“Me have they _de_capitated.

But to thee, behold, ‘tis given

Forthwith to _re_capitate me:

Wilt thou do the will of Heaven?”

“If, in sooth, high Heaven permits me

To recapitate my lord,

With good will I do so, proving

By my very deed my word;

For right well have you defended

Bretons by your knightly sword.

“Thus I place upon your shoulders

Once again your severed head:

Be, my son, _re_capitated,

In the Name all spirits dread.”

By the power of holy water

Freely sprinkled him upon,

Back to very manhood changing

Lez-Breiz stood—the spectre gone.

When the spectre thus had vanished,

Changed to veritable man:

“With me now you must hard penance

Do,” the hermit sage began.

“You a leaden cloak fast soldered

Round your neck must henceforth wear,

Wear for seven years, and daily

Other penance must you bear.

“Daily, at the hour of noontide,

Fasting, you must wend your way.

Up to yonder mountain summit:

There a little stream doth play.

From that little mountain streamlet,

Water you must bear away.”

“Holy hermit, only say

What your will, and I obey.”

When the seven years were ended,

Bared his heels were to the bone,

Where the leaden cloak had worn them;

Long and grey his hair had grown.

Grey his beard flowed o’er his girdle;

Any who his form had seen

Had a hoary oak-tree thought him,

Which for sev’n years dead had been.

None who Lez-Breiz met had known him,

Altered thus in face and mien.

One there was alone who knew him

Through the wood a lady bright,

Through the greenwood swiftly passing,

Clad in garb of purest white,

Stayed her steps and wept, beholding

Lez-Breiz in so piteous plight.

“Is it thou, my dear son Lez-Breiz?

Lez-Breiz, is it thou indeed?

Come, my child, that I may free thee

From thy burden sore, with speed.

“Let me with my golden scissors

Sever this thy heavy chain.

I thy mother, Anue of Armor,

Come to end thy lengthened pain.”

II.

A month and seven years had flown,

When Lez-Breiz’ faithful squire

Throughout the land his master sought,

With love that cannot tire.

And as he rode by Helléan’s wood,

He to himself did sigh:

“Though I have slain his murderer, yet

My dear lord lost have I.”

Then to him from the forest came

A wild and plaintive neigh,

Whereat his horse, with answering cry,

Snuffing the wind, his head thrown high,

Sped, with a bound, away.

Away they sped the greenwood through,

Until they reached the spot

Where the black steed of Lez-Breiz stood,

But them he heeded not.

The charger stood the fountain by,

He neither drank nor fed;

But with his hoofs he tore the ground,

With sad and downcast head;

Then raised it, neighing dismally,

He wept, so some men said.

“Tell me, O venerable sire,

Who to the fountain come,

Who is it that beneath this mound

Sleeps in his narrow home?”

“Lez-Breiz it is who lies at rest,

Here in this lonely spot.

Famed will he be through Brittany

Till Brittany is not.

He with a shout shall wake one early day,[159]

And chase the hated Frankish hosts away.”

Of the two warriors mentioned in the poem, the first is unknown except

under the opprobrious epithet of “Lorgnez,” or “the leper.” The “Moor

of the King” appears to have been one of those whom Louis took captive,

after having conquered the city of Barcelona, and retained in his

service. With regard to the avenging of his master’s death by the

esquire, tradition relates that, at the moment when a Frankish warrior

named Cosl struck off the Breton’s head, the esquire of Morvan pierced

his back with a mortal wound. According to Ermold Nigel, a Frankish

monk who accompanied the army of Louis, the head of Morvan was carried

to the monk Witchar, who, when he had washed away the blood and combed

the hair, recognized the features to be those of Lez-Breiz. He also

relates that the body was carried away by the Franks, and that Louis

le Débonnaire thought proper himself to arrange the ceremonies for

its sepulture, doubtless with the intent to guard his tomb from the

rebellious piety of the Bretons. The popular belief declared, as it has

done with regard to other heroes, and in other lands, that from his

unknown grave he should one day awake, and restore to his country the

independence of which his death had deprived her. Seven years after the

death of Morvan and the consequent subjugation of Brittany, Guiomarc’h,

another viscount of Leon, of the race of Lez-Breiz, in 818 again roused

his country to arms, and, after a vigorous struggle, succeeded in

throwing off the foreign domination so hateful to his countrymen.

Nomenöe, one of the most astute as well as determined of the Breton

kings, after deceiving Charles le Chauve for some time by a feigned

submission, suddenly threw off the mask, drove the Franks beyond the

Oust and Vilaine, seized the cities of Nantes and Rennes—which have

ever since formed a part of Brittany—and delivered his countrymen from

the tribute which they had been compelled to pay to the French king. M.

Augustin Thierry considers the following description of the event which

occasioned the deliverance of Brittany to be “a poem of remarkable

beauty, full of allusions to manners of a remote epoch, ... and a

vividly symbolical picture of the prolonged inaction and the sudden

awakening of the patriot prince when he judged the right moment to have

come.”

The fierce exultation of the poet when the head of the Intendant

is swept off to complete the lacking weight, recalls the words of

Lez-Breiz not many years before: “Can I but see this Frankish king, he

shall have what he asks. I will pay tribute with my sword!”

“Si fortuna daret possim quo cernere regem,

Proque tributali hæc ferrea dona dedissem.”[160]

THE TRIBUTE OF NOMENÖE.

(DROUK-KINNIG NEUMENOIOU), A.D. 841.

Cut is the gold-herb.[161] Lo, the misty rain

Forthwith in steam-like clouds drives o’er the plain.

Argad! To war!

I.

Spake the great chief: “From the heights of the mountains of Arez,

Mildew and mist for the space of three weeks have passed o’er us,

Mildew and mist from the land that lies over the mountains:

“Still from the land of the Franks, more and more, thickly driving,

So that in no wise my eyes can behold him returning,

Karo, my son, for whose coming from thence I am watching.”

“Tell me, good merchant, who travellest all the land over,

Hast thou no tidings to tell me of him, my son Karo?”

“May be so, Father of Arez, but where and what does he?”

“He, wise of head, strong of heart, with the chariots departed,

Drawn by three horses abreast, into Rennes with the tribute,

Bearing among them the toll in full weight of the Bretons.”

“Chief, if your son bore the tribute, in vain you expect him:

Each hundred pounds’ weight of silver was found to be lacking,

Lacking by three when they weighed it: whereon the Intendant

“Cried out, ‘O vassal, thy head shall make up the scant measure!’

Straight, with his sword swept his head off, and then, by the long

hair

Taking it up, he has thrown it down into the balance.”

Hearing these tidings, the aged chief fell, nigh to swooning,

Heavily fell on the rock, with his long white hair hiding,

Hiding his face, groaning, “Karo, my son! my son Karo!”

II.

The aged chief is journeying with all his kith and kin,

Till he to Nomenöe’s castle strong the way doth win.

“Say, porter at the castle gate, your lord, is he at home?”

“Or be it so, or be it not, to him may no harm come!”

E’en as he spake, his lord came riding through the portal strong,

Returning from the chase, his fierce hounds scouring swift along;

His bow he carried in his hand, and o’er his shoulder slung

A wild boar of the forest, huge, all dead and bleeding, hung.

“Good-day to you, brave mountaineers, and father, first to thee.

What tidings bring you, or what is it you would ask of me?”

“We come to learn if Justice lives—if God in heaven there be:

We come to learn if still there is a chief in Brittany.”

“Sure, I believe that God in heaven ever dwells on high;

And, so far as I can be, chief of Brittany am I.”

“Who _will_ be, _can_; and he who can will drive the Franks away,

Will chase the Franks, defend the land, vengeance on vengeance pay.

“My son and me he will avenge: the living and the dead:

Karo, my child, from whom the Franks have stricken off his head.

The excommunicated Franks, who pity know nor truth,

Have slain him in the early flower and beauty of his youth.

“His head, so fair with golden hair, they threw to make the weight,

They threw it in the balance, and have left me desolate.”

Then thick and fast the tears fell from the father’s aged eyes,

And glittered down his long and silvery beard in piteous wise;

They sparkled like the morning dew upon the aspen white,

When earliest sunbeams wake them into gems of quiv’ring light.

When Nomenöe that beheld, a fearful oath he swore:

“By this boar’s head, and by the dart wherewith I pierced the boar,

I swear my country to avenge ere many hours be o’er:

Nor will I wash away the blood from thee, my crimsoned hand,

Till I have washed the bleeding wounds of thee, my injured land.”

III.

The thing which Nomenöe did no chief hath done before:

With sacks to fill with pebble-stones he went down to the shore:

Pebbles and flints for tribute to the bald-head Frankish king:

No chief but only Nomenöe e’er hath done this thing.

He shod his horse with silver shoes, turned backwards every one,

And he himself to pay the tribute forth to Rennes is gone,

Prince that he is: no chief but he did ever this before,

And never chief will do the like again for evermore.

“Ho, warden! open wide your gates! wide open let them be,

That I may enter into Rennes as it beseemeth me.

Hither come I, Lord Nomenöe, bringing store of gold:

My chariots all are filled therewith as full as they can hold.”

“Descend, O chief! my lord, descend, and enter in, I pray;

Enter the castle, and command your chariots here to stay,

And in the hands of your esquires your white steed leave below,

While you ascend to supper; but you first would wash, I trow:

Hark! even now to horn the water[162] do the cornets blow.”

“All in good time, my lord, I wash: be first the tribute weighed.”

The first sack brought they, well tied up, the weight in full it made.

The second sack was eke the same, and then the third they threw

Into the scales. Oh! oh! there lacks the weight that here is due!

When the Intendant that beheld, quick stretched he forth his hands

All eagerly upon the sack, to loose the knotted bands.

“Hold! Sir Intendant, I will cut the fastening with my sword.”

And swift it from the scabbard leapt ere he had said the word.

Upon the crouching Frank it fell, it fell with might and main,

Clean from his shoulders swept his head, and cut the balance chain.

Then rolled the head the scales into, and weighed the balance down.

“Stop the assassin—stop!” they cried all wildly through the town.

He flies! he flies! The torches bring; haste! follow him with speed!

“Ha! bring your links to light my way—the night is dark indeed.

The night is dark, the road is ice: ‘twill spoil your gilded shoes

Of leather blue so fair bedecked, and ye your toil shall lose;

For ne’er again your scales of gold shall you, for evermore,

Use to weigh flints from Brittany and pebbles from her shore.”

KOCHE, KING OF PITT.

KOCHE, the subject of this memoir, was born on the remote island of

Chatham, in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Forced by a cruel servitude to

fly from his native island, he passed many years in absolute solitude

on the little uninhabited island of Pitt, lying some miles distant

from Chatham. Here he reigned undisputed master of the land and all it

contained: whence the title of “King of Pitt” among those who knew him.

His account of his native island and its inhabitants, together with his

own adventures, show him to have been a man of an undaunted spirit,

which no adverse fortune could bend, much less break; and had he been

known to Carlyle, would have been placed by him among his heroes for

worship and imitation; but, unluckily, Carlyle never heard of him.

It is well, in order to understand the life and adventures of Koche,

“King of Pitt,” to relate the history of the country and people from

which he sprang, before going into the details of his career.

Ware-kauri, one of the South Sea islands, called by the English,

Chatham, lies several hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand. Its

history up to the year 1791 rests upon tradition, as prior to that date

its inhabitants had not acquired, among their many accomplishments, the

art of letters. Koche himself, from whose mouth this narrative has been

taken, says that his people were from the earliest period inclined to

peaceful pursuits, and subsisted chiefly upon fish and seal; that they

enjoyed a democracy, and conducted their simple affairs by a council of

notable men. He did not hesitate, however, to acknowledge that when at

long intervals, covering a generation, a high and prolonged west wind

drove a canoe-load of New Zealanders upon their shores, they forthwith

and without ceremony slew them. But he justified this departure from

their ordinary habits on the ground of public policy; as, had they

received them in charity, and pursued the peaceful tenor of their way,

their involuntary visitors would have ended by slaying and, moreover,

devouring them; the first party of this sort who landed on the island

having made it distinctly understood that men and women were their

favorite articles of diet. But among themselves, the taking of life,

he said, was unknown; and why should it not be, since they were not

fond of men, as some people were, and never suffered for want of food;

and on the sea-shore they found plenty of seal and birds, and, in the

marshes and lakes of the interior, fish and fowl in abundance? No! the

race of the Tuïti, his forefathers, were no man-eaters; they had become

“missionaries,” or Christian, in the days of his father, and remained

so ever since, such of them as had not been devoured or driven to death

by the hated Zealander—at whose name his black eye flashed fire—who

had made a slave-pen and shambles of his once happy island.

Their tradition goes back to a first pair, man and woman, who appeared

on the Isle of Rangi-haute, a score of miles to the southeast, called

by the English, Pitt. It is a solitary volcanic mountain, lifting its

truncated summit above the waters of the South Sea, whose waves have

beaten in vain for untold centuries upon its rock-bound base. How the

first pair came is unknown; whether brought by the Spirit from above,

or created on the mountain, none could tell; the time was remote, and

tradition was confused in going back to the origin of the human race,

to the beginning of the world; the memory of man did not run beyond the

apparition on Rangi-haute.

But the history of the couple and of their children is handed down in

the following legend: They lived upon the top of the mountain, from

whence they caught and worshipped the first ray of the morning sun,

and bowed in adoration to that luminary as he sank beneath the western

wave. The ground was held sacred; and their descendants in after-days

consecrated like spots, devoted alone to prayer and propitiation,

on which no article of dress even could be placed, and from the

desecration of one of which arose the destruction of the race.

Trees clothed the slopes of the mountain, and everywhere among them,

planted by the beneficent hand of the Creator, rose the karaka

(bread-fruit) laden with golden fruit—the sole food of man, and

source of perpetual youth and health. In after-days, it turned acrid,

and fatal to life, until the pitying Creator taught his children, by

immersion in boiling water and a running stream, to restore it in a

measure to its pristine state.

One day, a youth wandered down to the sea-shore among the birds that

lined the rocks, and, seating himself near where an eagle was perched

pluming his wing, they fell into conversation. The eagle complained

that they could no longer soar into the high air, by reason of a

spell cast over his tribe he believed by the Tuïti; his progenitors,

he said, had sailed over the mountain at will, and preyed upon the

living mako-mako, or honey-eater and the tuïs, or mocking-bird; while

he could fly only in the heavy air along the beach, and was compelled

to consort with sea-fowl, who held him in contempt; and to feed on

garbage. The youth answered that the blood of the honey-eater and

the mocking-bird had cried to the Creator, and brought down upon the

eagle his banishment. The Tuïti warred neither with the Maker nor his

children; they fed on fruit, and shed no blood: the eagle had banished

himself. The king of birds, avoiding the issue, replied that in the

great island to the northwest, which his friend had doubtless seen from

the mountain, the woods were filled with beautiful birds, and fruit of

every color, hanging over the dark, transparent waters of many lakes,

while here—what a poor place! One solitary mountain, no lakes, and no

fruit, save the karaka, which, sweet as it was, was bitter compared

with the fruit which grew in the west. There was no man upon it to rule

the great island. It called aloud for a master—a son of Tuïti—to go

over. The youth listened to the tempter, and ambition elated his soul;

he arose from the rock, and asked to be shown the path that led over

the water. The eagle, looking at him askance, promised him wings to

fly over, provided he would first render an easy service by taking him

to the top of the mountain. On hearing this, the youth cast himself

upon his face on the sand, trembling; where he lay for hours torn by

the conflict between the good spirit of obedience, and the evil one of

ambition, as they warred within him for the mastery. As the sun sank,

his guardian angel fled discomfited, and he rose to his feet with a

shudder, and, taking the eagle on his wrist, ascended the mountain, and

in the dark cast him loose in the forbidden field. All night long the

flutter and death-cry of birds smote upon his ear, and, when morning

dawned, the song of the mako was mute, and the tuïs had ceased to mock.

The people assembled in alarm. A child to whom its mother had given

fruit fell dead; they gathered about its body in terror. The eagle

hovered over them, and uttered his war-cry. The conscience-striken

youth confessed. The day was passed in penitence and sorrow about the

body of the child in the lap of its wailing mother. Hunger assailed

them; they burned the remains on a funeral-pyre built of the fragrant

kalamu, and, descending the mountain, fed upon the root of the fern,

and drank from the living spring.

The youth wandered by the shore, alone, stung with remorse, and,

meeting the eagle, was taught by him to construct the korari, the model

of all canoes, made in the likeness of a sledge, with a wicker-work of

tough creepers, having a false bottom filled with buoyant kelp. He put

to sea with his family, and landed on Ware-kauri, which he found, as

the eagle had said, uninhabited by man, a continent in size compared to

Rangi-haute; with undulating, fertile plains to the south, and lofty

mountains in the north, sparkling with lakes of dark transparent water,

and vocal with the song and bright with the plumage of birds. Filled

with new joy, he sent back tidings to his kinsmen, and was followed by

successive emigrations, until Rangi-haute was deserted save by a timid

few who feared the sea. Thus came about the settlement of Ware-kauri:

and to this extent is the tradition of the people.

From this time on they had lived in single families, or in companies of

two or three, moving from place to place as food became less plentiful,

or as fancy or a love of change dictated; being careful, in pitching

their new and fragile habitations, not to crowd upon established

groups. In the sealing season, the families of the interior came down

to the coast, and laid in from the rocks and reefs a supply of meat and

skins; and when fishing on the shore became dull, or the birds wild

with much hunting, the people of the sea bundled up their effects, and

moved to the interior lakes, chiefly to the great Tewanga, filled with

fish, and covered with wild fowl.

They dressed in cloaks of sealskin. Their only weapon of offence or

defence was a club, seldom used except in killing a seal. Tattooing

was unknown. No ornaments were in use. The teeth of deceased relatives

were burned with their bodies, not worn about the neck and wrist, as in

New Zealand, where they commit the absurdity of placing the departed

in a sitting posture in wooden boxes, after abstracting their teeth to

deck the survivors, in the name of religion. The Tuïti burned their

dead to avoid the fearful idea of prolonged decay. Man springs from

the earth as the flower springs: they return him to his mother, as the

fall fires, sweeping over the plain, return the flower; she drinks in

with the rain the ashes of her children, man and flower, and sends them

forth again after a season of repose to reign over and to beautify the

land. The songs of the women were plaintive and sweet, rivalling those

of the honey-eater, the mako-mako, who sang of love, and of the tuïs,

or mocking-bird, that mimicked from every tree and bush, and filled the

island with its false but beautiful notes.

Thus had lived the race in peace and plenty for centuries beyond their

simple means of computation, and thus were living, fearing no evil

from without, save the landing of a stray storm-driven canoe from

Zealand, when, towards the end of the last century, the sloop-of-war

_Discovery_ and its armed tender _Chatham_, commanded by Vancouver,

made a voyage of discovery around the world, by command of his majesty.

The _Chatham_, Captain William Henry Broughton, separated in a storm

from her consort, discovered the island on Nov. 29, 1791, and took

possession of it with the customary ceremonies, in the name of his

majesty, as first discoverer.

Broughton, as he approached the coast, saw a continued white sandbeach

interspersed with cliffs of reddish clay, and mixed with black rocks.

The country appeared very pleasant, with clearings here and there,

and smoke arising above the trees. With his glass he perceived some

people hauling up a canoe, and proceeded to the shore in a cutter. The

natives, seated on the beach, invited the party to land, and approached

and saluted them by meeting noses; and with great noise entered into

an animated but unintelligible conversation by signs, gestures, and

speech. They were a cheerful race, the conversation of the English

frequently exciting them to bursts of laughter. The young wore feathers

in their hair, and a few among them a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All

were cleanly and neatly dressed. The woods, which grew in a luxuriant

manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush,

and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing

the branches when young. The soil was rich, and the forests and beach

alive with birds of various species, which appeared as though never

molested.

The surprise of the islanders, their exclamations, and admiration on

beholding the strangers, could hardly be imagined. They pointed to the

sun and then to Broughton, and inquired if he came from thence. In

answer he gave them a dead bird, pointed out the cause of its death,

fired his gun, and advanced upon them. All fled to the wood excepting

one man, who stood his ground and offered battle. War was proclaimed.

The hero was reinforced, and the sailors fell back to the beach,

followed by fourteen men, armed with spears or driftwood picked up

as they advanced. “When abreast of the boat,” says Broughton, “they

became clamorous, talked loud to each other, and surrounded us. A young

man strutted towards me in a menacing attitude, distorted his person,

turned up his eyes, and made hideous faces and fierce gestures. As the

boat came in, they began the attack. We fired. Johnson’s musket was

knocked from his hand by a club. Our men were forced into the water,

when the boat’s crew opened upon them and they fled, save one who

fell on the beach with a ball through his breast. As we pushed off, a

man came out of the woods, sat down by the deceased, and in a dismal

howl uttered his lamentation.” He explains that in making the boast

which brought on hostilities he merely wished to show the natives the

superior effect of his firearms. This may be so, or it may be that

in the laborious process of confirming his majesty’s title to the

island, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, he had emptied more

bottles to his majesty’s health than was good for him, and had fired to

astonish the natives. Be this as it may, it was deeply to be regretted

that the answer to a question indicating such deep respect should

have been a warlike demonstration. But the Saxon knows but one way to

colonize, and that leads the aborigines “into the blind cave of eternal

night.”

The father of Koche told him that as the ship was leaving the shore the

atmosphere became dark, sultry, and gloomy, and thunder and lightning

descended the mountain and pursued the retreating strangers into the

sea. Meantime, the dead man lay on the white beach with a bullet

through his heart. Civilization had paid the Tuïti its first visit.

A council was held, and the fact that the slain was not carried off was

considered proof that “the children of the sun” were not cannibals, and

by some doubts were expressed as to their intent in landing. It was

concluded, in the event of their return, to meet them with an emblem

of peace. Accordingly, when in after years a sealer entered the bay of

Waitangi and its boat touched the sands, the natives laid down their

spears and clubs, a man advanced and placed one end of a grass plant

in the hands of the captain, and, holding on to the other, made him a

speech of welcome, threw over him his own cloak, and thus established

a firm and lasting peace; and from thenceforward the fishermen who

frequented the coast found them hospitable, cheerful friends, and

willing assistants in their labor, and “love between them flourished

like the palm.”

On the quarter-deck of an American vessel traversing the Pacific

Ocean, and chiefly at night, Koche related the sorrows of his race,

the private and public wrongs that had reduced the Tuïti to a handful

of slaves. Of his own mistreatment he made little account, relating

his personal oppression in a spirit of fun and bravado, relieved

occasionally by a flash of hate. In calm weather his broken narrative

ran tersely, and was marked by humor and a lack of strong feeling; but

when the storm-spirit arose, and washed the lower deck and enveloped

the upper in spray, his voice grew hoarse, his eye flashed, and his

white teeth from time to time came together with a clash that made the

blood tingle.

He said that one summer, about eighteen years before, a vessel in

search of seal anchored in the small oval bay of Pohaute, overlooked

by the Maunga Wakai Pai, a volcanic pyramid, the loftiest on the

island, at the base of which he lived. With his family and friends,

he went down to greet the new-comers, when, to the surprise of every

one, there landed among the white men a New Zealand chief armed to the

teeth. His hair, carefully combed and oiled, was tied up on the crown

of his head, and surrounded by a fillet of white feathers, and from

his ears protruded bunches of soft down. Evidently a man of power,

accustomed to command, he inspired a mysterious dread, and would have

been slain but for the protection he was under. The future darkened

as he walked the beach, questioning the people on their politics and

religion, manners and customs; and it was long remembered that he

highly commended the veneration they entertained for sacred places, and

walked off musing when in answer to his inquiry one was pointed out. It

was Mate-oro, chief of the Nga-te Motunga, who had lately been defeated

in battle by the Waï Kato, and driven with his tribe from the valley

of the Komimi to the coast of New Zealand, from whence he had embarked

for Ware-kauri, and appeared among the simple inhabitants as Satan in

Paradise—the forerunner of troops of fiends.

A red bluff beetled over the bay—a conglomerate of particles of

colored clay, cemented by a carbonate of lime, embedded with dark

shining nodules of iron, and traversed by dikes of basaltic lava.

Its summit was sacred. One morning before sunrise, a native ascended

to offer his devotions, and was horror-struck on beholding in the

holy field an iron pot. He sped down to communicate the startling

intelligence, and returned with a party of thirteen to verify the

reported sacrilege. Koche, who was of the number, threw off his cloak,

tore up a fragment of rock, and dashed the profane utensil to pieces.

A party of sailors, with a couple of bull-dogs, guided by Mate-oro,

pursued and overtook them. He shot dead one who turned and attempted

an explanation; the remaining twelve were bound and hung by the feet

from a tree, head downward, until nearly dead. The chief returned to

New Zealand, assembled his people, represented the island as fertile

and full of unarmed slaves, and recommended its subjugation. The brig

_Lord Rodney_, taking her pay in pigs, potatoes, and flax (and flame,

later on!), in two trips landed the tribe, numbering eight hundred,

on the fated isle. The natives offered no resistance to their fierce

invaders armed with firelocks, and were duly parcelled out among their

conquerors, and condemned to hard labor for life. No idea of moderation

in the amount exacted was entertained. In a short time, they furnished

thirty vessels annually with supplies. But the race began rapidly to

run out, with bent backs and paralytic limbs. Skulls on the beach,

pierced by musket balls or battered by clubs, told a tale to visitors

their tyrants could not deny. Valuable as was their labor, in drunken

orgies they were slain for food.

Once cheerful, full of mirth and laughter, they became morose and

taciturn. Koche, with many others, persistently refused to work; some

died under, others yielded to, the lash; and he, who had been dragged

by a rope to the field, and beaten in vain, and would neither yield

nor give up the ghost, was taken by the chief to his house to break

in. He continued moody, and maintained his independence so far as to

execute only such commissions as pleased him, frequently courting death

by mutely and stubbornly refusing to obey orders. Mate-oro seemed

to respect his attitude to some extent, and employed him to supply

his table with sea-fish, giving him a canoe furnished with nets and

lines for the purpose. The struggle between them now ceased, for this

occupation gave Koche solitude and freedom when afloat, and opportunity

to muse over the condition of himself and people. He soon came to

the conclusion that it was useless to attempt an insurrection, the

population being unarmed, dispirited, and under an iron subjugation.

But for his single self, he was resolved on resistance to the last,

and, as his boat tossed on the wave, he brooded over many schemes for

the destruction of his would-be master. A personal conflict was most

in accordance with his disposition, and many a time he was tempted,

unarmed as he was, to close in a death-struggle, out of which,

doubtless, he would have come victorious, if uninterrupted; for though

but little above the middle height, he was broad and deep-chested,

with sinews of iron, and capable of immense exertion; and, above all,

was animated by a spirit that would have revelled in the fight. But

followed as the chief was, fair play was not to be looked for, and he

reluctantly abandoned his favored purpose. His thoughts often wandered

to the cradle of his race, now uninhabited, to which he had made a

visit with his father in youth, where he felt assured he would find

a harbor of refuge, if Mate-oro could be first despatched. Whilst

in the midst of such reflections one afternoon, he drew up from the

ocean a fish seldom taken—the mo-eeka, pleasant to the taste, but

a virulent poison, a small portion of which when eaten producing a

deathly sickness, and a full meal, death. His massive face beamed with

satisfaction, and his dark eye glistened as he unhooked and dropped

it into the boat, contrary to the custom, which was to kill and throw

it back into the sea. On landing, he placed his dangerous prize in a

small salt-water pool near the beach, into which, as he caught them,

he placed others, until a large mess was collected. This he brought

home one night when the wind blew from the northwest, and persuaded

the cook to serve up for the morning meal. Directing her to throw the

offal to the wood-hogs, he disappeared, and soon after midnight reached

the east coast, seized a canoe, and put to sea. The cook, who had her

more immediate grudge to gratify, regaled the favorite dogs with the

heads and entrails; and this deviation from orders frustrated the

amiable purpose of her co-conspirator. The howls of his four-footed

companions in the night, followed by their death in the morning, told

the suspicious Indian a tale of poison, which a visit to the kitchen

confirmed. A portion of the breakfast thrown to a stray dog promptly

finished him.

Koche was sought for high and low, the island ransacked in vain; no

trace of him was found, and the conclusion was arrived at that he

had thrown himself into the sea. The chief had taken up a hatchet to

kill his cook, but she sullenly asserted she had never seen a mo-eeka

before, and was believed and spared, partly because the fish was rare

and seldom brought to land when taken, and partly because her good

cooking tickled his palate.

Prior to this attempt to treat him to the mo-eeka, Mate-oro had swept

the Isle of Rangi-haute of its inhabitants. The number of captives had

proved much smaller than had been anticipated, amounting in all to ten

families, and barely repaid the trouble and risk of the voyage.

When Koche, on the day following the episode of the poison-fish—the

last, as he flattered himself, of Mate-oro—ascended the mountain of

Pitt, and stood upon a throne—

“He was monarch of all he surveyed,

His rights there were none to dispute:

From the centre all round to the sea,

He was lord of the fowl and the brute.”

His first care was to make a royal progress over his dominion, in which

he fully expected to reign to the termination of his life. He felt

no fear of invasion, having traversed Ware-kauri, and effected his

embarkation unseen. No motive existed sufficiently strong to induce

one, in the face of the difficulties of a return trip against the wind,

unless it might be revenge on the part of Mate-oro, who was dead, and

had ceased to trouble him. Of domestic foes he had none. The Norway

rat, a deserter from a seal-ship, was the only quadruped on the island;

and the seal and sea-lion, the only amphibious animals that had ever

frequented the coast, had long since been extirpated, and the sealers

came there no more. All looked favorable for a quiet reign.

Near an old seal camp, he found growing some wild wheat, which he

cultivated after a manner, and which, with wild celery, water-cresses,

fern-root, and karaka, left him nothing to desire in the way of

vegetable food. On the shore, he found crabs and lobsters, and the

echini (sea-eggs) in the hollows of the rock; and at times, to

supplement his feast, the sea threw up her orange-colored pear. The

blue petrel had their habitations in the woods, in the ground under

the roots of trees, and in crevices of rocks, and were speared at

night as they flew about in numbers with a noise like the croaking

of frogs. They passed the day at sea-fishing, and not one was to be

seen until dark put a stop to their pursuit, when they returned to

land, and fluttered and croaked for hours before retiring to rest. But

the subject that gave its sovereign least trouble was the dark-brown

water-hen, of the size of a barnyard fowl, which inhabited the skirts

of the woods, and fed on the beach. It was unable to fly, and made no

attempt to escape when approached, but stood its ground, and bowed,

like a pious Turk, to its fate.

At the base of the mountain, near a strong spring, he formed a

summer-house—an arbor of the trees and shrubs of aromatic myrtle—and,

besides supplying his wants, did little else but wander over the isle

during the summer season; but, when winter came, he retired to a cave

in the mountain, from which he expelled the bats, and devoted his

leisure to making the utensils of the chase, toilet, and kitchen. He

manufactured baskets, nets, and lines of twisted fibre, fish-hooks of

mother-of-pearl, knives of sharp quartz, razors of shell, and mats for

bedding and cloaks.

He covered his fish alive in red-hot ashes, and, when cooked, peeled

off the skin, and ate the flesh from the ribs. He cooked his meat in an

oven, of which he had one at each residence, and several at points on

the shore. It consisted of a hole in the ground lined with stone, in

which he built a fire, and placed pebbles and stones. His game, after

the ordinary cleaning, was scrubbed with sand on the outside, and well

washed inside and out. Hot pebbles were placed in the belly and shaken

in under the breast, and green aromatic leaves stuffed in upon them.

The oven was then cleared of fire and pebbles, and lined with green

leaves, and the game placed in the bottom. The fat was washed, and

placed with hot pebbles in a vessel of bark, and beside it the blood,

tied in a leaf, and propped with hot stones. Then came a layer of such

vegetables as were in season or at hand, and the whole was spread over

with leaves, on which the remaining hot stones were placed, covered in

turn with leaves, and filled in with sod and earth. After an interval

according to the size of the mess, it was taken out, spread upon a

cloth of the glossy leaves of the karaka, and eaten hot.

No king fared better, and no one that ever reigned passed his days in

equal quietude and peace. No opposing politicians were there to vex his

soul with diverse counsels, and make the worse appear to him the better

reason; no blood of fellow-men weighed down his spirit; no friends

clamored for reward, or silent enemies shrank from punishment.

He knew neither hunger, thirst, nor cold, nor fear, nor jealousy,

and approached as near as it lay in fallen man to the estate of our

renowned ancestor in the garden before the presentation of Eve. He was

content, wanting no Eve, or Cain, or Abel. And for ten solitary years

his wish was gratified: he was unapproached, and reigned unchallenged.

In 1839, the captain of a vessel from Sidney offered to buy of Mate-oro

a portion of the island of Ware-kauri that lay about the bay of

Waitangi, then owned and possessed by a branch of the tribe commanded

by Nga-te-Toma. The terms were agreed upon, payment to be made on

delivery. But the Nga-te-Toma could not be prevailed upon to deliver

their possessions of black loam on demand, the more especially as

Mate-oro was to handle the purchase-money. War was declared, and the

contumacious Te-Toma were driven in the following spring into their

stronghold near the beach, and regularly invested.

At this juncture, the bark _Cuba_, having on board one Dieffenbach,

a naturalist, dropped anchor in the bay, entered into negotiations

with both parties, and, moved by the spirit of Christian charity,

ended by taking off the Te-Toma at night in boats to their ship—first

the women and children, followed by the naked warriors, stained with

ochre, armed, feathered, and equipped. The last to leave set fire to

the huts and abandoned property. The flames gave the alarm to their

opponents, who rushed through the fort to the beach, where they arrived

just too late, and presented, illuminated by the burning village in

the background, a vivid picture of baffled rage, going through the

war-dance with fearful yells and contortions. But they danced in vain,

though the exercise may have afforded them a melancholy gratification.

The _Cuba_ forthwith put to sea, and landed her human freight on the

northeastern shore among friends; but not until she had taken from them

deeds in fee of all their possessions in the west. Then, judging wisely

that Mate-oro would be found in no mood at that moment to discuss their

lately acquired title, she put to sea and bore down on Rangi-haute,

being the first vessel to cross the channel since Koche passed over in

his canoe ten years before.

Dieffenbach landed with a party, and in botanizing the isle was led to

the bower by a small spiral column of white smoke that arose from the

oven. No inhabitant was to be seen. The summer-house was ransacked of

nets, pearl-hooks, knives, and baskets; the oven opened, and a spread

of roast duck, hen, and karaka highly relished. The dark, transparent

water of the spring reflected the faces of the robbers, as they bent

over to drink, with a distinctness of outline unattainable by the white

water of other lands; but when Koche returned to his habitation, which

he did when the ship was well at sea, the reflection had vanished

from his mirror, the dinner from his oven, and the furniture from his

bower. As from a rock he watched the receding bark, freighted with his

peace of mind, he hoped and prayed she would pass Ware-kauri without

touching; but she ran in nevertheless, communicated with her friends,

and related the visit to the isle. The news that Rangi-haute was

inhabited soon reached Mate-oro, who read the riddle at once, and soon

after went over in person in pursuit of his quondam slave.

The party landed before noon, and, separating, closed in upon the

bower from different directions to find it empty. They soon, however,

struck a fresh trail, which led them down the coast to a small inlet,

in which it disappeared. Finding it did not issue on the opposite side,

they ascended either bank, watching closely for signs, until the bed

of the stream dwindled to a rivulet and entered a thicket; when the

trail was taken up and followed with difficulty through bushes and

underwood, matted with vines, until it failed totally. Circuits were

made, and much time wasted in fruitless search, but the thread was

lost, when the leader suddenly ordered the party back on the trail to

the mouth of the inlet, which they crossed, and moved down the beach

looking for footprints in the sand. Late in the afternoon they arrived

opposite a coral rock that stood out a mile in the sea. The water was

smooth, and a man swam out to reconnoitre. They watched him until he

disappeared behind the rock, which presented a bluff to the shore, and

waited patiently to hear from him, but an hour had elapsed and he made

no sign. The general opinion was that he had been devoured by a shark.

Mate-oro thought otherwise. He sent back a couple of men with orders

to bring down the boat at daybreak, set a watch on the beach, built a

fire, and went into camp.

A favorable breeze springing up, the boat came in early, took aboard

the party, and rowed out. In a deep fissure in the rock, from which he

was unable to extricate himself, they found the Indian who had swum out

the evening before. He told them that when he turned, and was about to

land, he was seized by the foot and drawn under the water, and, being

tired and out of breath, almost instantly lost consciousness.

When he recovered he found himself in utter darkness, and thought he

had passed into the spirit-land and was imbedded in a mountain for

punishment. After a time he had looked up and seen the stars, but could

make nothing of his condition. He had seen or heard no one, but as well

as he could recollect, the grasp on his ankle felt like the hand of a

man. Several pieces of fresh broken coral were found, but no footprints.

The party hastened ashore, and, leaving a man with the boat, moved down

the beach, and an hour later struck the trail coming out of the water,

and pursued it up a frightful chasm in the mountain, apparently without

an outlet. But as they neared the head they discovered the point at

which the trail began the ascent, and abandoning their dogs, the men,

after much difficulty and danger, gained the summit; when, to their

inexpressible astonishment, the trail led them directly back to their

camp on the beach—on reaching which they found their boatman lying on

the sand bound hand and foot with a running vine, gagged, and stunned

by a blow on the head, and the boat gone.

The rage of Mate-oro was excessive, and expended itself upon the

ill-starred boatman, whom he ordered to be tossed into the surf—a step

he speedily regretted and attempted to rectify; but when dragged out

to be cross-questioned, the body could return no answer; its shade had

quitted it, and was paddling a phantom canoe over the Stygian river to

the shadowy fishing-grounds.

The pursuers, full of wrath, set to work and built a korari, in which,

when the wind became favorable, they made their way home, calling down

maledictions upon the head of the rebellious runaway. During their stay

they scoured the island for Koche, and kept a lookout for their lost

boat, but saw nothing of either.

To the eastward of the southern point of Rangi-haute, and five miles

distant, lies the islet of Ranga-tira, consisting of a single mount

of moderate elevation, from two to three miles across at the base,

behind which Koche took shelter in his captured boat. The same favoring

breeze that brought down his enemies in the morning, enabled him in a

short run to double the “tira,” and land upon her little beach of forty

yards, quite out of sight and reach.

Had the fugitive been content to take up his permanent habitation

here, all might doubtless have gone well; but the islet was too small

to offer a place of concealment, and he feared an unsuccessful search

on the larger island would be followed by one on the smaller, in

which event escape would be impossible. For this and other reasons,

in which the question of food entered, but a cat-like attachment to

his old haunts ruled, he returned in the night after an absence of a

month, and, reconnoitring, found the coast clear. He had resumed his

old habits, adding to them a bright lookout to the northwest, when one

morning at daybreak, some months later, he discovered three canoes

close in to shore. He instantly struck into a deep ravine, and hoped by

doubling to gain time to reach and launch his boat. But he had hardly

got fairly off before his trail was taken up, and after a hot chase,

in ascending a dark defile, the dogs brought him to bay, and, turning,

he took up a rock and dashed out the brains of the foremost, and was

in deadly conflict with the pack, bleeding and faint, when a Zealander

came up with a club and felled him to the ground. When he recovered his

senses they were dragging him down the mountain by a rope tied about

the waist, torn with stones and briers, and bathed in blood; but even

then, until they reached the white beach, soon stained red, he caught

at every root, and projecting stone, and bush, and log, and held on

with such tenacity that they were compelled to beat his hands to force

them to relax. He lay on the sand bound hand and foot all night, with

parched mouth and throat, so bitten by the black sand-fly that by noon

on the following day he was swollen out of the semblance of man.

When taken back to Ware-kauri he was confined and watched closely,

taunted with the title of “King of Pitt Island,” fed and watered, but

not bodily ill-used. When sufficiently recovered and ordered to work,

he stood mute under two days’ lashing, seeking death; but his master,

who felt his honor enlisted in the contest, had resolved to break, not

kill him; and no provocation could wring from him the death-stroke.

Perceiving this on the third morning, Koche set to work when ordered,

and from thence performed the labor of two men; apparently completely

subjugated. From the fight with the dogs in the defile he had not

uttered a word; now he became cheerful and talkative.

In the fourth year of his renewed captivity, all watch upon him having

been removed, he was one evening among the slaves, employed in paddling

out canoe-loads of provisions to a whale-ship that was lifting her

anchor to sail. He boarded, and hid away in the hold unnoticed; and the

ship was clearing the harbor, when Mate-oro came out and instituted

search. He was found and dragged on deck, but broke from his captors

and sprang overboard. The ship’s boat gave chase, overhauled him, and,

as Mate-oro rose up in the bow to lay hands on him, he dived, and,

coming up behind, unshipped their rudder, and in the gathering dark

reached the headland and disappeared. He made his way by forest paths

to the eastern coast, where, finding an abandoned and broken canoe,

he stuffed her with kelp, and put to sea; by daylight he had sunk her

below the eastern horizon, and at nightfall ran her on the beach of

Rangi-haute.

Koche was himself again. He breathed anew the air of freedom, and his

soul exulted. Taught in his little school of adversity, he knew that

vigilance would be the price of his liberty, and determined to exercise

it, and carried out his resolution as well, perhaps, as any man since

the sun first shed on Eden his delightful beams—that sun which shone

upon him in his frail canoe that day for the last time for two dark

years; and on which, of his own free will, he never would have looked

again.

After picking up what food he could find upon the beach, and breaking

up and burying his canoe in a sand dune, he crossed the mountain, and,

plunging into an obscure thicket, almost impenetrable, crawled into

a crevice surrounded by jagged fragments of volcanic rock. The spot

was almost absolutely inaccessible, and the danger of approach would

have appalled a spirit less dauntless than his—not bent on liberty

or death. He had breasted his way to it in the glare of day when

perambulating his dominion; he now entered it with speed and safety a

fugitive at midnight.

In his retreat, he made and used no instrument whatever—no spear, or

snare, or knife, or line, or net. He never once approached the shore,

or left the circle of his crags and dense surrounding thicket. At dusk

he peered from his sepulchre, and watched the birds take up their

roosts upon the overtopping trees and bushes, and climbed up and caught

them in the night, and ate them raw. Hunger at first assailed him;

but his eye, becoming adjusted to the dark, marked down his prey with

unerring certainty, and he was soon able to drive and keep the wolf

from his den; and a water-drip in the rock quenched his thirst. At dawn

he sank into the earth, leaving behind no trace, no print of foot, no

trail; and when the sun uprose,

“The mists were curl’d

Back from a solitary world.”

The annals of his dark reign are soon told. Sleeping one day down

in the impenetrable darkness, he was startled by the deep bay of a

bloodhound; and his prophetic soul told him that the day of his second

dethronement had dawned, and his night of freedom passed. Mate-oro had

searched the isle in vain, and given up the hunt, when Gobiah, a New

Zealand son of Belial, brought over a slave-hunter whose deep hate

penetrated the impenetrable, and ran the fugitive to earth.

Expectation in Ware-kauri was on tiptoe during the absence of the

hunting-party; and on its return with the captive king a curious crowd

assembled on the beach to greet them. As the boat came through the surf

with Mate-oro on the prow and Koche bound at his feet, a shout went

up in honor of the chief, followed by derisive howling for the “King

of Pitt.” The march across the island was triumphal. Crowds flocked

to gaze upon the principal figures. The New Zealanders praised their

persevering chief, and called upon the “king” to burst his bonds. The

Tuïti, apart, with sullen and downcast looks, felt their faint hearts

beat quick as they caught a glance of their indomitable countryman,

stimulated by the sunlight, erect and proud, by whom the taunts of the

malignant masters were passing as the idle wind.

Gobiah and the hound shared the honors of the day, and all went merry

as a marriage-bell.

The capture, with its varying and contradictory details, was the

sensation of the period, and would have filled the columns of a

newspaper, had one existed, for a month. It subsided in due course, and

Koche, after another futile attempt to get himself despatched, went

to work as before with vigor and good cheer. His sovereign character

was now universally recognized, and he was invariably addressed by

his title in full. He accepted it in good humor, tinged with a little

pride. The Zealanders looked upon him with secret respect, while by

his own people he was regarded as one who, had their lot been less

hopeless, would have proved the leader and saviour of the nation.

Two years elapsed, when an American vessel, ready for sea, was boarded

by Mate-oro, and a demand made for the fugitive king. The ship was

searched from deck to keel, but no trace of him found. Unwilling to

anger the fierce chief, who still declared he was aboard, she lay over

a day, and the search was renewed with like effect. In the afternoon

she stood out to sea, and at nightfall her hull was down, and the

island had disappeared, all save one volcanic peak that rose like a

pyramid above the waves. Then Koche came out from the fore-chains, in

which he had in some mysterious manner buried himself, and caught a

last glance of his native mountain as it sank for ever from his view.

NECESSITY _VERSUS_ ART.

WE live in very busy days, and our lives hurry on to their end after

a very unceremonious fashion. Courtesy is out of date, and the world

scrambles on chiefly according to the principle embodied in the

words, “Every one for himself, and God for all.” This is the age of

individualism on the one hand, of levelling on the other. The system

of aggregate life, of Christian brotherhood, and helpful fellowship

is broken, and each one lives his little span to himself, jealously

cherishing a phantom of independence which, when appealed to for

protection, has a tendency to shelter itself under the broader ægis

of state supremacy. We live fast, and our lives wear us out. We pass

through all the emotions, all the experiences, of life in fewer years

than our forefathers took to study their classics or prepare themselves

for a profession. Young men who have reached the _nil admirari_ stage

before they are twenty, and young women who, before they are out of

their teens, have gone through the various religious phases, and made

up their minds that infidelity is the only rational system to adopt,

are unfortunately on the increase among us. After pleasure, after

controversy, what remains? Nothing but business. The mind of our day

is essentially practical. A certain social necessity exists of living

as well as your neighbors do, and of not “going down in the world.”

Certain artificial habits are formed almost unconsciously in early

youth; certain fictitious indispensabilities grow up silently by

your side, and, to keep up appearances, a certain amount of money is

wanted. In a new country where there is no privileged class, no landed

aristocracy, no law of primogeniture, each individual, to keep his head

above water, imagines he must take some means to increase his income

as years go on. This means that the whole community should devote

itself to commerce. But how does this “necessity” affect the abstract

principles of right and wrong, of moral beauty, of intellectual

development? In this race for life, where is all that makes life

beautiful? This utilitarian spirit looks upon all that from its own

point of view, as an auctioneer, not as an artist. The question is,

“Will it pay?” or “How much will it bring?” not “Is it civilizing, is

it beautifying, is it ennobling?”

Beauty is nothing to modern critics; it is no longer judged by

an abstract standard, but by the use which can be made of it. It

is utterly debased from its original estate; for, from being the

consolation of the many, it has become the luxury of the few. Rich men

think it right and proper that they should be surrounded by ornamental

objects, not because they appreciate their worth, but because it

shows off the wealth whose surplus they could afford to waste on such

expensive baubles. Costliness in ornamentation is the fashion of our

day, as simplicity and studied ruggedness were the fashion in the days

of Cromwell; and, cost what it may, the fashion must be followed. Do

these men care for their treasures? See what they would do with them if

it ever became the fashion again to sit on wooden chairs, and eschew

looking-glasses. They are valued, as in a shop, by the price they cost;

and old or new, elaborate or plain, it is all the same. The number

of figures on a Dresden vase is nothing: the number of dollars the

vase cost is everything. Some people would think nothing of a gem of

workmanship if it was got “at a bargain” or picked up on an old stall;

some would not be satisfied if the velvet they wore had been purchased

at half price, so that they could not boast it had cost twenty-five

dollars a yard! We will hope that such people are exceptions; still,

they exist. This is the exaggeration of the spirit of the age, and

prevails chiefly among those whom the latter half of the age has just

landed among the inhabitants of the modern El Dorado; but, in a more

or less rampant state, this spirit shows its cloven foot everywhere on

this vast continent.

But this is not the worst. If the appreciation of true art is wanting

in the patron, the time to perfect æsthetic productions is wanting to

the artist. Nowadays everything must be done at once; people cannot

wait; their houses must be run up in six weeks; for their churches

they will not wait longer than a year. Ornaments of all kinds must be

forthcoming immediately, and, indeed, if any vegetable model could

be found, which, like the acanthus leaf of Greek sculpture, might

be identified with the idea of our modern “art,” who shall say that

the mushroom is not a most fitting type? Must we suppose it to be

the result of our wonderfully rapid progress in art that we should

constantly change our ideals, and demand quite a different standard of

beauty this month from that we asked for last June? No doubt we are

so much more enlightened now that we could not wear the same colors

we wore last spring, and really thought quite pretty then, or that

we could not sit upon a sofa of the same shape as we found perfectly

charming last year! Of course, since our standards of taste vary so

quickly, it could hardly be expected that very minute care should

be bestowed on our ornamental surroundings. In old days, when men

worked for future ages, the leg of a chair was as delicately carved

as a cathedral buttress; when houses were built for twenty coming

generations to live in, the sculpture of a mantelpiece was wrought with

as much care as a monumental effigy. But _nous avons changé tout cela_.

Our houses are only intended to stand till they are pulled down to make

room for a railway depot, or till some advantageous offer is accepted

to turn them into a suite of _modiste’s_ or confectioner’s show-rooms.

Our furniture is meant to remain under our eyes only until we see a

set five times as gorgeous and ten times as expensive, when the things

we once thought so perfect will be sent as antiquated rubbish to some

auction-room, or ignominously hidden in the nursery or garret. And in

the meanwhile, where is art, nay, where is even comfort? Shall we not

very soon have overshot the mark, and find our lives becoming little

short of a pilgrimage from hotel to hotel? An English lady, whose

husband owned estates in all parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, and

who had at least six country-houses, each claiming the advantages of

family residence during a short part of the year, once said to a friend

less plentifully encumbered: “My dear, I envy you. I have half a dozen

houses in the country, and a large town-house; and, among them all, I

have not got a _home_!”

This constant change of fashion necessitates flimsiness of material

and carelessness of detail. But this is not all: it kills the artist

spirit. The old workmen had a chance of becoming artists because they

had plenty of time to exercise and sharpen their faculties; they became

used to certain sorts of work, and could perfect their ingenuity in

one particular line; and they had plenty of room for originality. Now,

on the contrary, it is more likely that the artist will degenerate

into a mere workman. He is hurried in his designs; he is often

dictated to by ignorant patrons, who, not having the divine _afflatus_

themselves, have not even the wit to trust to those who have; he is

called upon for six times the amount of invention that any man’s brains

can possibly furnish within a given time; and, to crown all, he is

limited as to price—which simply means as to materials, size, detail,

and ornamentation. He is in danger of becoming either a drudge or a

renegade, very often both. His art gets to be a mere bread-winning

business, a dry round of machine work, a careless fulfilling of an

unpleasant contract; and, under such adverse influences, no wonder the

creator-spirit leaves him, and he becomes simply a mechanic.

Art was once a power in the world: now it is rather an appendage to

a power of a different sort. Even while it was patronized by popes

and sovereigns, it was held as little less than sovereign itself; it

dictated terms, and claimed a full meed of independence in the choice

of its expressions within the limitations of orthodox symbolism. Now,

on the contrary, it is only tolerated so long as it conforms to the

fashion of the hour, so long as it ministers to the belittled taste

of to-day. Its votaries are no longer the honored guests of princes,

the equals of sovereigns, the arbiters of character. Of old, a painter

could immortalize a man by placing him in a certain part of his

picture, or he could ruin him by giving him a place on the opposite

side. Dante did the same thing in his unrivalled poem, and the sting

went home. But now what would the result be? The painter would lose

his custom, like a tradesman who sold damaged goods! Truly a dignified

position for the successors of Michael Angelo!

To be popular—and popularity just now is apt to be confounded

with greatness—art must truckle to the vitiated taste of a mob of

ignoramuses; architecture must give up noble proportions for the sake

of speed and cheapness; painting must give up historical memories

and religious inspirations for the sake of quick sales and gaudy

coloring; music and poetry must adapt themselves to the maudlin taste

of the age, and pretty, shallow ballads and idyls must take the

place of symphonies, anthems, and epic poems. So with oratory—it

must be graceful and piquant; that it should be logical and forcible

is immaterial. So with sculpture—we must have Rogers’ groups,

sewing-girls (why not have a sewing-machine and operator in marble?),

shoe-blacks, anything that is domestic and prosaic, provided we have

nothing heroic that will strain our powers of admiration, or excite

high aspirations after the ideal.

As to minor articles which of old were real objects of art, how do we

stand? Our jewelry, for instance—in what stage of decay is it? Would

Benvenuto Cellini think our clumsy plate worthy of his attention, or

our massive barbaric bracelets _artistic_ productions? On the other

hand, the lighter work is flimsy and insecure, equally unworthy of a

chiseller’s notice, except he toss it into the furnace, and reduce the

materials into an usable shape. Again the money test comes in: the

mere value of a precious stone is all, in modern times; the delicacy of

the setting, the thought of the designer, the time of the worker, are

perfectly immaterial.

Then our glass: it has no individuality whatsoever. We remember

noticing the strange contrast which happened to be most vividly

exhibited in a certain street in London, where two shops side by side

showed a glittering array of their respective specialty, English and

Venetian glass. The former, all blown by machinery, showed the most

perfect symmetry of design, each glass of a set the exact counterpart

of the other, the designs not varied to the extent of more than half a

dozen patterns, and the very prettiest things—baskets, for instance,

or horns of glass—pairfully, like three or four dozen similar ones,

allotted to their particular corner in the shop. The Venetian glass,

on the contrary, was a study for a painter. Every conceivable variety

of color, shape, and design, a luxuriance of detail, a fertility of

invention perfectly incredible, a picturesque individuality which will

not allow even pairs to do more than bear a general likeness to each

other—such are a few of the characteristics of this beautiful display

of ornaments. We took up a fruit-dish of opaque glass, and asked if

there were any more of that sort, none but that one being visible in

the shop. It was a marvellous conglomeration of colors, veined like

marble, vivid shades dying off into browns and dusky yellows, etc.

No; there were no more of them. “How was this produced?” we asked.

“I cannot tell,” said the polite Venetian who kept watch over these

treasures; “this is a mere chance; the glass sometimes runs into these

designs, but we might try for years, and never be able to reproduce

this.” The other articles, some useful, some ornamental, and all

moulded by the hand, attested the most delicate and fantastic skill;

the fancy of the workman had been allowed to run riot within certain

general limits; no line was the exact counterpart of the other—in a

word, the work was artistic, not mechanical. The contrast was evidently

unfavorable to the faultlessly mathematical proportions of the English

glass, which, however, in its own line, and freed from comparison with

higher products, is very beautiful.

Machinery has spoilt many minor arts; even the choir-stalls and the

screens of our day are often “turned” instead of carved, and in the

place of wrought-iron we have cast-iron in our grates and railings.

Even the domain of music has been invaded, and we have barrel-organs,

orchestrions, and musical boxes. Some new mechanism in a Geneva box

will command thousands of dollars, and for a musical canary with

jewelled eyes, caged in a tiny gilded cage, people will give any

sum; but who thinks twice of some unknown Beethoven or struggling

Mendelssohn whose sonatas and anthems might rival those of the masters

of old?

All that we have said is merely an introduction to an explanation

of the main subject of which we wish to treat, _i.e._ the effect

of this modern spirit on artists themselves. There are personal

ramifications consequent on this low estimate of art which amount just

to this: intellectual murder. The artist starts in life full of young

enthusiasm—and we include here all scholars and men who, in different

professions, reverence the principle more than they care for the use of

their craft—he feels that there is an intellectual world beyond and

above the world of business and fashion, and he strives to spread the

love of this ideal among commoner mortals. He finds them unresponsive,

though he feels himself a teacher sent to enlighten them. Still they

remain callous; they look on and laugh, and he starves. His art is all

he has whereby to live; for the spirit that recruits the ranks of art

is a vagrant and fitful one, and does not qualify men for steady habits

of lucrative drudgery. The truth now stares him in the face: he must

either pocket his principles or lie down and die of hunger. If he is

unusually persevering, and has that genius which does not alight more

than three or four times in a century on any child of Adam, he may

end by winning a place at last in public opinion, by commanding what

prices he likes, and by drowning, in the precarious tide of success,

the remembrance of the days when he fell below his own standard, and

had to drudge for bread. More often he will never succeed at all; he

will give up the unequal struggle, and be too glad if, by bartering his

independence, he can feed his wife and children.

We need hardly stop to say how baleful marriage too often is in the

case of artists; every one must see that. Unless in the rare instances

when a man meets a woman heroic enough to help him on in the difficult

paths of genius, nothing is more fatally clogging than marriage. It

is idle to speak of the joys and comforts which it brings. These are

ephemeral in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where an artist of even

average talent is concerned, while the responsibilities and vexations

of marriage grow heavier every day. An artist’s joy in his wife can

only be of two kinds: it results either from her physical beauty or

from her intellectual sympathy. The former any sane man will weary

of, even if he be rich enough to surround it with all those adjuncts

without which the beauty itself will soon disappear; the latter

implies that ideal union which we have reason to deplore as being too

rare to be even taken into practical consideration. We are speaking

emphatically of poor artists, and every one knows the peculiarly

trying circumstances of poverty in any shape, more especially poverty

endured by a refined nature. The domestic vexations of a poor artist’s

married life are something incalculable, and are almost enough to

destroy the patience of a saint. He may be poet, painter, or musician,

it little matters what; but it is simply impossible that the daily,

hourly shocks to his sensibilities should not leave a woeful impression

on his spirit. Is it encouraging to be interrupted in the middle of

a fine stanza by shrieks from the kitchen, and frantic appeals to

come and rescue the urchin who has pulled the wash-tub over himself?

Is it inspiring to be interrupted in a fugue by the sound of a

servant’s shrill answer to the scolding of her incensed mistress? The

contemplation of an empty larder, and the calculation of how to fill it

again at the lowest figure of expense, is not an elevated occupation,

nor is it likely to produce a very spirited picture or soul-stirring

poem. Except in very rare cases, a rising artist should put off

marriage till his fame is in all men’s mouths. A drag is a different

thing from a companion, and to most such even a few years’ solitude

ending in a mature choice ought to be far preferable to an uncongenial

yoke which, long before success has softened it, has become only a

necessary evil.

But even to the unmarried artist or scholar, life holds out terrible

temptations. Many mistake popularity for greatness, sensationalism for

genius. If the higher walks of art do not “pay,” let us forsake them,

and pick up gold in the byways! The trace of the clay will not stick to

the precious metal, and, if it has come from the pocket of ignorance

to pay the price of vulgarity, still it is “hard cash,” and will be

none the less welcome at the exchange! It will buy houses and land, it

will buy broadcloth and velvet, it will buy champagne suppers and opera

tickets. The artist sees that he must be a slave—a slave either to his

own necessities or to the bad taste of his patrons. The former means

silent worship at the shrine of true art, an early death, an unknown

grave, and an obscure name; the latter means unblushing indifference

to principle, a long and merry life, and a name on the lips of

thousands. Human nature is weak, and, out of twenty men who once had

the possibilities of genius, nineteen will crush its development to

earn their daily bread. No wonder that we have so few artists nowadays;

no wonder that men who might have been so are only caterers for public

amusement and “turners-out” of so many landscapes or interiors a year.

What are the subjects most in vogue just now, not to speak of nudities

and immoralities? Everything that is trivial, pretty, if you will, but

commonplace—children picking flowers, drawing-room scenes, a farm

kitchen, a group of cattle, a nosegay lying beside a flagon of wine, a

few vegetables sliced open, a woman mending a shirt, etc.! Truly most

noble subjects whereon to expend the time, care, and ingenuity of a

man of genius—a man, at least, who might once have aspired to genius!

But these things sell—everything trivial, childish, and _mesquin_

does in our day—and the artist must live! When necessity and art come

into collision, art must go to the wall! In music, ballads are the

order of the day—pretty little nothings set to pretty little tunes;

strains that are often no better than a cross between a popular song

and a revival hymn! In poetry, the case is no better; in the drama, it

is worse. The very patronage which lifts a man into notice kills his

genius and insults his manhood. A drawing-room pet is the highest title

an artist can claim in these days, and, to gain that pitiful renown,

he must throw overboard all respect for principle, all love of art. He

must even make himself uncomfortable, forego innocent habits, burden

himself with stupid formalities, in order to reach that favor which

he feels in his inmost soul will only degrade him when he has won it.

Many a man sells his soul to the devil in these days, just as in former

times, but with this difference: that, in the old legends, the devil

always gave a generous equivalent, whereas now he puts one off with

very shabby gifts.

There is a quaint old tale of this sort current at Bruges, concerning

an unhappy organist of very mediocre talents but immense ambition. He

was dying with envy because the organist of the cathedral drew crowds

to hear his marvellous playing, while he himself could barely draw

out a few meagre harmonies. At last, in despair, he made a compact

with the devil, bartering his soul for a long lease of years, during

which he should be enabled to eclipse the best musicians in Europe.

Suddenly it began to be noised about that there had been some strange

charm at work; the obscure artist had blossomed into a prodigy, and the

cathedral was deserted. Years went on, and all the musical talent of

the mediæval world made pilgrimages to Bruges to hear the wonderful

musician whose fingers could evoke such matchless harmonies, and

cause the most hardened sinners to melt into tears. But one day, the

poor man got frightened, and, with much contrition and many prayers,

besought a priest to get him back his contract. The priest succeeded,

and the devil was compelled to release his victim. The organist went

as usual to his instrument. The church was full; foreigners were there

and many of the notabilities of the town; but the musician’s power had

fled. The result was a disgraceful failure, and the strangers left the

church, declaring that a trick had been put upon them. The unhappy man,

distracted and overwhelmed with shame, could not bear the ridicule of

his altered position, and, in a moment of desperation, called again

upon his former ally. The devil forbore to reproach him, and gladly

gave him back the fatal talent. Things went on as before; it was said

that a sudden indisposition had been the only cause of that memorable

break-down, and crowds again flocked to hear the inspired organist. His

end is darkly hinted to have been terrible.

Well in this case—supposing it to have been true—the power over

the organ was a tangible and valuable gift; but nowadays artists

and their patrons rather remind us of the story of Esau selling his

birthright for a _mess of pottage_! Rich men should feel themselves

honored by contact with artists, not _vice versa_. It is no more an

honor for an artist to please a millionaire than it is for the church

to receive again a truant and gifted son. The abstract laws of art and

intellect are above the superficial and shifting necessities of the

world, and, if there is to be any intercourse between the votaries of

the former and the slaves of the latter, it should be the part of the

lower natures to do homage first to the higher. A great king once said

to his courtiers, when one of them importuned him to bestow a title

upon him: “Assuredly I can make you a duke, monsieur, but God alone

can make you a gentleman.” God alone can make an artist; God alone

can mould a spirit as refined, a soul as complex, an organization

as sensitive, as art requires in its devotees; and it follows that

whosoever wilfully debases this spirit destroys God’s own handiwork.

The world at large and its absurd maxims are much to blame, but the

imprudence or carelessness of artists is none the less deplorable. No

one should without reason arrogate to himself this position; it is a

species of priesthood, and, except a man or woman be impelled to an

æsthetic career by an irresistible impulse, it is not a safe or happy

path to tread. None can live in that atmosphere unless God has really

fitted them for it, and to them, if they carry their lamps unquenched

to the end, it must needs be a path of trial. As a pure speculation, it

is the worst career a practical man can embrace. It dooms the artist to

a solitary life—solitary in fact if he wishes to succeed; solitary in

spirit if he hastily burdens himself with a badly chosen companion.

We were going to say that the ideal state of art would be that

all artists should be born rich; but, though that would have its

advantages, it would perhaps take away from the dignity of art.

Meyerbeer was born of a wealthy family, and Titian lived like a prince,

but those are exceptions. Besides, Titian won his riches by his art,

though his is a bad example to refer to, by the way, since he truckled

very much to the prevalent taste of his gorgeous era. All artists who

have touched the noblest chords of human nature have lived and died

poor, and all artists in the future who care to emulate these giants

of the past will have to resign themselves to a like poverty. Money,

in these days—and perhaps, if we had lived in other days, we should

have found it much the same then—means a compromise with principle.

Those who are born with it can alone enjoy it unmolested, and, say what

you will, they will always know how to enjoy it best. No one is so

discriminating a patron of art and so considerate a friend of artists

as the hereditary land-owner whose ancestors for generations were born

to wealth and its duties; no one loves beauty so disinterestedly as one

to whom the beautiful has never in any shape been a source of profit.

An aristocracy of birth and education is better fitted than one of

wealth to appreciate the aristocracy of intellect; both are, in the

purest sense of the word, a “privileged class,” and both ought to be

actuated by the proud old motto: _Noblesse oblige_. Money can never

be the test of the unseen; genius cannot be purchased, and art has no

price. The heaviest equivalent ever paid for any work of art is but

a drop in the ocean compared to the thing gained; for it is not the

material you pay for—the canvas, the marble, or the painting; it is

not even the artist’s time, though that is most precious; but it is

the very soul of the man, the breath of his life, the essence of his

being. What can ever be sufficient compensation for that? You can buy

the expression of his thought, but his thought itself remains with him,

so that his work is more his own than it is yours even after you have

purchased it. His creations are his children, and belong to him by that

inalienable right of paternity which no human law of sale and barter

could possibly supersede.

After this, what are we to think of art? Simply that it is the most

divine gift, in the natural order, vouchsafed to man, and entitles the

artist to a place more exalted than that of any favorite of fortune,

be he prince, noble, or merchant. When will the common world of rich

men understand that? When will artists themselves ensure that it be not

forgotten? That it is not merely a means of living, a bread-winning

drudgery? It is a reflection of God, a ray of his creative power, a

solace given to earth, a humanizing influence left among the barbarians

of all times (for we are all barbarians in the long run, and saints and

artists are the only civilized beings worth notice!) Let us, then, bow

down our heads, and accept the dictation of art, rather than presume to

impose our trivial conventionalities on one of God’s chosen messengers.

MADAME JEANNETTE’S PAPERS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.

WHEN I was a boy, I used to go every day after school to watch

Jean-Pierre Coustel, the turner, at his work. He lived at the other

end of the village. He was an old man, partly bald, with a queue

hanging down his back, and his feet encased in old worn-out shoes. He

used to love to talk of his campaigns on the Rhine and on the Loire

in La Vendée. Then he would look at you and smile to himself. His

little wife, Mme. Jeannette, sat spinning in the corner behind him;

she had large black eyes, and her hair was so white that it looked

like flax. I can see her now. She would sit there listening, and she

would stop spinning whenever Jean-Pierre spoke of Nantes; it was there

they were married in ‘93. Yes; I can see all these things as if it

were yesterday: the two small windows overgrown with ivy; the three

bee-hives on a board above the old worm-eaten door, the bees fluttering

in the sunshine over the roof of the hovel; Jean-Pierre Coustel with

his bent back turning bobbins or rods for chairs; the shavings winding

themselves into the shape of corkscrews.... I can see it all!

And I can also see coming in the evenings Jacques Chatillon, the dealer

in wood, with his rule under his arm, and his thick red whiskers;

the forest-keeper, Benassis, with his game-bag on his hip and his

hunting-cap over his ears; M. Nadasi, the bailiff, walking proudly,

with his head up, and spectacles on his nose, his hands in his

coat-pockets, as if to say: “I am Nadasi, and I carry the citations to

the insolvent”; and then my Uncle Eustache, who was called “brigadier,”

because he had served at Chamboran, and many others besides; without

counting the wife of the little tailor Rigodin, who used to come after

nine o’clock in search of her husband, in order to be invited to drink

half a pint of wine—for, besides his trade of a turner, Jean-Pierre

Coustel kept a wayside tavern. The branch of fir hung over the low

door; and in winter, when it rained, or when the snow covered the

window-panes, many liked to sit under the shelter of the old hut,

and listen to the crackling of the fire, and the humming sound of

Jeannette’s spinning-wheel, and the wind whistling out of doors through

the street of the village.

For my part, I did not stir from my corner until Uncle Eustache,

shaking out the ashes of his pipe, would say to me: “Come, François, we

must be going.... Good-night all!...”

Then he would rise, and we would go out together, sometimes in the mud,

sometimes in the snow. We would go to sleep at my grandfather’s house,

and he used to sit up and wait for us.

How plainly I can see these far-off things when I think them over!

But what I remember best is the story of the salt marshes which

belonged to old Jeannette—the salt marshes she had owned in La Vendée

near the sea, and which would have made the fortune of the Coustels if

they had claimed their rights sooner.

It appears that, in ‘93, they drowned a great many people at Nantes,

chiefly the old aristocracy. They put them into barks tied together;

then they pushed the barks into the Loire, and sank them. It was during

the Reign of Terror, and the peasants of La Vendée also shot down all

the republican soldiers they could take; extermination was the rule

on both sides, and no mercy was shown by either party. Only, whenever

a republican soldier demanded in marriage one of these noble ladies

who were about to be drowned, if the unfortunate girl were willing

to follow him, she was immediately released. And this was how Mme.

Jeannette had become the wife of Coustel.

She was on one of these barks at the age of sixteen—an age when one

has a great dread of death!... She looked around to see if no one would

take pity on her, and just then, at the moment the bark was leaving,

Jean-Pierre Coustel was passing by with his musket on his shoulders; he

saw the young girl, and called out: “Halt ... a moment!... Citoyenne,

wilt thou marry me? I will save thy life!”

And Jeannette fell into his arms as if dead; he carried her away; they

went to the mayoralty.

Old Jeannette never spoke of these things. In her youth, she had been

very happy; she had had domestics, waiting-maids, horses, carriages;

then she had become the wife of a soldier, of a poor republican; she

had to cook for him, and to mend his clothes; the old ideas of the

château, of the respect of the peasants of La Vendée, had passed

away. So goes the world! And sometimes even the bailiff Nadasi in his

impertinence would mock at the poor old woman, and call out to her:

“Noble lady, a pint of wine!... a small glass.” He would also make

inquiries about her estates; then she would shut her lips tight, and

look at him; a faint color would come into her pale cheek, and it

appeared as if she were going to answer him; but afterwards she would

bend down her head, and go on spinning in silence.

If Nadasi had not spent money at the tavern, Coustel would have turned

him out of doors; but, when one is poor, one is obliged to put up with

many affronts, and rascals know this!... They never mock at those who

would be likely to pull their ears, as my Uncle Eustache would not have

failed to do: they are too prudent for that. How hard it is to put up

with creatures like these!... Every one knows there are such beings.

But I must go on with my story. We were at the tavern one evening at

the end of the autumn of 1830; it was raining in torrents, and about

eight o’clock in the evening the keeper Benassis entered, exclaiming:

“What weather!... If it continues, the three ponds will overflow.”

He shook out his cap, and took his blouse off his shoulders, to dry it

behind the stove. Then he came to seat himself on the end of the bench,

saying to Nadasi: “Come, make room, you lazy fellow, and let me sit

near the brigadier.”

Nadasi moved back.

Notwithstanding the rain, Benassis appeared to be pleased; he said that

that day a large swarm of wild geese had arrived from the north; that

they had lighted on the ponds of the Three Sawmills; that he had spied

them afar off, and that the shooting on the marshes was about to begin.

Benassis laughed and rubbed his hands as he emptied his glass of brandy

and water. Every one was listening to him. Uncle Eustache said, if he

went to shoot them, he should go in a little skiff; for as to putting

on high boots and going into the mire, at the risk of sinking in above

his ears, he would not fancy that much. Then every man had his say, and

old Jeannette musingly murmured to herself: “I also owned marshes and

ponds!”

“Ah!” cried Nadasi, with a mocking air, “listen to that: Dame Jeannette

used to own marshes....”

“Certainly,” said she, “I did!...”

“Where were they, noble lady?”

“In La Vendée, on the sea-coast.”

And as Nadasi shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, The old woman

is crazy! Mme. Jeannette ascended the little wooden staircase at the

back of the hovel, and then came down again with a basket filled with

various articles, needles, thread, bobbins, and yellow parchments,

which she deposited on the table. “Here are our papers,” said she: “the

ponds, the marshes, and the château are there with the other things!...

We laid claim to them in the time of Louis XVIII., but my relations

denied our rights, because I had married a republican. We would have

gone to law, but we had no money to pay the lawyers. Is it not so,

Coustel, is it not true?”

“Yes,” said the turner, without moving.

The persons assembled took no interest in the thing, not any more than

they would have done in the packages of paper money of the time of the

Republic, which may still be found in old closets.

Nadasi, still mocking, opened one of the parchments, and was raising

his head to read it, in order to laugh at Jeannette, when suddenly his

countenance become grave; he wiped his spectacles, and turning towards

the poor old woman, who had sat down again to her spinning.

“Are these your papers, Mme. Jeannette?” said he.

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you allow me to look at them a little?”

“You can do as you please with them,” said she; “they are of no use to

us.”

Then Nadasi, who had turned pale, folded up the parchment with several

others, saying: “I will see about that.... It is striking nine o’clock;

good-night.”

He went away, and the rest soon followed him.

Eight days after this, Nadasi set out for La Vendée; he had obtained

from Coustel and Dame Jeannette his wife their signature to a paper

which gave him full power to recover, alienate, and sell all their

property, taking upon himself the expenses, with the understanding that

he was to be repaid if he obtained the inheritance for them.

Soon after a report was spread in the village that Mme. Jeannette was

a noble lady, that she owned a château in La Vendée, and that Coustel

would soon receive a large income; but afterwards Nadasi wrote that he

had arrived six weeks too late; that the own brother of Mme. Jeannette

had shown him papers which made it as clear as the day that he had

held possession of the marshes for more than thirty years; and that,

whenever one holds the property of another for more than thirty years,

it is the same as if one had always had it; so that Jean-Pierre Coustel

and his wife, on account of their relations having thus enjoyed their

property, had no longer any claim to it.

These poor people, who had thought themselves rich, and whom all the

village had gone, according to custom, to congratulate and flatter,

when they found they were to have nothing, felt their poverty still

more keenly than before, and not long afterwards they died within a

short time of each other, like Christians, asking of the Lord pardon

for their sins, and confident in the hope of eternal life.

Nadasi sold his post of bailiff, and did not return to the country;

doubtless he had found some employment which suited him better than

serving citations.

Many years had passed; Louis Philippe had disappeared, then the

Republic; the couple Coustel slept on the hillside, and I suppose even

their bones had crumbled into dust in the grave. For my part, I had

succeeded my grandfather at the post-house, and Uncle Eustache, as he

himself had said, had taken his passport, when one morning, during the

gay season at Baden and Homburg, there happened to me something quite

surprising, and of which I still think frequently. Several post-chaises

had passed during the morning, when, towards eleven o’clock, a courier

came to inform me that his master, M. le Baron de Rosélière, was

approaching. I was at table. I immediately rose to superintend the

relay of horses. Just as they were being harnessed, a head was put

out of the coach-window—an old wrinkled face, with hollow cheeks,

and gold spectacles on the nose—it was the face of Nadasi, but old,

faded, worn out; behind him leaned the head of a young girl; I was all

astonishment. “What is the name of this village?” inquired the old man,

yawning.

“Laneuville, sir.”

He did not recognize me, and drew back. Then I saw an old lady also in

the coach. The horses were harnessed: they set off.

What a surprise, and how many ideas passed through my mind! Nadasi was

the Baron de Rosélière. May God forgive me if I am wrong! but I still

think that he sold the papers of poor Jeannette, and that he assumed

a noble name to ward off the questions of the inquisitive. What was

there to prevent him? Had he not obtained all the title-deeds, all the

papers, all the powers of attorney? And now has he not had the thirty

years of possession? Poor old Jeannette!... What misery we meet with in

this life!... And God permits it all!...

THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD.

FROM THE FRENCH OF REBOUL.

An angel bent with pensive air

Above an infant’s dream,

And seemed to view his image there

As in a stainless stream.

“O beauteous child!” he said, “I see”—

His breath like music’s sigh—

“The earth is all unworthy thee:

Come with me to the sky.

“Earth has no happiness complete;

The soul can never lift

Thee to a height where round thy feet

No clouds of pain will drift.

“At every feast, unbidden guest,

Some fear will still intrude:

No day so calm but in its breast

The morrow’s storm may brood.

“And shall care leave with passing years

Its impress on this brow?

And sorrows dim with growing tears

These eyes so tranquil now?

“No, no, sweet child! Come, let us mount

Above the fields of space;

Kind Heaven will cancel the account

Of life’s foreshadowed days.

“I pray no selfish grief may view

This day with mournful eyes,

Or with reproachful words pursue

Our way to paradise.

“But let your mother lift her brow

To Faith’s serenest light;

To one as innocent as thou,

Life’s last hour shines most bright.”

A subtle radiance from his wings

Upon the child was shed;

The angel mounting upward, sings:

“Poor mother! thy child is dead.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE DOCTRINE OF HELL, VENTILATED IN A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE

REV. C. A. WALWORTH AND WILLIAM HENRY BURR, Esq. New York: The

Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

This is a very small 18mo volume of one hundred and fifty-one pages,

containing more solid matter than some large octavos, as any person

who knows F. Walworth’s style of writing would naturally expect. It

contains a correspondence between himself and the gentleman whose

name is given above, who was a classmate of F. Walworth and one of

his fellow-members in the Presbyterian church of Union College. This

correspondence appeared in the _Investigator_, a notorious infidel

newspaper of Boston, and was called forth by an indignant denial

sent to that paper by F. Walworth of a false and utterly groundless

report that he had refused submission to the decrees of the Council

of the Vatican. Mr. Burr, who has renounced the errors of Calvinism,

and embraced those of infidelity and spiritism, took occasion from

this denial and the explicit avowal of perfect submission to all the

doctrines of Catholic faith involved in it, to question his former

classmate in regard to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and to

inquire of him how far his present belief in that doctrine agrees with

his former belief while a Presbyterian. This brought on a controversy,

in which Mr. Burr attempts to argue against the Catholic doctrine by

ridiculing and denouncing certain descriptions of the torments of

hell given by various writers, both Protestant and Catholic, bringing

in at the same time a number of discursive and random remarks about

many other topics, which are generally both very silly and altogether

irrelevant. F. Walworth, on his side, steadily refuses to be drawn from

the proper subject of controversy, or to permit his adversary to make

him responsible for the private opinions of any person, Protestant or

Catholic, and adduces strong, solid, irrefutable arguments from reason

in support of the strictly Catholic doctrine taught authoritatively

by the Church and obligatory on all her members. The only point which

F. Walworth professes to aim at, and toward which his argument is

directed with undeviating logic, is this. The doctrine which the church

authoritatively teaches and imposes as obligatory on the conscience

of her children is not contrary to reason, but in accordance with it,

and capable of being proved by rational arguments. In his statement

of what that doctrine is, F. Walworth follows Petavius, Perrone, and

Archbishop Kenrick with theological accuracy. He says (pref., p. 9),

“I have planted myself simply and purely upon the defined doctrine of

the Catholic Church, and what that doctrine necessarily involves.”

This is evidently to be understood of doctrine as defined, in the more

general sense of definitely and precisely taught by the infallible

magistracy of the church, by whatever method the church may exercise

this magistracy, and not to be restricted to definitions _de fide_

contained in explicit decrees of popes and councils. The logical

deductions following necessarily from that which is precisely the

article of Catholic faith are included in the obligatory doctrine. And

where these deductions have not been expressly drawn out and defined

in ecclesiastical decrees, the authority of the concurrent teaching of

theologians is acknowledged in explicit terms by F. Walworth: “Where

any questions remain undefined, I bow respectfully to the concurrent

opinions of [the church’s] leading theologians. Beyond this I will not

be bound” (p. 47). He says further: “All the language of Holy Scripture

on the subject must be accepted and maintained” (Pref., p. 8), which

is in accordance with a monition of the last Council of Baltimore to

Catholic writers on this subject. The same council also admonishes

Catholic writers not to diminish the punishment of sin in such a way

as to destroy its proportion to the sin. And if any one will examine

what F. Walworth has written, he will see that in this respect also he

has fulfilled the precept of the Fathers of Baltimore to the letter.

The statement of the defined doctrine of the church respecting hell

made by F. Walworth is precisely that of Petavius: “There is a hell,

and it is eternal.” Into the question of the specific physical nature

and instrumental causes of the punishments of hell he does not enter

very deeply. The only opinion of a Catholic writer which he expressly

opposes is that of F. Furniss, that the torments of hell increase in

geometrical proportion throughout eternity—an opinion which, so far

as we know, is not supported by any grave authority. Opinions which

are matters of lawful difference and discussion are left on their own

proper ground within the domain of theology. The point to be proved

is that reason cannot show any valid objection to the doctrine of

the everlasting punishment of the man who finishes his term of moral

probation on the earth in the state of mortal sin. Mr. Burr produces no

such objection. His admissions even confirm the truth of F. Walworth’s

positions. He admits that a state of intellectual and moral degradation

is in itself a state of misery. The sinner is in this disordered state

when he dies. If he lives for ever in the same state, this everlasting

state of existence is hell. But who can bring conclusive evidence that

there is any necessary cause which must bring him out of this state in

the future life? Such evidence not being forthcoming, reason has not

a word to say against the teaching of revelation, that those who fail

in their earthly probation have no other, and must abide for ever the

consequences of their own acts.

Some persons may object to the publication of a controversy in which

infidel arguments are placed within the reach of Catholic readers.

In the present instance, we think the cause of infidelity has alone

any reason to fear anything from Mr. Burr’s letters. His reasonings

are so weak and rambling, and the replies of F. Walworth so plain and

conclusive, that it must do good to any reader who has a Christian

belief to see what a wretched, disgusting substitute for divine

religion is offered to the dupes of infidel sophistry. Infidelity

destroys the mind and the manhood of the human being. In the form of

materialism, it makes him a beast; in the form of spiritism, a lunatic.

We do not say that books of this kind should be expressly placed in

the hands of all readers, especially children and those who never read

anything or hear anything except what is good; but we say to those who

do hear and read the infidel sophistry and blasphemy of the day, and

therefore need a refutation of it: Take the two sides represented in

this book—“Look on this picture, and then look on that.”

We must add that there are some most beautiful passages in F.

Walworth’s letters; that, as a literary work, they are a gem; and that

the appendix on the universal belief of mankind in hell, though brief,

is remarkably comprehensive and valuable.

THE THRESHOLD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: A Course of Plain

Instructions for those entering her Communion. By Rev. John B.

Bagshawe, Missionary Rector of S. Elizabeth’s, Richmond. With a

Preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel. New York: The Catholic

Publication Society. 1873.

The first part of this manual contains instruction in the truths of

faith; the second part, on sacraments, rites, devotions and similar

matters. It is good for candidates for admission into the Catholic

Church, for recent converts, and for clergymen, religious ladies,

teachers, and others who have converts to instruct.

A WINGED WORD, AND OTHER STORIES. By M. A. T., author of _The

House of Yorke_. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This collection of stories, already published separately in THE

CATHOLIC WORLD, ought to be welcome to all readers of taste and

discernment. It is just the book for summer reading, the only companion

one could bear in the retirement of the woods, and one whose spirit

would never jar upon any of nature’s moods. Fancy reading Miss Braddon

or Wilkie Collins under the forest canopy or by the river bank! But

here is a book which, at every page, will help you to put your own

vague thoughts into words, and will almost make you think that you

understand the song of the bobolink and the chatter of the squirrel.

And yet it is a book full of human interest, made up of human stories,

and treating of sorrow and want as well as of joy and peace. If we did

not know that the authoress was a New Englander, we should say she was

a German, so subtle and so spiritual are her principal characters,

so tender and so chaste her infinitely varied language. There is no

passion, no stir, no sensation in her plots, and her words do not pour

forth like a lava torrent, suggesting dangerous possibilities, and

caressing the animal instincts of our lower nature, like too many of

the successful and popular authors of our day. Reading her books, one

experiences a sense of coolness, and feels as if transported to a white

palace, where a crystal fountain plays unceasingly, and the silent

silver bells of lilies hang in clusters over the stream. It would

fill all the space we have at command to quote any of her beautiful

descriptions of scenes in the woods or by the golden sea-shore; she

seems to have gone down into the heart of every flower and learnt its

secret, to have lured the confidence of every brooklet, and made every

tree sing her some woodland poem.

The stories themselves (except the last) are the merest sketches, made

to hang beautiful thoughts upon, just as we plant a slender pole for a

scarlet vine to creep over. Yet they are each of them very original,

such as only “M. A. T.” would or could write.

One passage in “Daybreak” has been criticised in the Philadelphia

_Standard_ as containing the Nestorian heresy. It is found on p. 183:

“If you are willing, I would like to teach her to bless herself before

praying, and to say a little prayer to the Mother of Christ for your

safety. I won’t make her say ‘Mother of God.’” A little attention to

the context will make it perfectly evident that this criticism is

groundless, and that any Catholic might use this language in a similar

instance with perfect propriety. Mr. Granger and his little daughter

were Protestants. Margaret had no right to teach the child anything

which was against the conscience of her father. He was willing that she

should address the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Christ, but not that

she should use the term Mother of God. Mother of Christ is a perfectly

proper and orthodox title, and is used by the Church in the Litany of

Loretto. Therefore, it was right to teach the child to use it, with

her father’s permission, and to abstain from teaching her to use the

expression Mother of God, which is really its precise equivalent. S.

Basil did not even require certain persons who were estranged from the

Catholic fold through the Arian heresy, but who wished to be admitted

to the communion of the Church, to profess in express terms that the

Holy Ghost is God, but was satisfied with a profession of his divinity

in equivalent terms. If an equivalent term may sometimes be admitted

in the case of Catholics, much more may it be employed in teaching

those who are not Catholics. It is one thing to use terms which are

heretical, another to use those which are less explicit, but more

easily understood by those who do not know the true meaning of the more

explicit Catholic terms.

One of the stories in this collection, “What Dr. Marks Died Of,” might

have been omitted without any loss to the volume. It may easily be

taken as a shot at the medical profession, and if that was the author’s

aim, it is one which we cannot approve. If it was not, the story is an

arrow in the air.

THE IRISH REFORMATION; or, The Alleged Conversion of the

Irish Bishops at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth, etc. By W. Maziere

Brady, D.D. Fifth Edition. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867. (New

York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

STATE PAPERS CONCERNING THE IRISH CHURCH IN THE TIME OF QUEEN

ELIZABETH. Edited by W. Maziere Brady, D.D. London: Longmans,

Green, Reader & Dyer. 1868. (New York: Sold by The Catholic

Publication Society.)

We have had frequent occasion of late to notice with pleasure and to

congratulate our readers and the Catholic community generally on the

revival in England of Catholic literature, and particularly of that

class of works which has a tendency to illustrate the dark era of

persecution and proscription which, commencing under the reign of Henry

VIII., may be said to have reached almost down to our own day. In the

last generation, Dr. Lingard, by his impartial _History_, cleared away

a good deal of the rubbish with which the deformities of the so-called

English Reformation were hidden from view; subsequently, Lady Fullerton

and other distinguished writers of fiction attempted, and with success,

to gain the attention of the public to their admirable portraiture of

the sufferings and fortitude of the Catholics of England in the times

of Elizabeth and James I.; while the erudite editor of the _Narrative

of F. Gerard_ has, by his industry and conscientious labors, placed all

future historians under a great debt of gratitude.

The works before us, though treating of a different subject, and

written by a Protestant clergyman, have a tendency very similar to

that produced by the writings we have mentioned. The first is devoted

to a discussion of the question whether the Protestant hierarchy in

Ireland can legally and historically claim descent from the ancient

church in Ireland; or, in plainer terms, have the Anglican bishops

in that country ever been consecrated at all, at any time, or by any

competent authority? In tracing up the succession of the defunct

“Establishment,” the author gives very succinct and accurate sketches

of every incumbent, Catholic and Protestant, of every diocese in

Ireland from the middle of the XVIth century and proves by dates,

facts, and public documents that the “reformed” prelates have no

more right to claim apostolic succession than they have to claim

to be the apostles themselves. When we mention that Dr. Brady is a

beneficed clergyman, and was formerly chaplain to the lord lieutenant,

our readers will have little hesitation in accepting conclusions so

damaging to his own church, and which, as he tells us himself, only the

cause of truth could have compelled him to publish.

The other book, though not so interesting, is to us on this side of

the Atlantic of much greater value, as few of us have an opportunity

of consulting the originals. It is a collection of state papers,

letters, documents, and petitions “touching the mode in which it was

sought to introduce the Reformed religion into Ireland,” and are all

authenticated copies taken from the records of the State Paper Office

in London. However much Dr. Brady may have done by these publications

to damage the cause of Protestantism in Ireland, and to humble the

pride of a faction that never has and never can possess the respect

or affection of the people upon whom it has so long preyed, he has

deserved by his fairness and courage the esteem and thanks of all

impartial lovers of historical truth.

—Since the above was in type, we find occasion for congratulating

the author upon having arrived at the conclusion to which his

investigations naturally led, _i.e._, his reception into the Catholic

Church.

A VISIT TO LOUISE LATEAU. By Gerald Molloy, D.D. Boston: P.

Donahoe. 1873.

This pretty little gem of a book, which has an engraving of the cottage

of the Lateau family as a frontispiece, will charm and edify all those

who take an interest in reading about the wonders of divine grace with

which our age is specially favored.

DIRECTORIUM SACERDOTALE: A Guide for Priests in their Public

and Private Life. By F. Benedict Valuy, S.J. With an Appendix for the

use of Seminarists. London: John Philp. 1873.

This manual for ecclesiastics is highly commended by the Abbé Dubois,

an eminent director of a seminary in France, and an author of works

specially intended for priests, who calls it “the priest’s _Following

of Christ_,” and by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, to whom it is dedicated

by the translator. A valuable appendix has been added, containing a

catalogue of books for a priest’s library and for a mission, _i.e._,

parochial and lending library. It is enough to see Mr. Philp’s name as

publisher to know that it has been carefully, neatly, and conveniently

printed.

A HUNDRED MEDITATIONS ON THE LOVE OF GOD. By Robert

Southwell, Priest of the Society of Jesus. Edited, with a Preface, by

John Morris, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1873.

There is a delicious quaintness about these meditations. They are

colloquies with God and with self, and come from the soul of a poet

who “aspired to and attained martyrdom.” A sketch of the saintly

author has recently appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD (“Poet and

Martyr,” April, 1873), so that it is needless to give one here. But the

frontispiece of the volume before us is a portrait of F. Southwell,

which is valuable.

ONLY A PIN. Translated from the French of J. T. De

Saint-Germaine. By P. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

1873.

_Only a Pin_, but an exceedingly valuable one, pointing a moral keenly

and sharply; having a head secure and sound, not likely to be turned

by any accidental twist; altogether a well-manufactured pin, straight

and strong, not weakly bending this way and that to serve illegitimate

uses, but made in the best factory and of good metal; a pin belonging

to the first and oldest family in Pindom, and sure to make its mark in

the literary world.

We often hear the expression “not worth a row of pins,” but a row like

this pin would be far from worthless. One would hardly expect to

become interested in the events brought about by so small an article as

a pin; yet the accomplished author has managed to engage attention most

agreeably from the first chapter to the last.

The translation is in the main very natural and easy, but now and then

a sentence seems a little careless or obscure.

TALES FROM CHURCH HISTORY: VIVIA PERPETUA; or, The Martyrs

of Carthage. By R. De Mericourt. Translated from the Second French

Edition. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

The heroine of this story is S. Perpetua, the companion of S.

Felicitas. The story is well conceived and powerfully written. We have

not seen the original, but the translation shows an experienced and

competent hand, and has the great merit of reading as if the book had

been composed in English. There are, however, a number of inaccuracies

in respect to names, some careless sentences, and other blemishes of

style, some of which may be due to incorrect proof-reading, as the

errors evidently typographical are numerous. For instance, the Pontifex

Maximus is called the Pontiff Maximus, and in one place two Christian

converts are called “convicts.” Such an admirable story as this is,

with its thrilling delineations of Christian heroism and pagan cruelty,

ought to pass through more than one edition. If it does, we hope the

publisher will have its clerical errors corrected by a competent hand,

and the press-work more carefully performed, so as to make the book in

all respects _comme il faut_. If this is intended as the first of a

series, the project is one worthy of commendation.

Since the foregoing was put in type, we have ascertained that the story

as it appeared in French was “imitated from the English,” which, we

are informed, means that it was a free translation of an English book.

This accounts for certain omissions which appear rather singular in

a Catholic tale of this sort. No mention is made of the altar, the

sacrifice of the Mass, or holy communion. The explanations of Christian

doctrine and the answers to Vivia’s objections are not complete and

satisfactory. M. de Mericourt has taken care, however, that nothing

contrary to Catholic doctrine should be admitted, and as the events of

the story do not require any minute description of Christian doctrine

or worship, the omissions noted do not essentially detract from its

character as a portraiture of Christian virtue in the midst of the

dangers and trials of pagan life.

CARDINAL WISEMAN’S ESSAYS. Vol. III. New York: P. O’Shea.

1873.

This new volume contains the splendid refutation of High-Church and

Tractarian theories which appeared at the height of the Oxford movement

in the _Dublin Review_. Few persons have ever convinced so many and

such able antagonists by an argument as the great cardinal did in this

case. If it were possible to obtain the little volume on the last

illness and death of the cardinal, printed in England for private

circulation, to be published with this collection of his works, the

Catholic community would feel itself very much favored. The cardinal

was a holy man, as well as a great prelate. We have had the pleasure

of reading the beautiful account of his last illness and saintly death

in the little volume alluded to, and we cannot help thinking that its

publication would be an act of great propriety and utility, unless

there is some reason for reserving it for a place in a large and full

biography.

—Before going to press, we have noticed among the English

announcements that the work above referred to has been published.

THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTER; THE AMULET. Tales by Hendrick

Conscience. Baltimore: Murphy. 1873.

It is superfluous to praise Conscience’s tales, which are even better

than Canon Schmid’s. These two are uncommonly interesting, and

published in a very nice and attractive form, which makes them as

pretty little volumes for prizes as boy or girl could wish.

MODERN MAGIC. By Schele De Vere. New York: G. P. Putnam’s

Sons. 1873.

This is a crude hodge-podge of facts which the author has picked up

here and there, in which he utterly fails to distinguish between the

natural, the diabolical, and the divine. He has read some Catholic

works, and is to some extent familiar with the lives of the saints;

but the little that he knows only serves to place his ignorance in a

stronger light. What a pity it is that educated men should be ignorant

of what a child can so easily learn! Except for the additional examples

which he brings from recent times, Mr. De Vere would have been more

usefully employed in translating Görres, from whom he occasionally

quotes.

LA PRIMAUTE ET L’INFAILLIBILITÉ DES SOUVERAINES PONTIFES,

ETC. Par l’Abbé L. N. Bégin, D.D. Quebec: Huot. 1873.

This is another timely and admirable course of lectures from the Laval

University. The topics of the lectures are historical, embracing

the chief difficulties presented in the earlier, mediæval, and

later history of the Roman pontiffs respecting the supremacy and

infallibility of the successors of S. Peter. The controversies on

rebaptism, the Philosophumena, the case of Liberius, of Zosimus, of

Vigilius, of Honorius, the subject of the false decretals, the career

of S. Gregory VII., the conflict of Boniface VIII. with Philip le

Bel, the affair of the Templars, the great schism of Avignon, the

condemnation of Galileo, the suppression of the Jesuits, and several

other topics, are discussed in these able lectures in a critical and

erudite manner, in so far as space and the other conditions to which

the nature of his discourses subjected the author, have given him

the opportunity. The whole is preceded by an essay on the doctrine

of the supremacy, and concluded by a short eulogium on Pius IX. The

author is a graduate of the Roman College, and imbued with the sound

scholarship and orthodox spirit of that institution, the headquarters

of sacred science, which may God deliver from the impure horde who

are now defiling its precincts by their odious presence! There are a

great number of intelligent Catholic laymen seeking with anxiety at the

present time for clear, satisfactory information on just these topics

which the Laval professor has handled in the lectures now published. It

is a pity that they are accessible to those only who read French. If

the Quebec publisher would issue an edition in English, we are inclined

to think that the sale in England and the United States would reimburse

him. The lectures on the Syllabus, noticed in this magazine some months

ago, are also worth translating, and the publication of two such

courses in the English language would most certainly bring great honor

to the Laval University.

* * * * *

TO CONTRIBUTORS.—New contributors are reminded that no

attention can be paid to manuscripts unless accompanied by the writers’

real names, and a reference, if they are unknown to the editor.

We also desire it to be understood that short, pithy articles on

subjects of present interest will have the preference, and that none

should exceed twelve printed pages (of 650 words each), except by

special arrangement.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London, and The Catholic Publication

Society, New York: The Life and Letters of S. Francis Xavier. By H.

J. Coleridge, S.J. Vol. II. 12mo, pp. xxi-579.—Homeward. By Rev. F.

Rawes, O.S.C.

From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: A Novena in Honor of S.

Joseph. From the Italian of F. Patrignani, S.J. 24mo, pp. 104.

From COLLINS & BRO., New York: Teachings of Jesus. 24mo, pp.

44.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: On the Eve. By I. S.

Turgenieff. 18mo, pp. vi.-272.—Count Kostia. By Victor Cherbuliez.

18mo, pp. 307.—Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine.

18mo, pp. xx.-185.—Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thos. Hardy. 18mo,

pp. vi.-269.