Round our dwelling,
All day telling
Us their woe;
And, at vesper,
Frosts grow crisper,
As they whisper
Of the snow.
4. From the unseen land,
Frozen inland,
Down from Greenland,
Winter glides.
Shedding lightness
Like the brightness
When moon-whiteness
Fills the tide.
5. Now bright Pleasure’s
Sparkling measures
With rare treasures
Overflow!
With this gladness
Comes what sadness
Oh, what sadness,
Oh, what woe!
6. Even merit
May inherit
Some bare garret,
Or the ground;
Or, a worse ill,
Beg a morsel
At some door-sill,
Like a hound.
7. Storms are trailing,
Winds are wailing,
Howling, railing,
At each door.
’Midst this trailing,
Howling, railing,
List the wailing
Of the poor!
LXXXI.—THE SISTER OF CHARITY.
WILLIAMS.
Richard Dalton Williams was born in Ireland. He had been for
several years previous to his death, Professor of Belles
Letters in the Catholic College, Mobile. His poems all bear the
unmistakable stamp of poetic genius.
1. Sister of Charity, gentle and dutiful,
Loving as seraphim, tender and mild,
In humbleness strong, and in purity beautiful,
In spirit heroic, in manners a child,
Ever thy love like an angel reposes,—
With hovering wings o’er the sufferer here,
Till the arrows of death are half-hidden in roses,
And hope-speaking prophecy smiles on the bier.
2. When life, like a vapor, is slowly retiring,
As clouds in the dawning to heaven uprolled,
Thy prayer, like a herald, precedes him expiring,
And the Cross on thy bosom his last looks behold;
And O! as the Spouse to thy words of love listens,
What hundredfold blessings descend on thee then—
Thus the flower-absorbed dew in the bright iris glistens,
And returns to the lilies more richly again.
3. Sister of Charity, child of the holiest,
O, for thy living soul, ardent as pure—
Mother of orphans and friend of the lowliest—
Stay of the wretched, the guilty, the poor;
The embrace of the Godhead so plainly enfolds thee
Sanctity’s halo so shrines thee around,
Daring the eye that unshrinking beholds thee,
Nor droops in thy presence abashed to the ground.
4. Dim is the fire of the sunniest blushes,
Burning the breast of the maidenly rose
To the exquisite bloom that thy pale beauty flushes,
When the incense ascends and the sanctuary glows,
And the music, that seems heaven’s language, is pealing—
Adoration has bowed him in silence and sighs,
And man, intermingled with angels, is feeling
The passionless rapture that comes from the skies.
5. O, that this heart, whose unspeakable treasure
Of love hath been wasted so vainly on clay,
Like thine, unallured by the phantom of pleasure,
Could rend every earthly affection away.
And yet, in thy presence, the billows subsiding
Obey the strong effort of reason and will,
And my soul, in her pristine tranquillity gliding,
Is calm as when God bade the ocean be still.
6. Thy soothing, how gentle! thy pity, how tender!
Choir-music thy voice is—thy step angel grace,
And thy union with deity shrines in a splendor
Subdued, but unearthly, thy spiritual face.
When the frail chains are broken, a captive that bound thee,
Afar from thy home is the prison of clay,
Bride of the Lamb, and earth’s shadows around thee
Disperse in the blaze of eternity’s day.
7. Still mindful, as now, of the sufferer’s story,
Arresting the thunders of wrath ere they roll,
Intervene as a cloud between us and His glory,
And shield from His lightnings the shuddering soul.
As mild as the moonbeam in autumn descending
That lightning, extinguished by mercy, shall fall,
While he hears, with the wail of a penitent blending,
Thy prayer, Holy Daughter of Vincent de Paul.
LXXXII.—WASHINGTON AND BONAPARTE COMPARED.
CHATEAUBRIAND.
1. If Washington and Bonaparte are compared, man with man, the genius of
the first will seem to take a less lofty flight than that of the second.
Washington belongs not, like Bonaparte, to the race of Alexanders and
Cæsars, who surpassed the ordinary stature of the human race; he creates
no sentiment of astonishment; he is not seen contending, on a vast
theatre, for glory, with the greatest captains and most powerful monarchs
of the earth, he traverses[579] no seas; he hurries not from Memphis
to Vienna, from Cadiz to Moscow; his work is a simple one of defending
himself, with a handful of citizens, within the narrow limits of domestic
hearths, in a land without a past and without celebrity.
2. He gains none of those battles which renew the bloody triumphs of
Arbela[580] and Pharsalia;[581] he puts not his foot upon the necks of
kings; he does not say to them, waiting on the vestibule of his palace,
_how often you come!_ and how you weary Attila![582] A certain spirit of
silence envelops the actions of Washington: slow caution marks them all.
One would say that he had ever the sentiment of his great mission with
him, and that he feared to compromise it by rashness.
3. His own personal destiny seems not to have entered into the
calculations of this hero of a new species; the destinies of his country
alone occupied him, and he did not permit himself to risk or gamble
with what did not belong to him. But from this profound obscurity what
light breaks forth! Seek through the unknown forests where the sword of
Washington glittered, and what will you find there? Tombs? No! A world.
Washington has left the United States as a trophy of his field of battle.
4. Bonaparte possessed no single trait of this great American. His wars
were all waged on an ancient continent, environed[583] by splendor and
stunning with noise. His object was personal glory: his individual
destiny filled all his thoughts. He seems to have known that his mission
would be short: that the torrent that fell from such a height would
quickly expend its force. He hurried forward to enjoy and to abuse his
glory, as if aware that it was a fugitive dream of youth. Like the gods
of Homer, four steps must suffice him to reach the end of the world.
5. Each of these men has been recompensed according to his works.
Washington, after having raised a nation to independence, slept
peacefully, as a retired magistrate, under his paternal roof, amid the
regrets of his countrymen, and the veneration of all people, Bonaparte,
having robbed a nation of its independence was hurled, a dethroned
emperor, into exile, and the terrified earth hardly thought him secure
enough under the custody of the ocean.
6. Even while exhausted and chained to a rock, he was struggling with
death: Europe dared not lay down her arms, for fear of him. He died;
and this event, published at the gate of the palace before which
the conqueror had proclaimed so many funerals, hardly arrested the
passer-by. What, indeed, had citizens to weep for!
7. Washington and Bonaparte both arose out of the bosom of a republic.
Both were born of liberty; the first was faithful to it, the second
betrayed it. Their lot will be according to the different part they
chose: very different with future generations. The name of Washington
will spread with liberty from age to age, and mark the commencement of
a new era for the human race: the name of Bonaparte will be pronounced
also by distant generations, but no benedictions will be attached to it;
it will serve on the contrary, as an authority to oppressors, great and
petty of all times.
8. Washington represented completely the wants, the ideas, the state
of enlightenment and opinions of his epoch. He seconded, instead of
thwarting, the advancing movement: he willed that which he ought to have
willed; the fulfilment of the mission to which he was called. Hence the
coherence[584] and perpetuity of his work.
9. This man, who strikes the imagination so slightly, because he was
natural, and kept within his just proportions, has confounded his history
with that of his country: his glory is the common patrimony of increased
civilization: his renown rises like one of those sanctuaries whence a
stream, pure and inexhaustible, flows forth for ever, for the solace of
the people.
10. Bonaparte might also have enriched the public domain. His action was
on the nation the most civilized, the most intelligent, the most brave,
the most brilliant of the earth. What a rank would he have occupied at
present in the universe, if he had joined magnanimity to his other heroic
qualities! if—Washington and Bonaparte at the same time—he had nominated
liberty the inheritor of his glory!
11. But the disproportioned giant did not completely identify his destiny
with that of his country. His genius belonged to modern, his ambition
to ancient times. He did not perceive that the miracles of his life by
far surpassed the value of a diadem, and that this gothic ornament but
ill became him. Sometimes one might see him take a step with the age; at
others he would retrograde toward the past. But whether he reascended the
stream of time or followed its course, the prodigious force of his genius
seemed to command a flow or a flux at his will.
12. Men were, in his eyes, only a means of power: there was no sympathy
between their welfare and his own. He promised to liberate, and he
enchained them: he separated himself from them, and they shrunk back from
him. The kings of Egypt built their funeral pyramids, not amid fertile
plains, but sterile sands. On a like site has Bonaparte constructed the
monument of his renown.
[579] TRAVˊ-ERSES, crosses over.
[580] AR-BEˊ-LA, it was near Arbela that Alexander gained his great
victory over the Persians.
[581] PHAR-SAˊ-LIA, it was here Julius Cæsar defeated Pompey.
[582] AT-TIˊ-LA, a celebrated king of the Huns. He invaded Europe with an
immense army, in 451. He crossed the Rhine and penetrated to the heart of
Gaul, sacking and burning all the towns in his way. He was defeated by
Ætius at Chalons.
[583] EN-VIˊ-RON, to surround.
[584] CO-HERˊ-ENCE, consistency.
LXXXIII.—CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN.
BROUGHAM.
1. One of the most remarkable men certainly of our times as a politician,
or of any age as a philosopher, was Franklin; who also stands alone
in combining together these two characters, the greatest that man can
sustain, and in this, that, having borne the first part in enlarging
science by one of the greatest discoveries ever made, he bore the second
part in founding one of the greatest empires in the world.
2. In this truly great man every thing seems to concur that goes toward
the constitution of exalted merit. First, he was the architect of his
own fortune. Born in the humblest station, he raised himself by his
talents and industry, first to the place in society which may be attained
with the help only of ordinary abilities, great application, and good
luck; but next, to the loftier heights which a daring and happy genius
alone can scale; and the printers’ boy who at one period of his life
had no covering to shelter his head from the dews of night, rent in
twain the proud dominion of England, and lived to be the ambassador of a
commonwealth which he had formed, at the court of the haughty monarchs of
France, who had been his allies.
3. Then he had been tried by prosperity as well as by adverse fortune,
and had passed unhurt through the perils of both. No ordinary apprentice,
no commonplace journeyman, ever laid the foundation of his independence
in habits of industry and temperance more deep than he did, whose genius
was afterwards to rank him with the Galileos and Newtons of the old
world. No patrician born to shine in courts, or assist at the councils of
monarchs, ever bore his honors in a lofty station more easily, or was
less spoiled by the enjoyment of them, than this common workman did when
negotiating with royal representatives, or caressed by all the beauty and
fashion of the most brilliant court in Europe.
4. Again, he was self-taught in all he knew. His hours of study were
stolen from those of sleep and of meals, or gained by some ingenious
contrivance for reading while the work of his daily calling went on.
Assisted by none of the helps which affluence tenders to the studies of
the rich, he had to supply the place of tutors by redoubled diligence,
and of commentaries by repeated perusal. Nay, the possession of books
was to be obtained by copying what the art which he himself exercised
furnished easily to others.
5. Next, the circumstances under which others succumb he made to yield,
and bent to his own purposes—a successful leader of a revolt that
ended in complete triumph after appearing desperate for years: a great
discoverer in philosophy without the ordinary helps to knowledge; a
writer famed for his chaste style without a classical education; a
skillful negotiator, though never bred to politics; ending as a favorite,
nay, a pattern of fashion when the guest of frivolous courts, the life
which he had begun in garrets and in workshops.
6. Lastly, combinations of faculties, in others deemed impossible,
appeared easy and natural in him. The philosopher, delighting in
speculation, was also eminently a man of action. Ingenious reasoning,
refined and subtle consultation, were in him combined with prompt
resolution and inflexible firmness of purpose. To a lively fancy he
joined a learned and deep reflection; his original and inventive genius
stooped to the convenient alliance of the most ordinary prudence in
every day affairs; the mind that soared above the clouds, and was
conversant with the loftiest human contemplations, disdained not to make
proverbs and feign parables for the guidance of apprenticed youths and
maidens at service; and the hands that sketched a free constitution for
a whole continent, or drew down the lightning from heaven, easily and
cheerfully lent themselves to simplify the apparatus by which truths were
to be illustrated or discoveries pursued.
7. His whole course, both in acting and in speculation, was simple and
plain, ever preferring the easiest and shortest road, nor ever having
recourse to any but the simplest means to compass his ends. His policy
rejected all refinements, and aimed at accomplishing its purposes by
the most rational and obvious expedients. His language was unadorned,
and used as the medium of communicating his thoughts, not of raising
admiration; but it was pure, expressive, racy. His manner of reasoning
was manly and cogent, the address of a rational being to others of the
same order; and so concise, that preferring decision to discussion,
he never exceeded a quarter of an hour in any public address. His
correspondence on business, whether private or on state affairs, is a
model of clearness and compendious shortness; nor can any state papers
surpass in dignity and impressiveness those of which he is believed to
have been the author in the earlier part of the American revolutionary
war.
8. His mode of philosophizing was the purest application of the inductive
principle, so eminently adapted to his nature, and so clearly dictated
by common sense, that we can have little doubt that it would have been
suggested by Franklin, if it had not been unfolded by Bacon, though it
is clear that in this case it would have been expounded in far more
simple terms. But of all this great man’s scientific excellencies,
the most remarkable is the smallness, the simplicity, the apparent
inadequacy of the means which he employed in his experimental researches.
His discoveries were made with hardly any apparatus at all; and if,
at any time, he had been led to employ instruments of a less ordinary
description, he never rested satisfied until he had, as it were,
afterward translated the process, by resolving the problem with such
simple machinery, that you might say he had done it wholly unaided
by apparatus. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and
electricity was demonstrated were made with a sheet of brown paper, a
bit of twine, a silk thread, and an iron key. Upon the integrity of this
great man, whether in public or in private life, there rests no stain.
Strictly honest, and even scrupulously punctual in all his dealings, he
preserved in the highest fortune that regularity which he had practiced,
as well as inculcated, in the lowest.
9. In domestic life he was faultless, and in the intercourse of society,
delightful. There was a constant good humor and a playful wit, easy and
of high relish, without any ambition to shine, the natural fruit of his
lively fancy, his solid, natural good-sense, and his cheerful temper,
that gave his conversation an unspeakable charm, and alike suited every
circle, from the humblest to the most elevated.
LXXXIV.—THE LAST MINSTREL.
SCOTT.
Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771, died
September 21, 1832. He was distinguished as a poet, and unrivaled
as a novelist.
1. The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek, and tresses gray,
Seemed to have known a better day:
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy;
The last of all the Bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry.
2. For well a day! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them and at rest.
No more on prancing palfrey borne,
He caroled, light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caressed,
High-placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay.
3. Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger filled the Stuart throne,
The bigots of the Iron time
Had called the harmless art a crime.
A wandering Harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door,
And tuned, to please a peasants ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
4. He passed where Newark’s stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow’s birchen bower;
The Minstrel gazed with wistful eye,
No humbler resting-place was nigh;
With hesitating step, at last,
The embattled portal arch he passed,
Whose pond’rous grate and massy bar
Had oft rolled back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.
5. The Duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell,
That they should tend the old man well:
For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power and beauty’s bloom,
Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb!
LXXXV.—THE MINSTREL BOY.
THOMAS MOORE.
1. The minstrel boy to the war is gone;
In the ranks of Death you’ll find him,
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.
“Land of song,” said the warrior-bard,
“Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee.”
2. The minstrel fell: but the foeman’s chain
Could not bring his proud soul under.
The harp he loved ne’er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder,
And said, “No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery;
Thy songs were made for the pure and free;
They never shall sound in slav’ry.”
LXXXVI.—ARMY HYMN.
O. W. HOLMES.
1. O Lord of Hosts! Almighty King!
Behold the sacrifice we bring!
To every arm thy strength impart,
Thy Spirit shed through every heart.
2. Wake in our breasts the living fires,
The holy faith, that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our nation free;
To die for her is serving Thee.
3. Be thou a pillared flame to show
The midnight snare, the silent foe;
And when the battle thunders loud,
Still guide us in its moving cloud.
4. God of all Nations! Sov’reign Lord!
In thy dread name we draw the sword;
We lift the starry flag on high,
That fills with light our stormy sky.
5. From treason’s rent, from murder’s stain,
Guard thou its folds till Peace shall reign;
Till fort and field, till shore and sea,
Join our loud anthem,—Praise to Thee!
LXXXVII.—THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.
ARCHBISHOP SPALDING.
M. J. Spalding, D. D. Archbishop of Baltimore, is a native of
Kentucky. He is a man of great learning and ability, and of
untiring industry. He is the author of a very valuable “History
of the Protestant Reformation,” and of several volumes of Essays
and Lectures. The following is from his brilliant Introduction to
the “History of the Church,” by Darras.
1. Take them all in all, the two hundred and fifty Popes and more, who
have successively occupied the Chair of Peter, constitute the most
respectable and venerable body of men whose deeds are recorded on the
pages of history. Nearly all of them were highly respectable men,
learned, enlightened, and pious, far beyond their age; very many of them
were venerable for their personal sanctity. Seventy-nine of them—nearly
a third of the entire number—were so remarkable for their holiness of
character as to merit being inscribed on the Calendar of Saints; and this
number includes thirty-three who willingly laid down their lives for
Christ and His Church.
2. A very large proportion of the others were men of blameless life, and
of indefatigable[585] zeal for the propagation[586] of the faith, while
not a few of them were possessed of great learning and capacity. Such,
for instance, were Innocent III., Innocent IV., Boniface VIII., and
Benedict XIV.,—not to name a host of others in the earlier ages of the
Church.
3. In this connection, it is a remarkable fact, and one which shows how
effectually Christ has watched over His Church, in the person of His
Vicars on earth; that during the last three centuries—since the so-called
Reformation—not a single unworthy or immoral Pope has occupied the
venerable Chair of Peter. While wickedness has abounded[587], and the
very foundations of the faith have been boldly undermined by wicked men
“lying in wait to deceive,” God has taken care of His own, and has spared
scandals in the high places of His Church.
4. The Reformation, has, perhaps, been instrumental in involuntarily and
indirectly rendering this signal service to the cause of the Church,
which it so unblushingly maligned. By removing from the pale of Catholic
Christendom the most turbulent[588] and unrestrained of its members, it
has contributed to purify the atmosphere breathed by the great body of
Christians, who remained faithful; while by its bitter opposition, it has
quickened their zeal and nourished their vigilance. Thus God’s providence
hath drawn good out of evil.
5. Compare the Popes with the sovereigns who have contemporaneously[589]
filled the various thrones of Europe and the world; and mark the
difference, or rather the contrast. While among the latter it is
very difficult to discover even one just man, in a long line of
incumbents;[590] in the former, it is almost as difficult to find one
who is wicked. Among the latter, personal morality, self-restraint, and
purity are the exception; among the former, they are the rule. Among the
latter, a ruler now and then appears clad with the virtues which mark the
saint, as if to show that sanctity is compatible with every condition in
life; among the former so many blameless and saintly men appear, that
we cease to wonder, and yield to no surprise on discovering a new Pope
who is true to the traditions[591] of his order. When we find a solitary
flower in the bleak and dreary desert, we are startled into unbounded
admiration; when we behold whole clusters of them in a flower-garden,
we look with calm pleasure on the beautiful spectacle, but take it as a
matter of course, and are not at all astonished.
[585] IN-DE-FATˊ-I-GA-BLE, unwearying; not yielding to fatigue.
[586] PROPˊ-A-GAˊ-TION, diffusion; increase.
[587] A-BOUNDˊ-ED, been prevalent or plentiful.
[588] TURˊ-BU-LENT, riotous; disorderly.
[589] CON-TEMˊ-PO-RA-NEOUS, living or existing at the same time.
[590] IN-CUMˊ-BENT, one who holds an office.
[591] TRA-ˊDI-TION, the history or account handed down from one to
another.
LXXXVIII.—LABOR AND GENIUS
SYDNEY SMITH.
Sydney Smith was born in 1791, and died in 1845. His
miscellaneous writings, comprising essays, reviews, and
occasional pieces, are characterized by a happy combination of
strong sense and brilliant wit.