, 1806. The children of France were taught that “the honor

and the service of the emperor is one and the same thing as the honor

and service of God”; that those who were wanting in their duty to

Napoleon rendered themselves worthy of eternal damnation; and that God

had given the crown not only to him, but to his family. The French

bishops submitted in silence to this orthodox imperialism.

The next step was to deprive the pope of his temporal power. As Pius

VII. had refused to enter into the emperor’s plans for the founding of

a great western empire, he was to be imprisoned. Napoleon had just

annihilated the wonderful troops of Frederick the Great, and from his

palace at Berlin he once more dictated terms to the Holy Father. “Let

the pope,” he wrote, “do what I wish, and he will be repaid for the

past and the future.”

All Europe, save England, was lying helpless at the feet of the

conqueror; and that the pope should continue to defend the interests

of a Protestant country against the power of a second Charlemagne was

an impossible supposition.

But Napoleon was now so great that he refused to enter into personal

correspondence with Pius VII.; so he wrote to Eugene Beauharnais, the

Viceroy of Italy, with instructions that he should communicate his

letter to the pope.

“They say,” wrote the emperor,” that they want to publish

all the evil that I have committed against religion. The

idiots! They ignore, then, that there does not exist a spot

in Italy, Germany, or Poland where I have not done more for

religion than the pope has done evil.… What does Pius VII.

mean by denouncing me to Christendom? Does he imagine that

their arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?…

Perhaps the time is not far off when, if this meddling in my

affairs does not stop, I shall acknowledge the pope to be

nothing more than bishop of Rome, holding a rank in all

respects similar to my bishops.… In two words, this is the

last time that I consent to treat with these wretched

priests of Rome.”

The pope replied to these insults in a letter full of meekness and

humility, in which he declared that he had refused Napoleon nothing

which his conscience would permit him to grant. Napoleon gave orders

for the occupation of Rome by the French troops under General Miollis;

and the army passed in through the open gates of the city on the 2d of

February, 1808. The pope was a prisoner. The Neapolitan cardinals were

carried off by force; and in March all who were not natives of the

states of the church were ordered to leave Rome. The dethronement of

the pope was proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet, and his

dominions were declared irrevocably united to the kingdom of Italy.

The Holy Father signed the bull of excommunication, and in the night

of the 5th of July, 1809, General Radet broke into his apartments,

arrested him and Cardinal Pacca, hurried them into a closed carriage,

and drove out of Rome through the Porta Pia, accompanied by a

detachment of _gendarmes_. The pope, who was ill and weak, was driven

in great haste through Italy to Savona, a fortified town near Genoa,

where he was imprisoned.

Europe was dumb, the press was silent, and people dared not even

express sympathy for the Holy Father. Napoleon tried to make the world

forget that there was a pope; but he himself was often reminded of his

existence. Many dioceses were without bishops, and the pope refused to

confirm those who had been appointed, so long as he was deprived of

his liberty. The emperor had some of the highest dignitaries of the

French church to write to the prisoner of Savona to represent the evil

consequences of this refusal; but to no purpose. All the cardinals

were summoned to Paris to grace the Imperial Court. The

_Penitentiaria_ and _Dataria_ were also removed thither. Napoleon sent

a circular to the bishops, ordering them “to suppress the prayer to

St. Gregory VII., and to substitute another feast for that of this

saint, whom the Gallican Church cannot recognize.” Everything was “to

be organized as if no pope existed.” No priest was to be ordained

without the emperor’s permission. “Give orders,” he wrote, “to the

prefect of the Taro department to choose fifty of the worst priests at

Parma and fifty of the worst at Piacenza.… Let them embark for

Corsica.”

The time had now come when Napoleon was resolved to be divorced from

Josephine. He consulted the Archbishop of Bordeaux and his clergy on

the subject. Their reply was unfavorable, and he summarily dismissed

them and had the vicar-general and the superior of the seminary

deprived of their offices. One day, after a very silent repast with

the empress, he broached the subject to her. She fell fainting to the

floor; the emperor summoned the chamberlain and had her carried to her

apartments. Her adieu to sovereignty was effected under trying

circumstances. A grand reception took place at the Tuileries on the

evening of her departure. She assisted at the funeral of her worldly

greatness, and the fate of Napoleon was decided at the same moment by

a few hurried words spoken by two courtiers as they were leaving the

imperial presence. Negotiations for the marriage of Napoleon with the

Grand Duchess Olga, sister of the Czar of Russia, were all but

concluded. That night M. Floret, the first secretary of the Austrian

Embassy, whispered to M. de Sémonville that the emperor might easily

have the hand of Marie Louise of Austria. This was related to

Napoleon; the alliance with Russia was broken off; and two years later

came the retreat from Moscow, when the arms fell from his soldiers’

hands. But to espouse a daughter of the Catholic house of Austria it

was necessary to obtain not only a civil but also a religious divorce

from Josephine. No other authority than that of the pope, Cardinal

Fesch declared, would be otherwise than “uncertain or dangerous” on

the subject; but to apply to the captive of Savona would be useless.

Napoleon therefore created an ecclesiastical tribunal for the

occasion, over which his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, was appointed to

preside. The emperor first attempted to make it appear that his

marriage with Josephine in 1804 was invalid, because it had taken

place without witnesses or deed; but the cardinal was able to show

that this was not true. He next alleged as a cause of illegality the

absence of the parish priest; but the faculties conferred upon Fesch

by Pius VII. more than supplied this deficiency. As a last resort

Napoleon declared that he had never consented to the religious

marriage, thus openly confessing that he had deceived Josephine,

Cardinal Fesch, and the Holy Father. This statement, however, was

probably an after-thought and false, which is not surprising in an

habitual liar like Napoleon. The tribunal was threatened with the

anger of the emperor if it kept him waiting beyond a certain day. As

it had been created only to do his bidding, his marriage with

Josephine was declared null; but let us remark that the Holy Father

had nothing to do with this business; he was not even consulted, as he

had already given proof of what might be expected from him in the case

of Jérôme Bonaparte and Miss Paterson. Nearly all the cardinals were

at this time living in Paris. Fourteen of them gave it as their

opinion that the divorce had been rightly granted; thirteen others

asserted that the tribunal was incompetent, and that the case should

have been submitted to the pope. In consequence they determined not to

assist at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise. When Cardinal

Fesch reported this to the emperor, he got into a fit of rage. “Bah!

they will not dare,” he exclaimed; and when Cardinal Consalvi, the

leader of the thirteen, came to a public audience at the Tuileries

eight days before the ceremony, Napoleon came up to him, stopped

before him, gave him a thundering look, and passed on without speaking

a word. As he entered the chapel of the Louvre for the wedding he wore

an air of triumph; but his countenance grew dark when he perceived the

thirteen were not there.

“Where are the cardinals?” he asked in an irritated tone.

“A great number are here,” was the reply.

“Ah! the fools; but they are _not_ here,” said Napoleon with another

glance at the empty seats. “The fools, the fools!”

He declared that it was his intention to cause _the resignation of

these individuals_, and that henceforth they were to be deprived of

the Purple. In this way arose the title of Black and Red cardinals.

The property of the thirteen was seized and their income went to swell

the public treasure, whilst they were sent to different provincial

towns and placed under surveillance.

The difficulty as to the appointment of bishops to vacant dioceses had

not been settled. In May, 1810, Napoleon despatched two cardinals,

most favorable to his pretensions, to Pius VII., whom he still held a

prisoner in Savona, to persuade the pope to confirm the bishops

appointed by the emperor; but the Holy Father was immovable. Napoleon

thereupon resolved to make his own bishops and dispense with the papal

confirmation. Cardinal Fesch, who had accepted the title of

Archbishop-elect of Paris, now refused to take possession of his see

without the approval of the pope.

“I can force you to obey me,” said Napoleon to his uncle.

“Sire, _potius mori_,” replied the cardinal.

“Ah! ah! _potius mori_—rather Maury. Be it so. You shall have Maury.”

Cardinal Maury accepted, and in a few days his vicar-general was

arrested and sent to the dungeon of Vincennes, where he remained till

the fall of the empire. About the same time Vincennes opened its

gloomy gates to Cardinals di Pietro and Gabrielli. This was in 1811.

Pius VII. had been in prison for two years. Napoleon now ordered his

jailers to treat him with greater severity. No person was allowed to

see him without the emperor’s permission; and for violating this

regulation some priests from Marseilles were thrown into a filthy

dungeon. All letters to and from the Holy Father were submitted to the

inspection of the keeper of the prison.

“It is useless for the pope to write,” said Napoleon; “the

less he does, the better it will be.… The less that which he

writes reaches its destination, the better.… I trouble

myself very little as to what he may do.… Let him be told

that it is distressing for Christendom to own a pope so

ignorant of what is due to sovereigns, but that the state

will not be disturbed, and good will be effected without

him.”

On the 8th of January, 1811, experts sent from Paris entered the

episcopal palace at Savona, where the Holy Father was confined, opened

his doors and drawers, searched his correspondence, unsewed his

clothes, and broke open his desk, in order to discover something that

might incriminate him. They even took away his breviary and the Office

of the Blessed Virgin. He was also ordered to deliver up the Ring of

the Fisherman; but, justly suspecting that it would be used for

fraudulent purposes, he broke it in two and handed the pieces to

Napoleon’s agent. A moral terrorism reigned over the religious world

in France and Italy. The emperor’s vengeance pursued even ladies who

gave alms to the Black cardinals. The cardinals, bishops, and priests

who had spoken against his tyranny were in prison; the rest remained

silent.

Napoleon now called a National Council to devise measures for

governing the church without the assistance of the pope. The French

bishops had for the most part been kept ignorant of the precise nature

of the trouble between himself and Pius VII., and he intended by this

new move to impress upon the mind of the Sovereign Pontiff that he

could nor rely upon the support of the bishops. First, however, a

deputation was sent to the pope to urge upon him the pressing

necessity of conforming without further delay to the will of the

emperor. Pius VII. was at this time in very feeble health, and

Napoleon did not hesitate to bribe his physician, Dr. Porta, that he

might inform the members of the deputation of the most favorable

opportunity to take advantage of the weak and suffering state of the

Holy Father to wring from him the desired concessions. For some days

those who surrounded him were able to attest the presence of all the

symptoms of madness.

“You will have seen,” wrote his jailer to the Minister of

Worship, “by my last letters that the uncertainty of the

pope when he is left to himself goes to the length of

affecting his reason and his health. At present the mental

alienation has passed off.”

Still, the bishops sent by Napoleon to Savona were obliged to return

without the pope’s signature to the document of concessions. The

National Council was opened on the 17th of June, in the Cathedral of

Notre Dame, under the nominal presidency of Cardinal Fesch. The

opening discourse was delivered by Mgr. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes,

who spoke in eloquent and burning words “of the Supreme Head of the

episcopate, without whom it resembles a branch separated from the tree

and withered, or a vessel tossed by the waves without rudder or

steersman.”

“This see may be removed,” he said, “but it cannot be destroyed. Its

magnificence may be taken away, but never its strength. Wherever this

see shall establish itself it shall draw all others around it.” These

words fell like burning coals in the midst of the assembly and

produced great emotion. The effect had not died away when the Bishop

of Nantes arose to comply with the formality of asking each prelate

whether it pleased him that the council should be opened. “Yes,”

answered the Archbishop of Bordeaux, “saving the obedience due to the

Sovereign Pontiff, to whom I bind myself and whom I swear to obey.”

Then Cardinal Fesch in a loud voice read the oath as prescribed by a

bull of Pius IV.: “I acknowledge the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and

Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all other churches; I

promise and swear perfect obedience to the Roman pontiff, the

successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus

Christ on earth.” One by one the bishops bound themselves irrevocably

to the cause of Pius VII. Napoleon was furious and berated his uncle

for “getting up one of his scenes.” Two laymen were appointed to be

present in his name at all future meetings of the bishops.

Some of the courtier prelates drew up a fulsome address to Napoleon, a

kind of treatise on state theology, which they presented to the

members of the council for their signature. Mgr. de Broglie, Bishop of

Ghent, declared he would never sign it. Another bishop proposed that

“the liberty of the pope” should be demanded. This was received with a

confused murmur of applause; but Cardinal Fesch, who dreaded the wrath

of his nephew, declared that the time was inopportune for such a

request. Napoleon, unable longer to restrain himself, ordered the

council to put an end to its “idle debates.” He gave the members eight

days to devise an expedient for providing bishops for the vacant sees.

As a sign of his displeasure he refused to receive the council

officially at the Tuileries. The bishops, he said, had “acted as

cowards.” In answer to the demand to find an expedient for providing

bishops for the vacant sees without the confirmation of the pope, the

council declared that it would first be necessary to send a deputation

to consult Pius VII. This declaration was carried by Fesch to his

imperial nephew. He was received with an outburst of anger. Napoleon

would soon show the bishops their place. When the cardinal attempted

to reason with him, he rudely stopped him: “What! theology again!

Where did you learn it? Be quiet; you are an ignoramus.” He threatened

to dissolve the council and organize a system of state religion, but

finally drew up a decree himself, in which he falsely asserted that

the pope had made the desired concessions. The bishops were deceived,

and, with two exceptions, voted in favor of the decree. A little

reflection, however, convinced many of them of the fraud which had

been practised upon them, and they recalled their votes. Suddenly, on

the 11th of July, Napoleon dissolved the council. The following day,

at three o’clock in the morning, Mgr. de Broglie, Mgr. de Boulogne,

and Mgr. Hirn, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the decree,

were arrested in their beds and carried off to the prison of

Vincennes. In August five cardinals and eight bishops, partisans of

the emperor, were sent to Savona to make still another effort to win

over Pius VII. to Napoleon’s plans. The Holy Father, who was so

closely guarded that no one was allowed to see him except his bribed

doctor and the jailer, was in total ignorance of all that had passed

in the National Council. For five months, from September, 1811, to

February, 1812, these cardinals and bishops used every argument and

artifice to induce the pope to sign the decree of the council.

Their efforts were successful. Pius VII., worn out with importunities,

feeble in body and in mind, wrote the brief of adhesion. But Napoleon

was not satisfied. He was already organizing his army for the fatal

Russian campaign, and he wrote to his Minister of Worship the

following instructions: “I send you the original papal brief. Keep it

and communicate its contents to nobody. I wish to find the bishops in

Rome on my return, to see what we can do.… The truth is, the church is

experiencing a crisis.” His victory over Russia was, in his

imagination, already an accomplished fact; he would return the

undisputed sovereign of all Europe, would gather the bishops in Rome,

and would give to the church, as he had given to the state, a _Code

Napoléon_.

On the 24th of January, 1812, the Holy Father wrote to him in the most

unaffected and simple manner, and begged to be permitted to consult

disinterested counsellors and to have free communication with the

faithful. Napoleon disdained to answer this letter, but sent through

his Minister of Worship the following notification to the deputation

at Savona: “His majesty deems that it is unfitting to his dignity to

answer the letter of the pope.… His majesty pities the ignorance of

the pope, and compassionates a pontiff who could have played so great

a part, but who has become the calamity of the church.… His majesty

understands these matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction better than

the Holy Father.… If the pope cannot make a distinction which is

simple enough to be grasped by the most uncultivated seminarian, why

does he not voluntarily descend from the papal chair and leave it to a

man who is less feeble in mind and better principled than he?” And

now, just as he was setting out on the Russian campaign, he ordered

that Pius VII. should be transferred from Savona to Fontainebleau.

The Holy Father was unwell, but to this no attention was paid. Just

before reaching the Mont Cenis he fell dangerously ill. The journey

was not interrupted. A bed was fitted up in the carriage and a surgeon

procured, who, with the instruments that might be needed, accompanied

him. When they reached Fontainebleau nothing was prepared, and the

pope had to pass the first night in the porter’s lodge. A _Guide-book

of Paris_, published at this time, informed the French that they

possessed a “papal palace” in their capital. But the end was drawing

near. On the 24th of June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen at the

head of an army of five hundred thousand men. As he reached the

opposite bank his horse stumbled and fell. His fatalism led him to

consider this a bad omen. The Russians fled before him, and, after the

victories of Smolensk and Borodino, he rode into Moscow on the 15th of

September. It was silent as a desert, and the Kremlin, where he took

up his residence, was like a tomb. At midnight from a hundred quarters

the flames burst forth, and in the lurid light of the burning city the

army began the fatal retreat. The weather, which had been fine,

suddenly grew cold; sleet and snow and rain beat with merciless fury

upon the men, from their benumbed hands their arms fell, and by the

roadside they laid down to die. On the 18th of December Napoleon

arrived, a fugitive, in Paris. In this one campaign he had lost

250,000 men, half of whom had died of cold and hunger.

With the beginning of the year 1813 he wrote to Pius VII. and begged

him to believe that his feelings of respect and veneration were

independent of circumstances. Shortly afterwards he went to visit the

Holy Father at Fontainebleau, and upon their first meeting for eight

years he embraced him with every mark of affection. The health of the

pope was wretched, and advantage was taken of his weak condition to

obtain still further concessions.

Upon the promise of Napoleon to liberate the imprisoned cardinals,

bishops, and priests, Pius VII. signed the Concordat of

Fontainebleau—an act which he almost immediately recalled, and which

he never ceased to regret. When the faithful Pacca, after so long a

separation, was at length admitted to his presence, he expressed his

admiration for the pope’s heroic constancy.

“But finally,” cried out the Holy Father in anguish, “we

have sullied our conscience. Those cardinals dragged me to

the table and made me sign.”

Pius VII. was still held a prisoner, and Napoleon acted as though the

Concordat of Fontainebleau still existed. He appointed bishops,

imprisoned priests, and drafted seminarians to fill up his decimated

regiments.

The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen were more brilliant than

important. In August, 1813, the Emperor of Austria declared against

his son-in-law. Then came the crushing defeat of Leipsic, and Napoleon

was slowly driven back upon France, closely followed by the allied

armies. Orders were sent to remove Pius VII. from Fontainebleau, and a

few days later the war was raging at the very gates of the palace

which he had so recently occupied. Finally, on the 10th of March,

1814, when all hope was lost, Napoleon signed a decree which restored

his dominions to the pope. Since his removal from Fontainebleau Pius

VII. had been driven about through various parts of France, closely

guarded; but now that he turned his face toward Rome, his journey

assumed the appearance of a triumphal procession, and at length, on

the 24th of May, 1814, the Feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, he

re-entered the Holy City amid the universal enthusiasm of his people.

Just one month before, in the palace of Fontainebleau, Napoleon signed

the decree which declared his empire at an end; and, a fallen

sovereign, he passed out in silence through the ranks of the men whom

he had so often led to victory.

In his last meeting with Josephine he took her hand and said:

“Josephine, I have been as fortunate as any man upon earth. But in

this hour, when a storm is gathering over me, I have in the wide world

none but you upon whom I can repose.” And in St. Helena he said to

Caulaincourt: “If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget those

scenes; they are the fixed ideas of my sleepless nights. I have had

enough of sovereignty. I want no more of it; I want no more of it.”

It is not easy to form a just estimate of the character of Napoleon.

We have heard veterans who had fought at Austerlitz and Lutzen declare

that when he rode along the line his glance did so blind the eye that

they could not look upon him; and they thought so. This light of glory

still enshrines his memory and dazzles us, to prevent us from seeing

him as he was. No one has ever doubted his surprising strength; his

almost incredible power to bear labor, whether of body or mind; his

wonderful intellect, which grasped things with equal ease, in general

and in detail; his unequalled ability to organize an army, a nation,

or a continent; his courage, which rose superior to the most crushing

defeat.

But with these great endowments he had a coarse and selfish nature. He

was as ready to lie as to tell the truth. No act that was expedient

was bad. His ambitious ends sanctified all means by which they could

be attained. Dissimulation, deceit, hypocrisy, betrayal of friends,

imprisonment, murder, assassination, he was ready to use indifferently

as his purposes demanded. Without moral convictions himself, he

believed others equally devoid of them. To assign conscience as a

reason for anything was in his eyes pretence and hypocrisy. The

religious scruples of the pope and cardinals he held to be mere

obstinacy and ill-will. When Pius VII. declared he had not the power

to annul the marriage of Jerome with Miss Patterson, Napoleon saw in

this only a desire to take revenge for the way in which he had been

insulted at the coronation. After having persecuted bishops and

priests, keeping many of them in prison, during his whole reign, he

had the impudence to declare in St. Helena that the priests were all

for him as soon as he allowed them to wear violet-colored stockings.

He was the coarsest reviler and insulted all whom he feared or hated.

The pope and the cardinals were “idiots and fools”; the republicans

were “mad dogs and brigands”; the King of Prussia was “the most

complete fool of all the kings on earth”; the Spanish Bourbons were “a

flock of sheep”; De Broglie, the Bishop of Ghent, was “a reptile”; the

priests who disapproved of the Concordat were “the scum of the earth”;

and of the philosophers he said: “Je les ai comme une vermine sur mes

habits.” His conduct towards women was coarse and contemptuous. They

ought to know nothing and were not fit to have opinions. He told

Madame de Staël to go home and knit her stockings; the greatest woman

was she who had the most children—he wanted soldiers. He did not

conceal his contempt for men. “Every year of my reign,” he said in St.

Helena, “I saw more and more plainly that the harsher the treatment

men received, the greater was their submission and devotion. My

despotism then increased in proportion to my contempt for mankind.”

From 1804 to 1815 he sacrificed to his mad ambition not less than five

millions of men. Several thousand French subjects were shot merely for

desertion. Each principal town had its _place aux fusillades_. The

prisons of France were filled with his victims. A more thorough tyrant

than he never lived. Liberty of all kinds was odious to him. He hated

all whom he could not enslave. To be free was to be his enemy. While

he reigned men spoke with bated breath, the press was fettered, and

the church was in chains. In his own family he was a despot; he gave

his brothers crowns, but only on condition that they would become his

slaves; and when Lucien thought that even royal honors might be bought

at too dear a price, he was forced to leave France.

His jealousy was surpassed only by his vanity. “Go,” said he to his

soldiers, “kill and be killed; the emperor beholds you.”

He had a barbaric love of vulgar display, and this was one of the

passions which impelled him to his bloody wars. No man ever had less

heart. If he loved any one, it was Josephine, and her he sacrificed

without a pang. Remorseless as destiny, which was his god, he trod out

with the iron hoof of war right and life, and where he passed there

was wailing and desolation as after pestilence. In his last illness on

the desolate rock of St. Helena he spoke with reverence and feeling of

religion. From the hands of the priest sent to him by Pius VII. he

received the sacraments of the church. For six years he had held in

cruel confinement Christ’s vicar, the gentlest of men; for six years

he himself pined in living death on the barren island of St. Helena.

It was the 5th of March, 1821, that he died. On the tomb of St. Peter

Pius VII. offered up the divine Sacrifice for the repose of the soul

of Napoleon.

[75] _The Life of Pope Pius VII._ By Mary H. Allies. London:

Burns & Oates. 1875.

MODERN ENGLISH POETRY.

Mr. Stedman, the author of _The Victorian Poets_, appears to be a

painstaking and conscientious writer. He has read with extraordinary

industry all the poetry of the period to which his criticism is

limited, including not a little which, if he deemed it his duty to

study, it was not worth his while to name. He has brought to this

study a highly, although we think not methodically, cultivated mind

and a retentive memory. He has a remarkable fluency of diction,

bordering occasionally on volubility, and a certain fecundity of

illustration; but his words have at times a vagueness, not to say

inaptness, of application which is not suggestive of clearness or

depth of thought. His work, he will pardon us for thinking, is rather

an “essay in” technical than “philosophical criticism.” He himself

appears to be conscious of this; for he writes in his preface: “If my

criticism seems more technical than is usual in a work of this kind,

it is due, I think, to the fact that the technical refinement of the

period has been so marked as to demand full recognition and analysis.”

Furthermore, he informs us that he “has no theory of poetry”; and we

must own that, in the absence of any theory of poetry, a philosophical

criticism of it seems to us to be out of the question. The qualities

he requires of it “are simplicity and freshness in work of all kinds,

and, as the basis of persistent growth and of greatness in a

masterpiece, simplicity and spontaneity, refined by art, exalted by

imagination, and sustained by intellectual power”; but does he

understand what he means by this? We do not. Are we to understand that

the only inseparable qualities, the only properties, of poetry which

must characterize “work of all kinds”—by which we presume he means

every real poetical production—are simplicity and freshness? What does

he mean by simplicity? what by freshness? Does he refer these

qualities to expression only? If so, what does he mean by “simplicity

not being excluded from the Miltonic canon of poetry”?

In the higher efforts of poetry, he tells us, we must still have

simplicity; but instead of freshness we are there to look for

“spontaneity.” Are, then, “simplicity and spontaneity” the basis of

persistent growth (we must own that even the meaning of this

expression is hidden from us) and of “greatness in a masterpiece”? No;

it must be “simplicity and spontaneity refined by art, exalted by

imagination, and sustained by intellectual power.” But will not the

simplicity, and most assuredly the spontaneity, disappear in the

“artistic refinement”? Still more difficult is the idea of “simplicity

and spontaneity exalted by imagination” being the “basis” of a

poetical “masterpiece.” Poetry is the offspring of the imagination.

Its excellence depends absolutely on the force and vigor of that

intellectual power. There can be no poetry in its absence. And what

other is imagination than intellectual power?

The poetic feeling we believe to be the echo of the soul to God in the

presence of all his works. It is the emotion—really rapture—which

wells up within it at the contemplation of the sensible images in

which he reveals portions of his beauty in every variety and

combination of form, proportion, color, touch, scent, and sound. Let

the poet stand alone by the long margin of the sea on a still summer

day. What but it is that profound emotion of which he is so intensely

conscious as he looks out upon the immense ocean in its still unrest,

which the blue heavens only seem to limit because his power of vision

can reach no further, and when he hears the mellow murmur of the

wavelets as, rearing themselves in graceful curves, they fall in low

whispers along the yellow sands, as if depositing some message from

infinitude, and then rapidly withdraw?

What else is that indefinable transport, resembling, only in an

infinitely inferior degree, the ecstasy of a saint, which holds in

suspense all our faculties as, in the languid heat of summer-tide, we

stand at the foot of craggy heights between which in distant ages some

river has found for itself a channel; and, as we gaze into the

impenetrable shade of the dense thickets which cover their sides, hear

the distant sound of falling waters, and scent the fresh perfume of

the breathing foliage, the river flowing past us at our feet, to be

almost immediately hidden from our view by projecting headlands,

covered, they too, with the living darkness of foliage crowding upon

foliage, trees on trees?

The delightful trance into which the poetic soul is lulled by the

beauty and truth of God speaking through even the least of his works

defies analysis; but we may say of it with some confidence that the

objects that provoke it never weary of their charm. And wherefore?

Because they do not obstruct the instinct of immortality, the yearning

for infinitude, which is a passion within the soul of the poet, but is

wholly absent from no one in whom God’s image is not quite effaced. On

the contrary, their apparent endlessness, their want of boundary and

definite outline, suggest infinitude, and awake the echoes of

immortality from their profoundest depths, and minister to the deep

yearning of the soul for something more lovely than aught of which it

has been hitherto cognizant.

This it is which accounts for the immense superiority of Gothic to

Grecian architecture—a superiority so complete as to elevate it into

quite another sphere of beauty. The pleasure we experience at the

sight of the highest efforts of a Greek architect is almost

exclusively æsthetic, sensible, artistic. It is occasioned by

sharpness of outline, grace of form, beauty of proportion. In these is

the only poetry it can express; which can never, consequently, mount

to sublimity. It can only be beautiful at best. It pleases the sense,

but the soul—of the poet, at all events—soon wearies of them.

But the Gothic cathedral, with its soaring arches interlacing one

another, its many naves, aisles, chapels, and recesses, its endless

wealth of tracery and sculpture, its clustering pinnacles and spires

pointing heavenwards, the deep shadows of its buttresses, and its many

mounting roofs—in short, the utter absence of definiteness of outline,

and its grandeur as well as grace of form and beauty of

proportion—respond, and powerfully, to the soul’s craving for

infinitude, impatience of limitation, and heart-yearning for the

infinitely Beautiful and True.

This poetic sense it is which causes all mere human pleasures so soon

to pall upon us. For it is impossible for the human soul to experience

any save a transient pleasure from aught less than the infinite and

eternal. Life itself is not a pleasure, because we know it is passing

away. If we believed we should be annihilated at death, the pain of

life would be intolerable.

We hold, therefore, that this suggestiveness—which must not be

confused with obscurity, an element antagonistic to poetry—must

underlie every expression of poetry, whatever form it may take. A

didactic poem is a contradiction in terms, although such a production

may abound in poetical passages. It reminds one of the pictures one

sees sometimes in which the painter represents with great accuracy a

melon or grapes, a glass with wine in it, knives and forks, a loaf of

bread, a cheese sometimes, not omitting the maggots, or a lobster

tempts his brush—in short, anything which goes into the human mouth

for bodily sustenance. Ordinary folk gape with wonder at the

cleverness of the imitation; but there is no one so dull as to suppose

that there is in it any of the poetry of art.

The visible creation is the expression of the divine Idea in it. It is

impossible, consequently, that it should not express, in all its

infinitude of forms, modes, color, scent, sound, etc., the truth and

beauty of Him who conceived it. It would be contrary to reason to

suppose that he sent it forth into objective existence as a mere toy

for the amusement of his august creature, as we throw dissolving views

of grotesque figures upon a white surface for the amusement of

children. It was to convey to us intimations of himself, as well as

snatches of his happiness. The spherical form of the unnumbered

worlds; the limited power of our visual organ, which can only see the

beginnings of things; perpetual motion; sound and scent, which fail

not when they are no longer within the reach of our senses; the

revolution, in never-ending cycles, of years, seasons, weeks, and

days; renewed life never failing to come forth from rest and

repose—ay, even from death and corruption; imaginary horizons,

vanishing distances, light prevailing over darkness; the thrill of

awful pleasure with which the created soul of man apprehends this deep

meaning of things—that spiritual instinct to which time is a pain,

eternity a rapture—in all are mirrored, in every variety and form of

grace and loveliness, as well as of unsightliness and horror,

Infinitude, Immortality, God the infinitely lovable, because he is the

infinitely Beautiful and True.

In proportion to the strength of this instinct is the excellence or

inferiority of the poetic gift. From this must it draw all its highest

inspirations. Poetry is, in fact, its advertent expression; and thus

the poet is, like God—only, of course, after a secondary and imitative

fashion—a creator (ποιητὴς). He avails himself of some of the

illimitable wealth of imagery in which God has expressed, or given

objective existence to, his own one but infinitely varied idea, and,

by fresh combinations, throws them into really new forms or creations.

Out of many examples that come to mind—for excellence in this is less

uncommon than in the higher order of poetry, of which the crown and

lord of nature form the material—may be quoted the following creation

of a midsummer noon in the _Earthly Paradise_, by Morris:

“Within the gardens once again they met,

That now the roses did well-nigh forget;

For hot July was drawing to an end,

And August came the fainting year to mend

With fruit and grain; so ‘neath the trellises,

Nigh blossomless, did they lie well at ease,

And watched the poppies burn across the grass,

And o’er the bindweed’s bell the brown bee pass,

Still murmuring of his gains. Windless and bright

The morn had been, to help their dear delight;

But heavy clouds, ere noon, grew round the sun,

And, half-way to the zenith, wild and dun

The sky grew, and the thunder growled afar;

But, ere the steely[76] clouds began their war,

A change there came, and, as by some great hand,

The clouds that hung in threatening o’er the land

Were drawn away; then a light wind arose

That shook the light stems of that flowery close,

And made men sigh for pleasure.”

This brings us to another, and an important, point in which it is our

misfortune to differ from Mr. Stedman. He regards poetry as an art. He

treats it as such throughout this work; and as such he criticises it.

Hence his criticism is almost exclusively technical; hence, too, it

exhibits frequent inconsistencies. For example, amongst the properties

he assigns to the highest poetry, which we have already quoted, he

places spontaneity. By this term he means, we presume, a freedom from

effort, the unbidden outflow of imagination, not the labored product

of teaching and practice. But this is utterly inapplicable to art,

which supposes instruction, clumsy first efforts, and perfection

acquired only by years of toil. What there is of art in poetry is

limited, or nearly so, to its expression; and even here the less there

is of art, and the more of what Mr. Stedman means by spontaneity, the

loftier and the more genuine the poetry. It is no praise but a

depreciation of Matthew Arnold’s or Tennyson’s poetry to trace the

inspiration of one to Bion and Moschus and of the other to Theocritus.

In good sooth, he does the laureate injustice in the far-fetched

examples of imitation of Theocritus he ascribes to him. It is the

blemish of nearly all our modern poetry that its expression is so

labored, so technical. For this it is that, in the highest poetry,

nearly all who have tried it have failed; none more signally than

Tennyson in _Queen Mary_. One only has succeeded—Sir Aubrey de Vere.

Another—whom, because he has so foully outraged the moral sense of all

mankind, we prefer not to name until he has made reparation, and who,

if he had not cast from him all sense of the beautiful and the true,

might have been perhaps the greatest poet of the age—is as remarkable

for the originality and unstudiedness of his expression as for the

brilliance and fecundity of his imagination.

Mr. Stedman literally limits poetry to expression. In a passage at the

side of which is the marginal index, “What constitutes a poet,” he

writes: “Again, the grammarian’s statement is true, that poetry is a

means of expression. A poet may differ from other men in having

profounder emotions and clearer perceptions; but this is not for him

to assume, nor a claim which they are swift to grant. The lines,

“Oh! many are the poets that are sown

By nature—men endowed with highest gifts,

The vision and the faculty divine,

Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,”

imply that the recognized poet is one who gives voice, in expressive

language, to the common thought and feeling which lie deeper than

ordinary speech. He is the interpreter; moreover, he is the maker—an

artist of the beautiful, the inventor of harmonious numbers which

shall be a lure and a repose.”

It is clear from this unintelligible and self-contradicting passage

that the writer has no theory of poetry. Yet in it he makes a very

definite attempt to sketch such theory, although he before told us

that he has none. What he means by it being “a grammarian’s statement”

that “poetry is a means of expression” we know not. Had he asserted

that poetry is the poet’s means of expression, we could have

understood him without agreeing with him; but he identifies poetry

with its expression. Say they must co-exist; but they are not

identical. There is not a human soul without a body, nor a leaf

without the sap of the tree; but great confusion would ensue from

identifying the one with the other. He goes, however, even further

than this. It seems to be his idea that no one can be a poet who does

not write poetry. It is true he uses the term “recognized,” but he

goes on to describe the poet as “an artist of the beautiful, the

inventor of harmonious numbers.” But it is not necessary, for any one

to be a poet, that he should be recognized as such. There are those

who “want the acomplishment of verse” through the very intensity of

the poetic gift. Their intuitions are so profound that language sinks

under the task of conveying them; expression is overwhelmed. People

never write more feebly than when under the influence of strong

emotion. For this reason it is, too, that poetry may sometimes be

improved by the travail of art, the less, however, in proportion to

the inspiration of the poet. There are those, pre-eminently Shakspere,

in whom the expression is nearly as inspired as the poetry.

Ingenium miserâ fortunatius arte

Credit, et excludit sanos Helicone Poëtas

Democritus.

In more than one passage Mr. Stedman approaches the truth about

poetry, as when he says that “poets differ from other men in having

profounder emotions and clearer perceptions”; and again when he

writes: “Certain effects are suggested by nature; the poet discovers

new combinations within the ground which these afford.” If for

“effects” had been substituted “conceptions of the beautiful,” it

would have been very near a sufficiently accurate description of the

creative power of the poet; but he is hampered by his identification

of poetry with its expression, and so, even here, substitutes

“effects”—which really has no meaning in the context—for ideas. Poetry

is the intuition of the Beautiful and True as expressed in nature and

in man, not an analysis of its causes and effects. Not the least

inspired of modern poets, Rossetti, has very exquisitely sung this

theory of poetry in a sonnet on “St. Luke the Painter”:

“Scarcely at once she [Art] dared to rend the mist

Of devious symbols: but soon having wist

How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day

Are symbols also in some deeper way,

She looked through these to God, and was God’s priest.”

The fault of almost all the modern English poets is that they are too

artistic. Certainly their poetry cannot be blamed as _carmen quod non_.

Multa dies et multa litura coercuit, atque

Perfectum decies non castigavit ad unguem.

But it makes too much display of labor. We admire its artistic skill,

and that is its principal attraction. We feel that it is not nature

which is hymning amidst so much art. The result of such obvious effort

betrays the handicraft of the artisan rather than the inspiration of

the poet. It is the Versailles fountains instead of Niagara. It cannot

be too much insisted on that poetry is not one of the fine arts. The

greater number of modern English poets, however, treat it as such, as

much as is possible with only the imagery of words for their material.

They are disciples rather of Horace than of Democritus. There is

plenty of _labor_ and _litura_, and of verse _perfectum decies ad

unguem_; of _ingenium miserâ fortunatius arte_ but little. They

surpass in mountain-labor the forgotten Lucilius, who _in versu

faciendo sæpe caput scabunt, vivos et rodunt ungues_; but they have

too little of “the sacred madness of the bards” for admission into

Helicon. The reason is not far to seek. We notice a similar phenomenon

in Greece when religious belief was forced to retire before scepticism

and the prating sophists. To the sceptical temper of the age is

undoubtedly owing the labor devoted to expression, which has done all

it could to reduce poetry to an art. It has also occasioned a certain

subjectivity, if we may use the word—a painful mental analysis—which

is fatal to poetry.

Robert Browning is the greatest offender in this regard. So painfully

intense, in truth, is his introspection that he pays far less

attention to expression than his contemporaries. Cut off from the

divine suggestiveness of nature by his hard materialism, he does

nothing but think; and thinking poetically rather than syllogistically

is an unamalgamation. Thought and expression are alike confused,

rugged, and difficult. The reader, without even melody of rhythm to

help him on, stumbles and gropes through intricate sentences,

parentheses in parentheses, a startling image here and there; anon a

whirring flight of poetry, or what resembles it; but the wings soon

droop, and the poet is on the earth again, or lower than the

earth—anywhere but soaring heavenwards. He has in him the making of a

poet. Had he the Catholic faith, his imagination would carry him to

great heights and keep him there. He might have soared nigh to

Shakspere. His talent is dramatic—which is to say, his poetic gift is

of the highest order; but nature has no divine suggestiveness to him,

the hollow shell whispers no eternity in his dull ear; for him man has

no end, events no purpose; and inasmuch as man has a definite end, and

a sublime one, to which events definitely contribute, he is not able

to create men and women, a destiny, or destinies, in any of which

should there be a living verisimilitude. A plot in which men, women,

and children talk and act as men, women, and children do talk and act

is out of his reach. His highest effort is the dramatic poem, in

which, however, occur at times passages of great dramatic power,

showing what he could have done had he not been a heathen.

Mr. Tennyson has been the subject of various articles in THE CATHOLIC

WORLD; but so markedly does he contrast with Browning, and so

noteworthy is the different bias given to the poetry of each by the

materialistic spirit of the age, that we cannot afford to pass him by

here in complete silence.

We may look in vain in the poetry of the laureate for passages of

dramatic force such as now and then light up the creaking, groaning

poetry of Browning; but he never grovels, as the latter does very

often indeed.

Tennyson has strong sympathy with the one faith, and, as one may

think, a kind of supernatural bias in its favor, or he too, like the

author of _Paracelsus_ and _Bishop Blosegram’s Apology_, might have

used his poetry as a fantastic costume for crude psychological

problems and for the mind-darkness of doubt. The distinguishing

characteristic of his poetry is the exquisitely artistic finish of its

expression. Every line shows signs of careful toil. His genius has

been without doubt hampered by it. He is more artist than poet; and,

as though conscious of this, he seems to claim inspiration by an

affectation of oracular obscurity. Yet not unseldom the refined

simplicity of word and phrase, the grace of imagery, and all the

artistic brilliance of choicest ornament express poetry, although

never of a very high order. An elegiac poem such as _In Memoriam_, of

nearly seven hundred quatrains, however beautiful in expression, has

“unreal” on the face of it; and that is fatal to its pretensions as a

poem. Yet are there indications here and there of true poetic feeling.

Painful is it, and not without shame, to have a difference with all

the world of criticism. But if we have reason, our fellow-critics will

not disdain us; and if we have not, we throw the blame on our theory

of poetry. But there is a modern poet—Rossetti—whom, on the whole, we

must place on a higher pedestal than Tennyson. With an equal

simplicity of word and phrase, a refinement of expression not

inferior, he has the art, if it be the result of art, to conceal his

art. It is true he has all the artistic finish of Tennyson—so much so

that we cannot but feel that it is an artist who is singing to us; but

the artist disappears in the poet. We must disenchant ourselves of the

thrall of his poetry before we can criticise the artistic perfectness

of its expression. It is not only that, as Tennyson, he paints scenes

of nature and human doings with consummate art; but, true poet that he

is, he catches the very life of nature and it throbs within his verse.

His soul echoes to the Beautiful and the True imaged in nature through

all her modes and forms of color, scent, and sound; he reads their

meaning; and when he reproduces them, as Mr. Stedman has it, “in

different combinations,” they are as suggestive of those ideas of God

as the very images of nature herself. Take, for example, the eleventh

song in _The House of Life—The Sea Limits_:

“Consider the sea’s listless chime:

Time’s self it is made audible—

The murmur of the earth’s own shell.

Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass

No furlong further. Since time was

This sound hath told the lapse of time.

“No quiet, which is death’s—it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life

Enduring always at dull strife.

As the world’s heart of rest and wrath

Its painful pulse is in the sands

Lost utterly, the whole sky stands,

Gray and not known, along its path.

“Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;

Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee.

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again—

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

“Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh

The same desire and mystery,

The echo of the whole sea’s speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not anything but what thou art:

And earth, sea, man, are all in each.”

This is poetry of the loftiest kind.

We cannot forbear quoting one more example of his “quality.” It is

poetry which reaches near to Shakspere. “The poet of the world”

himself might have thus grandly imaged lust—with more nervous

terseness, may be; but the structure of dramatic numbers exacts that,

and we do not yet know that Mr. Rossetti is not equal to the drama.

“Like a toad within a stone

Seated while time crumbles on;

Which sits there since the earth was cursed

For man’s transgression at the first;

Which, living through all centuries,

Not once has seen the sun arise;

Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,

The earth’s whole summers have not warmed;

Which always, whitherso the stone

Be flung, sits there, deaf, blind, alone—

Ay, and shall not be driven out

Till that which shuts him round about

Break at the very Master’s stroke,

And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,

And the seed of man vanish as dust:

Even so within this world is lust.”

Thus much we have quoted in support of a criticism which will not be

readily assented to by all. Our space does not admit of our quoting

more. But we refer the reader to _The Blessed Damozel_ as a gem not to

be outshone; and, for dramatic power joined to the loftiest poetry, to

_A Last Confession_.

Next after Rossetti, if at all after, comes William Morris. In the

form and sound and bias of their numbers there is a close resemblance.

The imaginings of the latter flow more profusely, perhaps because he

does not tarry to spend so much care upon his art. Indeed, whilst the

_art_ of Rossetti is faultless in its way, a seldom blemish, like a

minute blur in a diamond of the best water, may be detected in that of

Morris, as the word “now” thrice in three successive quatrains, the

word “golden” in five successive lines, in a scene, of almost tragic

pathos, of _Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery_—the finest music he has

smitten from the chords of no feeble instrument:

“Why not, O _twisting_ knight, now he is dead?”

But amidst so much finish and faultlessness slight fallibilities like

these are, as it were, a relief. The truth is, the artistic spirit in

both, which (and no wonder) is all enamored of mediæval art—art in

those ages of faith when she appeared in forms of beauty as sublime as

faultless—is too forgetful of the living, breathing, moving present.

That they should drink in inspirations of the Beautiful and the True

from the forms in which that most poetic age embodied them, is well;

but the art—the poetic expression—was _natural_ to that epoch; it is

not natural to this. If this is made too conspicuous, as we think it

is in both these poets, there is a risk of mannerism; and mannerism is

an artistic blemish. The attempt to entice men away from the turbid

and muddy torrent of sounding hap-hazard words, which, setting in from

Johnson and Gibbon, has swollen into an inundation of all but sheer

nonsense from the babbling tributaries of the cheap press, to the

nervous grace of simple words and simple sentences and the suggestive

imagery of pure nature, is a service to letters as well as art, for

which alone they and Tennyson, and all the poets of that school,

deserve to be crowned. But aught by which so profoundly artistic a

renaissance is needlessly dissociated from the present should have

been carefully eschewed. In the matter of words we do not think that

such as “japes,” “dromond,” “whatso,” the substitution of the ending

“head” for “hood” in words for which universal custom has decreed the

former, and so on, are a needed revival of the obsolete. We think,

too, that simplicity of grammatical construction has been pushed to

the verge of affectation. Still, it is so artistically done, is so

beautiful in itself, and evidences such a return of leal homage from

hideousness to the rightful Beautiful and the True, that it goes

against us to complain.

It is time that the appointment of a poet-laureate should cease in

England. It is an anachronism. It is almost an insult to the world of

letters. These are not times in which people are likely to accept the

criticism of the British crown or of the crown’s advisers as decisive

of a poet’s merits. So, too, there is such a dearth of independent,

trustworthy criticism, it has become such a follow-the-leader kind of

business, that if the crown merely caps the opinion of the

contemporary public, there is every chance of the wrong man being put

in the wrong place. At any rate the appointment should not be limited

to one. There should be “power to add to their number.” We have no

hesitation in assigning a higher niche to either Rossetti or Morris

than to Tennyson. In two respects Morris surpasses Rossetti. We have

as yet from the latter no sustained efforts such as _The Earthly

Paradise_ of the former, and the poetic fire appears to be kindled in

him with less effort. We are quite sure that it is in no spirit of

challenge or rivalry that he takes Tennyson’s very own theme in _The

Defence of Guenevere_, _King Arthur’s Tomb_, _Sir Galahad_, _a

Christmas Mystery_, and _The Chapel in Lyoness_; but it is an

involuntary expression of conscious power. In all the _Idyls of the

King_ there is not a passage of such vivid poetry as the following in

_The Defence of Guenevere_:

“‘All I have said is truth, by Christ’s dear tears.’

She would not speak another word, but stood

Turned sideways, listening like a man who hears

“His brother’s trumpet sounding through the wood

Of his foe’s lances. She leaned eagerly,

And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could

“At last hear something really; joyfully

Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed

Of the roan charger drew all men to see.

The knight who came was Launcelot at good need.”

The poetry of the _Idyls_, glittering and charming as it may be, is

cold and pulseless by the side of _King Arthur’s Tomb_, a poem which

rises to the utmost height of tragic pathos. The description of the

remorse of Guenevere for merely ideas of disloyalty to her kingly

husband which she had permitted herself to entertain, as well as of

the satisfaction she made, is poetry in its noblest form, short of the

drama. But we should never meet throughout all the poetry of Tennyson

such blemishes as those we have already quoted, nor such as

“I tell myself a tale

That will not last beyond the whitewashed wall”

—an image which is beneath the dignity of poetry, whilst it rather

dulls than quickens our idea of the fleeting nature of his tale; or

“… till the bell

Of her mouth on my cheek sent a delight

Through all my ways of being.…”

But for a poetry so lofty and so inspiring we can well afford to pay

the penalty of a few blemishes.

We think that he shares with Tennyson, to a certain extent, the fault

of obscurity—never, as Tennyson, in single passages, but in the design

and end of entire pieces. We cannot suppose, for example, that he has

not a definite end and purpose in _The Earthly Paradise_; but it is an

immense defect that it must be very carefully studied in order even to

conjecture one; that it does not readily occur, and still more that,

study it as one may, he cannot feel quite sure he has conjectured

rightly. And we feel this very serious defect the more keenly because

in several of the separate portions of that poem we are afraid to

trust ourselves implicitly to the poet; we dare not throw ourselves

into his imagination, fearful whither it is to bear us. This is

specially remarkable in _Cupid_ _and Psyche_. The subject startles us

from the first. Gods and goddesses whose memory only remains as the

long-passed-away images of falsehood instead of the Beautiful and the

True, especially sensuous impersonations of impurity, are a subject

which is calculated to scare rather than attract us. But we gain

confidence as we read on. Had Byron sung of it, we should have

luscious and sensuous imagery of base suggestiveness. Had it been the

theme of a living poet, we should have had shameless obscenity. Our

poet transfigures it into purity itself. Not an unchaste image shocks

the soul. The whole subject is etherealized—we would say, if we felt

quite sure of its purpose, even spiritualized. As we interpret it, the

heathen myth, although used without stint, is, by the inimitable

genius of the poet, stripped of all impure suggestiveness, and is even

made a vehicle of exquisite beautifulness for conveying one of the

most touching revelations of the great poem of humanity. Psyche (the

soul) is represented to us undergoing by the power of divine love all

sorrow, overcoming superhuman difficulties, succored always, when hope

was well-nigh gone, by guardian angels, until,

“Led by the hand of Love, she took her way

Unto a vale beset with heavenly trees,

Where all the gathered gods and goddesses

Abode her coming; but when Psyche saw

The Father’s face, she, fainting with her awe,

Had fallen, but that Love’s arm held her up.

“Then brought the cup-bearer a golden cup

And gently set it in her slender hand,

And while in dread and wonder she did stand

The Father’s awful voice smote on her ear:

‘Drink now, O beautiful! and have no fear;

For with this draught shalt thou be born again,

And live for ever free from care and pain.’