theories is specifically different from what it is as represented by
the other. According to the latter theory, the essence of the Christian
religion is something exclusively spiritual and individual. The
exterior organization is not in vital and substantial unity with it,
but is an habiliment, an extrinsic instrument, a vehicle, or a separate
medium. One who considers that faith, the way of salvation, spiritual
union with God in Christ, are in a separate and independent sphere,
very naturally and logically considers that questions of ecclesiastical
organization and government are of inferior moment; that symbols of
doctrine, forms of worship, and modes of discipline are not matters of
perpetual and universal obligation as founded on divine right and law.
Such a question as that of episcopacy must, therefore, appear to him as
among the non-essentials; and even supposing that he admits the
certainty or probability that it is the apostolic form, he will see no
reason why it should be necessary to the being of the church, or even
to its well-being, or why Christians should be divided in fellowship on
account of matters merely belonging to exterior order and indifferent
forms.
According to the former theory, the spiritual and corporeal parts,
religion and the church, are after the model of human nature and the
Incarnation, in vital, essential, and perpetual unity. The church is
the way of salvation, the body of Christ vivified by his Spirit, the
medium of union with God. Christianity is a sacramental religion. The
episcopal order has been established and consecrated by Jesus Christ to
possess and transmit the plenitude of sacerdotal grace and power
received from him as a gift; to preserve and transmit the faith,
sacramental grace, the pure oblation of Christian worship, the
discipline of the New Law in Catholic unity.
A Christianity of the first species, loosely organized in an imperfect
society, could never have been transmuted into the second species. The
specific Catholic Christianity, hierarchical, dogmatic, sacramental,
liturgical, is the historical Christianity of the period of the first
six œcumenical councils, and appears at the Council of Nice, in the
person of the great Athanasius, in all parts of the earth, in all the
saints and doctors, in all writings and all monuments, pointing
backward to the past, the era of martyrdom, the period of foundation
and of apostolic labor, as the origin and source of its doctrine,
discipline, and worship. A transmutation of species in Christianity
like that which the Protestant theory supposes is rationally
impossible. There is the additional impossibility to be taken into
account of such a great and universal change having occurred without
leaving its records and traces in history. Christianity is an
historical religion, and the historical Christianity is identical with
Catholicity. It is the absolute and universal religion which has
manifested itself as a work which only divine power could have
produced, in the history of the past; in present history it is showing
before our eyes its supernatural and divine character; and the
fulfilment of its end in the final consummation and triumph of the
kingdom of Christ will finish the last chapter of the Revelation of
Christ in History.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR THEM IN THE INN.”
Foot-sore and weary, Mary tried
Some rest to seek, but was denied.
“There is no room,” the blind ones cried.
Meekly the Virgin turned away,
No voice entreating her to stay;
There was no room for God that day.
No room for her round whose tired feet
Angels are bowed in transport sweet,
The Mother of their God to greet.
No room for Him in whose small hand
The troubled sea and mighty land
Lie cradled like a grain of sand.
No room, O Babe divine! for thee
That Christmas night; and even we
Dare shut our hearts and turn the key.
In vain thy pleading baby cry
Strikes our deaf souls; we pass thee by,
Unsheltered ‘neath the wintry sky.
No room for God! O Christ! that we
Should bar our doors, nor ever see
Our Saviour waiting patiently.
Fling wide the doors! Dear Christ, turn back!
The ashes on my hearth lie black—
Of light and warmth a total lack.
How can I bid thee enter here
Amid the desolation drear
Of lukewarm love and craven fear?
What bleaker shelter can there be
Than my cold heart’s tepidity—
Chill, wind-tossed, as the winter sea?
Dear Lord, I shrink from thy pure eye,
No home to offer thee have I;
Yet in thy mercy pass not by.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A
PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW IRELANDER.
“I’m afraid your shooting party is spoiled,” said my mother, handing me
a letter across the breakfast-table in the well-known hieroglyphics of
my Uncle Jimmy.
“I should hope not,” I retorted, as the expedition in question had been
looked forward to with considerable pleasure, on account of Harry
Welstone, my old chum at the Catholic University, having announced his
intention of “turning the head of his dromedary to the desert of
Kilkenley,” the name of my ancestral seat, in the snug morning-room of
which my mother and myself were discussing cream, tea, new-laid eggs,
and crisp rashers.
My Uncle Jimmy’s note, addressed to my mother, his only sister, ran
thus:
“UNITED SERVICE CLUB,
“LONDON, Sept. 10.
“MY DEAR SUSEY: My old and valued friend, Mr. Fribscombe
Hawthorne, the member for Doodleshire, is most anxious to treat
Ireland fairly on the Home-Rule question. He is well disposed
towards the Green Isle, and the country cannot afford to lose
an ally in this crisis. Freddy [myself], although no
politician, manages his tenants exceedingly well, and I should
like Hawthorne to learn that at least one Irish landlord can
live upon his estate without fear of bullet or bludgeon.
Hawthorne leaves to-night, and will stop at the Shelborne
Hotel, Dublin. Tell Freddy to drop him a line, asking him to
put up at Kilkenley, and to give him some of that Sneyd and
Barton claret which I love, not wisely but too well. My enemy
is at work on my big toe, but I hope to be with you as usual at
Christmas. The grouse were capital, fat and large, and I am on
the look-out for partridge. Your affectionate brother,
“JIMMY L’ESTRANGE.”
“P.S. I forgot to mention that Hawthorne’s daughter accompanies
him; you had better enclose a note to her.
“J. L’E.”
“_Con_found it!” I cried, “it’s really too bad of Uncle Jimmy to saddle
us with some dried-up statistician and his mummy daughter. You must
write to him, _madre mia_, saying that I am at Derravanagh and beyond
reach of post and wire.”
“If your uncle wasn’t very anxious about this he would never write so
urgently; and don’t you think a little sacrifice is due to him?”
My mother was in the right. A moment’s reflection told me that my
uncle’s letter was as forcible as an act of Parliament.
“Besides,” added my mother, with a cheery smile like a ray of sunshine,
“this Mr. Hawthorne may be a sportsman and enjoy the shooting as keenly
as Harry Welstone or yourself.”
My uncle was, or I should say is—for while I write he is enjoying a
pipe in the company of Barney Corcoran, who stands to him in the same
capacity as did Corporal Trim to “My Uncle Toby”—as thorough a
gentleman as ever saw the light of day. Simple, unassuming, loyal,
generous, brave, he actually refused the recommendation for the
Victoria Cross, in order that a fair-haired boy, whose very soul was
set upon its possession, might receive the decoration. Pure-minded and
good, he is at once, as Bayard, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
Jimmy entered the army in the year 1847, roving about with his regiment
from clime to clime with a superb indifference as to change of scene,
but with a fervid determination to remain with the gallant
Thirty-third; and it was only when the Crimean war-cloud loomed
overhead that he resolved upon quitting the old corps for one under
orders for the East. One-half of the fighting Thirty-third volunteered
with him, and the great redoubt at the Alma is steeped in the blood of
many a gallant fellow who chose to follow the fortunes of Jimmy
L’Estrange.
Jimmy was badly hit at Inkerman, and was sent home invalided, to be
nursed by my mother. In a few months, however, he returned to the seat
of war, only to be knocked over at the taking of the Redan, which he
entered side by side with the dashing Tom Esmonde, where, in addition
to a bayonet thrust in the chest, he was made the depositary of a
bullet in the right leg. This bullet, clumsily extracted by an
unskilful surgeon, constitutes the only decoration my uncle deigns to
wear, and he carries it suspended from the steel chain attached to a
huge gold watch formerly in possession of his great-grandfather, to
whom King James presented it ere he rode from the disastrous
battle-field of the Boyne.
Jimmy has eight thousand pounds lent out at four per cent., and lives
like a nabob at his London club—reading the _Army and Navy Gazette_ all
the morning, gossiping with his former companions-in-arms during the
afternoon, sunning himself in the park until dinner-time, and playing
shilling whist up to his wonted hour for turning in for the night. He
spends three months in every year at Kilkenley, during which, by a
judicious course of open air, early hours, plain food, and ‘34 claret,
he is enabled to undertake the London campaign with renewed vigor and
vitality.
Visions of a crabbed, hard-headed, hard-fact, singularly uninteresting
Englishman crossed my mind as I helplessly gazed at my uncle’s
epistle—of mornings spent in debating the question of Home Rule
_versus_ Imperial legislation; of days engaged in quoting acts of
Parliament and compiling statistics; of evenings behind the horror of a
white choker, passed in dissecting and arranging these statistics,
converting figures into facts, and facts into figures—this dreary
drudgery instead of the delectable society of the bright, happy, and
joyous Harry Welstone, of mornings on the hillside, of days in the
turnip-fields looking for the identical partridge of which my uncle had
made honorable mention in his letter, of evenings whirled through in
chatting over old times and old associations. What cared I for Mr. Butt
or Home Rule, the land question, fixity of tenure, tenant right, and
such bother? If my tenants required time to pay the rent, they got it.
If they required help toward fencing, draining, top-dressing, or
thatching, they got it. If they were twelve months in arrear, they came
to my mother to plead for them; if over that period, they invariably
waited for the annual visit of my Uncle Jimmy, in order to utilize him
as ambassador; and my private opinion is, that upon one occasion, in
order to keep up the credit of a family distantly related to his valet,
Barney Corcoran, he paid the rent himself. I dare not hint at such a
thing, but I feel thoroughly assured that the money came out of his own
pocket. In the end, however, things generally came right, and delay in
this case did not prove dangerous.
I read my uncle’s epistle twice, confounded him once, and contented
myself by showering mild maledictions upon the heads of his English
friends with a fervor that bore witness to my feelings of chagrin and
disappointment.
The letters were duly written to Mr. and Miss Hawthorne and forwarded
to the Shelborne.
“An’ yez are not goin’ to Derravanagh?” asked Ned Clancy, my
game-keeper, in tones betraying the deepest dejection—“afther all me
thrubble wud the birds, an’ the dogs blue-mowlded for a set. Begorra, I
dunno what I’ll do wud the poor bastes. I tould thim we wor aff in the
mornin’, an’ now be me song it’s at home they’ll have for to stay an’
set gruel.”
“I’m sorry to say I can’t go, Ned, as I expect an English gentleman and
his daughter to visit us”; and, wishing to impress him with their
importance, added: “He is a member of Parliament, and is coming over to
study the Home-Rule question.”
My _addendum_ failed to produce the desired effect.
“An’ much he’ll larn here,” observed Clancy with a toss of his head.
“Av he axes the quollity for information, sorra an information they
have for to give him; an’ if he axes the poorer soart, they’ll only cod
him, bad cess to him!”
Ned Clancy was even more fatally “sold” than I by the postponement of
our visit to Derravanagh; for a certain blue-eyed colleen, the daughter
of a “warm” farmer living close to the shooting-lodge, had succeeded in
stirring tender emotions in the region lying beneath Mr. Clancy’s
waistcoat on the left side, which, while productive of joy, were
equally productive of pain, since the sunshine of her presence was
unhappily counterbalanced by the very prolonged shadow of her absence.
Forty miles lay between him and the object of his admiration; and
although there are but seventy thousand four hundred yards in forty
miles, still it is a long road for a gentleman to travel, unless he is
pretty certain of his welcome, and as yet Ned Clancy had “never told
his love.”
“Mebbe yer honor wud like for to show this English gintleman the
counthry; an’ shure, in regard to scenery, there’s no batin’
Derrynacushla all the ways be Derravanagh. Sorra a finer sight nor the
view from Ballyknocksheelin hill; it flogs Rooshia, Ashia, an’
Africa—so Misther Corcoran, yer uncle’s boy, tould me; an’ shure he
ought for to know, be raisin’ av his havin’ travelled all the world,
likewise Arabia.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too far, Ned.”
“Far!” he contemptuously ejaculated—“a few dirty mile, an’ the horses
atin’ their heds aff. Lily av the Valley darted through her stall this
mornin’, an’ it tuk me an’ a cupple more for to hould Primrose.”
This was special pleading with a vengeance.
“Mebbe the gintleman wud take a gun. Give him a lind av Miss Blake,
sir. She goes aff soft an’ aisy, an’ wudn’t rub the dew aff th’ eyebrow
av a grasshopper. Blur an’ ages, Masther Fred! for th’ honor av ould
Ireland give him a shot. The birds is as thick as hayves, an’ he cudn’t
miss thim no more nor a haystack; an’ shure,” he added, “anything _he_
misses I’ll be on the luk out for, so betune us we’ll make it soft
anyhow.”
“It’s not to be done, Ned; besides, Miss Hawthorne accompanies her
father, and she possibly would not like to separate from him.”
“Bad cess to thim for wimmen!” he muttered, as he tossed the gun across
his shoulders; “they spile everything. I wish they wor niver invinted.”
In the course of post two very polite letters reached us, one addressed
to my mother from Miss Hawthorne, the other to myself from the M.P.,
accepting the invitation and stating that the writer would leave Dublin
by the one o’clock train upon the following day, reaching Ballyvoreen
station at 5.30.
The letters were excellently well written, both as regards style and
caligraphy, especially that of the lady, whom I now felt assured must
be a distinguished member of the Social Science or of the British
Association.
“They will be here to-morrow, mother. How on earth are we to amuse
them? We are in for it now, and must do our best to make their visit
agreeable. I know little, and care less, about Home Rule, so I’ll hand
Mr. Hawthorne over to Myles Casey, of Loftus Park, who opposed our
present member. Father O’Dowd, too, will give this base, bloody, and
brutal Saxon enough to think about for a dozen sessions of Parliament.
I’ll do _my_ part like a man.”
“We must give a dinner-party,” said my mother with a weary sigh,
visions of unpacking the family plate, which had not seen the light of
day since my poor father’s death, floating across her mind’s eye. “I
can drive Miss Hawthorne about the country and pay visits.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about her, mother. She’ll be able to amuse
herself. Show her the old quarry at Rathnamon, and she can geologize
until she’s black in the face. Or bring her to Carrignageena, and
she’ll find ferns to bother her; and if she’s a dab at antiquities, the
old church at Bohernacapple ought to put her on the treadmill for a
week. There is one tombstone there that has bewildered Sir William
Wilde and the entire Royal Irish Academy.”
“She may be interested in the Home-Rule question,” suggested my mother
with a smile, adding: “And perhaps political economy is her _forte_.”
“In that case I’ll hand her over to Harry Welstone. He can talk Adam
Smith, Martin Tupper, and Stuart Mill. He can enlighten her on the land
question as well as A. M. Sullivan or Mitchel Henry; and he _shall_ do
it as sure as my name is Frederick Fitzgerald Ormonde. Besides, he can
imitate Gladstone, Bright, Toole, Mathews, and Buckstone. He’s just the
sort of fellow to encounter this antediluvian female, and, if such a
thing were within the realms of possibility, metamorphose her.”
Visitors to a country house, should the entertainers be not in the
habit of receiving company, are about the severest penances that can by
any possibility be inflicted. Everything requires to be turned
topsy-turvy for them—beds, bedrooms, furniture, carpets, “fixins’” of
every description. The cellar must be overhauled and confidential
conferences held with the cook. The “trap” used for knocking about the
roads and attending markets and fairs must be shoved aside, and the
family coach put into formidable requisition. The horses must be
clipped, while the harness is found to be defective and a new whip an
absolute necessity. The very door-mats suggest renovation.
As regards Harry Welstone, his room and his tub were always ready. I
would have felt no hesitation in quartering him on the house-top, and
the only preparation I went in for with reference to his visit was a
scrupulous overhauling of the billiard-table. Having no person to
practise with except Martin Heaviside of the Grove, or Captain O’Reilly
of the Connaught Rangers when home on leave, the cushions became more
like bags of sand than those springy, elastic walls from which the pale
white or the blushing red ball bounds gaily towards the coquettish
pocket or the artfully-arranged collision of the carrom. With the aid
of Ned Clancy—who, in addition to being game-keeper, was a sort of
Jack-of-all-trades—and the usual _formulæ_, I succeeded in imparting
the necessary tone to the table, and was satisfied that Harry would
scarcely fail to appreciate the utility of the preparations.
I felt no anxiety whatever to “show off” to the English member of
Parliament, while I honestly confess to a burning desire to appear the
“correct thing” in the eyes of my old college chum; and while I ordered
a homely vehicle called the shandradan—half pilentum, half brougham,
very old, very rickety, and very seedy—to meet Mr. and Miss Hawthorne
upon the following day, I turned out my own dog-cart, built by Bates,
of Gorey—stained ash, brass-boxed wheels, brass-mounted harness,
‘possum rug, with Lily of the Valley and Primrose tandem—in order to
bowl Harry Welstone from Ballyvoreen station to the lodge gate, nine
miles, in the forty minutes.
In accordance with preconcerted arrangement, I met Harry, hugged him,
whacked him on the back, refreshed him from my flask, rolled him in the
‘possum rug as though the mercury were in the tens below zero, and
almost yelled with pleasure the entire way back.
Is any meeting equal to the meeting of old school-fellows?
_Ay de mi!_ no.
He had grown much stouter and much handsomer. His eyes were more
romantically dark, and his black moustache, which I recollected so well
in its struggling tooth-brush infancy, was now pointed after the
fashion of the third Napoleon.
After he had received a cordial welcome from my mother I dragged him up
to his room, and there we sat talking over Jim Cooper, that went to the
diggings, and Bobby Thyne, now a leader at the Indian bar, and Tom
O’Brien, who was a Jesuit, and Phil Dempsey, whose last speech on
circuit had elicited the warm encomiums of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald; of
the Corbet girls, and the Walshs’ picnic at the Dargle, when Harry fell
overhead into the river in a chivalrous endeavor to pluck a maiden-hair
fern for Miss Walsh, and a host of similar delightful _souvenirs_,
until the dinner-bell rang.
“Harry, my old bird, what will you dip your beak into—claret or the
ding-dong?”
“Well, I stand by the solid liquor, Fred, but the pace is too heavy.”
Over our punch we resumed the conversation on the olden, golden time.
Ah! how weary, as we approach the end, to look back at the milestones
we have passed on our journey. Why did we tarry here, why not have
rested there, why not have halted for good and aye? With us it was
_couleur de rose_. We had no shadows to sadden memory. Our gossip was
of our college days, when life was on the spring and every nerve braced
for the forthcoming struggle. We talked late into the night,
disregarding dove-like messages from the ark announcing coffee.
The next day Harry went on a ferreting expedition with Ned Clancy, and
my mother was too deeply immersed in household affairs to be enabled to
take my place and go to meet our expected guests; so, with feelings of
no very amiable description, I threw myself, all untidy and ill-dressed
as I was, into the shandradan, and jingled the nine miles to
Ballyvoreen behind as sorry a pair of nags as ever ploughed a nine-acre
field.
I had to wait at the station, as _of course_ the train was
five-and-twenty minutes late, and I was seriously hoping that some
untoward accident had occurred which would retard its progress for
four-and-twenty hours at the very least, when it came creaking and
groaning in. Just as I had anticipated, a tall, grim, gaunt, elderly
gentleman alighted, followed by a tall, grim, gaunt, elderly young
lady, with a nose as sharp as a shilling razor, wearing her hair in
wiry curls, and dragging by a long blue ribbon a plunging, howling,
ill-visaged pug. The sight of the dog was somewhat of a relief to me,
as I foresaw the miserable existence he was likely to lead with my two
Skye terriers—a counterpart of the torture I should be compelled to
endure with his master and mistress.
“Mr. Hawthorne, I presume,” bowing and lifting my hat.
He bowed stiffly.
I repeated the question, fearing, perhaps, that he had not heard me.
“You are mistaken, sir,” in freezing tones. “I am Lord Mulligatawney.”
“I _was_ mistaken.”
Apologizing for the error, I looked up the line and perceived in the
distance—for the train was a long one—a well-dressed, dapper little man
engaged in lugging a valise from beneath the seat of a first-class
carriage. “This must be my guest,” thought I, advancing, and as I
reached the carriage the portmanteau came to earth with a chuck that
nearly precipitated its proprietor into an adjacent hedge. Following
the “leathern conveniency,” and with a spring graceful as that of a
gazelle, a young girl alighted from the compartment. She was small but
exquisitely proportioned. Her hair, pure gold, was wound round the back
of her head in ponderous plaits. Her eyes were of that blue which in
certain lights cries “check” unto the violet. Her nose was straight and
delicately shaped, but not in the least classical. Her mouth was large,
full, and generous, and adorned with flashing white teeth, somewhat
irregular, it is true, but in their irregularity lay a special charm
all their own. She was attired in a shepherd’s plaid silk travelling
dress, a Die Vernon hat with a sweeping blue feather almost caressing
her left shoulder, and her dainty little hands were encased in black
kid gauntleted gloves. Struck by her singular grace and beauty, I
remained staring at her—staring like a schoolboy at a waxen effigy.
“You are Mr. Ormonde,” she said laughingly, and advancing towards me.
“You are Miss Hawthorne,” I stammered.
“I am, and papa, as usual, is fussing about our luggage—_impedimenta_
you scholars call it nowadays. I knew you from your photograph. It is
_so_ kind of you to come and meet us.” She put out her hand as she said
this in a winning, confiding way that was fraught with captivation. I
bowed over the tips of her fingers in respectful reverence, scarcely
daring to touch her hand.